25 Years Ago

October 1, 1979 The Canal Zone, an American possession for 76 years, ceases to exist, as sovereignty of the territory is handed over to Panama.

50 Years Ago

October 28, 1954 Ernest Hemingway becomes the fifth American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, following Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, Pearl S. Buck, and William Faulkner.

75 Years Ago

October 24, 1929 Prices plunge on the New York Stock Exchange as 13
million shares are traded. A few days later 16 million shares will be traded. By mid-November, prices will have lost nearly 40 percent of their September peak value.

100 Years Ago

October 27, 1904 The first section of the New York City subway system opens for business. It runs from City Hall to Grand Central Terminal, then to Times Square and up the West Side to 145th Street and Broadway.

200 Years Ago

October 26, 1804 The members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery settle in at winter quarters in a Mandan Indian village on the Missouri River, near the site of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.

225 Years Ago

October 17, 1779 Gen. George Washington installs his troops in winter quarters in Morristown, New Jersey, where they will endure an even more miserable winter than they did at Valley Forge.

October 28, 1779 Gen. Benjamin Lincoln withdraws his Continental troops after a failed attempt to capture Savannah, Georgia, from the British. The campaign cost the Continentals 800 men, including Gen. Casimir Pulaski, who had led a checkered career since arriving from Poland to join the Continental Army two years earlier.

250 Years Ago

October 31, 1754 King George II grants a royal charter to King’s College, to be established in the city of New York. After closing during the Revolution, it will be reopened under the more patriotic name Columbia College.