October 13th

Today's Highlight in History:
On October 13th, 1974, longtime television host Ed Sullivan died in New York City at age 72.

On this date:
In A.D. 54, Roman emperor Claudius the First died, after being poisoned by his wife, Agrippina.

In 1775, the United States Navy had its origins as the Continental Congress ordered the construction of a naval fleet.

In 1792, the cornerstone of the executive mansion, later known as the White House, was laid during a ceremony in the District of Columbia.

In 1843, the Jewish organization B'nai B'rith was founded in New York City.

In 1845, Texas ratified a state constitution.

In 1943, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.

In 1944, American troops entered Aachen, Germany.

In 1944, British and Greek advance units landed at Piraeus during World War Two.

In 1960, Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy participated in the third televised debate of their presidential campaign.

In 1962, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," by Edward Albee, opened on Broadway.

Ten years ago: At the start of a three-day conference in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, the crown prince of Kuwait promised greater democracy for the emirate if it were freed from Iraqi occupation. In Lebanon, rebel Christian General Michel Aoun ended his mutiny against the government. Le Duc Tho, co-founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party, died in Hanoi at age 79.

Five years ago: British physicist Joseph Rotblat and the anti-nuclear group he founded, the Pugwash Conference, were named winners of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.

One year ago: The Senate defeated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 51-to-48. In Boulder, Colorado, the JonBenet Ramsey grand jury was dismissed after 13 months of work with prosecutors saying there wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone in the six-year-old's strangulation. Robert A. Mundell of Columbia University in New York won the Nobel Prize for economic sciences.

"There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost."

-- Franz Kafka, Austrian author (1883-1924).