Moments in Time: Battle of Ball's Bluff
The History Channel
On Oct. 21, 1861, Union troops suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in Virginia, the second major engagement of the Civil War, which produced the conflict's first martyr and led to the creation of a Congressional committee to monitor the conduct of the war.
On Oct. 22, 1797, the first parachute jump of note was made by Andre-Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet above Paris.
On Oct. 23, 1998, Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death inside his home in Amherst, New York, by anti-abortion radical James Charles Kopp. His killing marked the fifth straight year that an abortion-providing doctor in upstate New York and Canada became the victim of a sniper attack. Kopp, whose defense argued that he only intended to wound Slepian, was convicted of second-degree murder in 2003.
On Oct. 24, 1969, movie star Richard Burton dazzled his wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor, with a 69-carat Cartier diamond ring costing a cool $1.5 million after she responded to his allegation that her hands were large and ugly by saying that he'd better buy her the ring to make them look smaller and more attractive. In 1979, the now-divorced Taylor put the ring up for auction and it sold for $3 million.
On Oct. 25, 1980, AC/DC earned their first pop Top 40 hit with "You Shook Me All Night Long." It remains their most popular single.
On Oct. 26, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivered a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, condemning lynchings, committed mainly by white supremacists against Black Americans in the Deep South and elsewhere. The previous year, the NAACP had reported that such crimes claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans each week.
On Oct. 27, 1659, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, two Quakers who'd emigrated from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, were executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. The men had violated a law passed by the Massachusetts General Court the year before that banned Quakers from the colony under penalty of death.
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