Today is Wednesday, Oct. 10, the 283rd day of 2007. There are 82 days left in the year.
On Oct. 10, 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was established in Annapolis, Md.
In 1813, composer Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy.
In 1911, revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched their overthrow of China's Manchu dynasty.
In 1935, George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway.
In 1943, Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China.
In 1957, President Eisenhower apologized to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after the official was refused service in a Dover, Del., restaurant.
In 1957, the Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees in Game 7, 5-0.
In 1957, the TV series "Zorro," starring Guy Williams as the masked hero, debuted on ABC.
In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placing of weapons of mass destruction on the moon or elsewhere in space, entered into force.
In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.
In 1982, Father Maximilian Kolbe, who died in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, was canonized by Pope John Paul II.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator, Jody Williams, were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Defying the Republican Congress a second time, President Clinton vetoed a ban on certain late-term abortion procedures. Seventy-four people were killed in the crash of an Argentine jetliner in Uruguay.
The House voted 296-133 to give President Bush the broad authority he'd sought to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support. Two executives who'd overseen WorldCom's financial record-keeping pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Hungarian novelist and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz won the Nobel Prize in literature.
The Bush administration rejected anew direct talks with North Korea in the wake of the communist country's nuclear test, and suggested it was possible the test was something less than it appeared.
Playwright Harold Pinter is 77. Former Illinois Sen. Adlai Stevenson III is 77. Actor Peter Coyote is 65. Entertainer Ben Vereen is 61. Singer John Prine is 61. Actor Charles Dance is 61. Rock singer-musician Cyril Neville (The Neville Brothers) is 59. Actress Jessica Harper is 58. Singer-musician Midge Ure is 54. Country singer Tanya Tucker is 49. Actress Julia Sweeney is 48. Actor Bradley Whitford is 48. Musician Martin Kemp is 46. Rock musician Jim Glennie (James) is 44. Actress Rebecca Pidgeon is 42. Rock musician Mike Malinin (Goo Goo Dolls) is 40. Actress Wendi McLendon-Covey is 38. Actor Mario Lopez is 34. Actress Jodi Lyn O'Keefe is 29. Singer Mya is 28. Singer Cherie is 23. Actress Aimee Teegarden is 18.
"At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been." " Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and dramatist (1856-1900)