MOMENTS IN TIME - Sept. 30, 2010

The History Channel

* On Oct. 10, 1845, The United States Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Md., with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors. The curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy and French.

* On Oct. 8, 1871, a spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary ignites a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings and leaves 100,000 homeless. Legend has it that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern and started the fire. In 1997, the Chicago City Council exonerated Mrs. O’Leary and her cow.

* On Oct. 5, 1892, the Dalton gang attempts to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kan., but meets resistance from townspeople. As the gang was about to make their getaway, a throng of townsfolk armed by a local hardware store, surprised them. In the gunfight that ensued, all five men were shot.

* On Oct. 7, 1913, for the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Mich., automobile factory is run on an assembly line. This cut the man-hours required to complete one Model T from 12-1/2 hours to six. Further improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes.

* On Oct. 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy advises American families to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. One year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted.

* On Oct. 4, 1988, televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public. Jim Bakker was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, later reduced to eight years.

* On Oct. 9, 1992, a meteorite crashes into a Chevy Malibu owned by 18-year-old Michelle Knapp in Peekskill, N.Y. The bowling ball-size rock weighed 28 pounds and smelled of rotten eggs. It was confirmed that the object was a genuine meteorite and came from the inner edge of the main asteroid belt in space, between Jupiter and Mars.

* On Oct. 15, 1917, Mata Hari, the archetype of the seductive female spy, is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris. She first came to Paris in 1905 and found fame as a performer of exotic Asian-inspired dances, claiming to have been born in a sacred Indian temple. In reality, Mata Hari was born in a small town in northern Holland in 1876, and her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle.

* On Oct. 11, 1925, novelist Elmore Leonard is born in New Orleans. His book "Hombre" (1961) was voted one of the best 25 Westerns of all time by the Western Writers of America. His first mystery, "The Big Bounce" (1969), was rejected by 84 publishers before it was published as an original paperback.

* On Oct. 17, 1931, gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000. Elliot Ness and his "Untouchables" routinely broke up Capone's bootlegging businesses, but it was tax-evasion charges that finally stuck and landed Capone in prison.

*On Oct. 12, 1945, Army Pfc. Desmond T. Doss of Lynchburg, Va., is presented the Congressional Medal of Honor for outstanding bravery as a medical corpsman, the first conscientious objector in American history to receive the nation's highest military award.