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October 12
1492. Christopher Columbus' expedition makes landfall in the Bahamas, though the explorer believes he is in Southern Asia.
1692. Governor Phips of Massachusetts issues orders to stop the increasingly controversial and unpopular Salem Witch Trials, and will eventually order the special court convened to try the accused disbanded. After 19 hangings and one person being crushed to death, the madness is stopped. Something like 200 individuals accused of witchcraft are pardoned.
1892. Partly in celebration of Columbus' voyage, school children first recite the PLedge of Allegiance. In 1942 Congress will recognize it as the official pledge of the United States. Originally, the pledge did not include the words "under God". In 1954, President Eisenhower, originally raised as a Jehovah's Witness but having previously converted to Presbyterianism a few years before his election, signs legislation including the religious phrasing to the pledge.
1901. Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" the "White House".
1933. The Department of Justice obtains the Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island.
1960. Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev embarrasses himself and his country by removing his shoe and pounding it on his desk while attending a United Nations meeting. He was protesting allegations by the Phillipines that the Soviet Union was embarking on colonialism in Eastern Europe.
1972. A racial brawl breaks out on the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier en route to the Gulf of Tonkin. More than 200 sailors are involved and 50 are injured. A Congressional inquiry follows.
1979. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is published.
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