25 YEARS AGO

October 4, 1976 Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz resigns after a newspaper reports his racist remarks about blacks.

October 14–21, 1976 The United States makes a clean sweep of the Nobel Prizes, winning or sharing awards in chemistry, physics, medicine, economics, and literature. (No peace prize was awarded.)

50 YEARS AGO

October 24, 1951 Nearly 10 years after it began, President Harry S. Truman proclaims the formal end of the war between the United States and Germany.

125 YEARS AGO

October 13, 1876 Meharry Medical College, which for most of a century would remain one of a handful of medical schools for African-Americans, opens in Memphis, Tennessee.

150 YEARS AGO

October 1851 Emanuel Leutze’s painting Washington Crossing the Delaware is unveiled in New York City.

175 YEARS AGO

October 7, 1826 America’s first railroad, the three-mile horse-drawn Quincy Tramway, begins hauling granite from a quarry to the construction site of the Bunker Hill Monument.

225 YEARS AGO

October 9, 1776 Missionaries establish the mission of San Francisco de Asis on the site of the future city of San Francisco.

October 11–13, 1776 After delaying the British advance long enough to save the Continental cause, a makeshift American fleet commanded by Benedict Arnold is destroyed by gunboats on Lake Champlain.

October 23, 1776 The Continental Army evacuates all of New York City except for a garrison at Fort Washington. On October 28 it sustains heavy casualties at the Battle of White Plains, but withdraws intact to the north.

300 YEARS AGO

October 15, 1701 Connecticut grants a charter to the colonies’ third college, which will later be called Yale.