Today in History: China Arrests the “Gang of Four” on October 12.

Today in History

Today is Wednesday, October 12, 2022, the 285th day of the year. The year has 80 days left.

Today’s Historical Highlight:

On October 12, 1976, Hua Guofeng was named to succeed the late Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Communist Party; it was also announced that Mao’s widow and three others, known as the “Gang of Four,” had been arrested.

On this date:

The Old Style calendar says that Christopher Columbus’s group arrived in the Bahamas in 1492.

To mark the 300th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival, the first known Columbus Day celebration was held in the United States in 1792.

General Robert E. Lee died in 1870 at the age of 63 in Lexington, Virginia.

In 1933, bank robber John Dillinger escaped from an Ohio jail with the help of his gang. They killed the sheriff, Jess Sarber, on the way out.

In 1971, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” a rock opera, opened at Broadway’s Mark Hellinger Theatre.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon chose Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, who was in the minority in the House, to be the next vice president.

In 1984, a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army went off in a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people. It was meant to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but she was not hurt.

In 1986, the superpower meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in a stalemate. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev couldn’t agree on arms control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United States.

In Yemen in 2000, a suicide bomber targeted the destroyer, USS Cole, killing 17 sailors.

On the Indonesian island of Bali, a nightclub was destroyed by bombs in 2002, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians and 7 Americans. The bombing was attributed to militants with ties to al-Qaida.

In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to raise awareness about global warming.

In 2011, a Nigerian al-Qaida operative pleaded guilty to attempting to bring down a jetliner with a bomb in his underwear. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told a federal judge in Detroit that he had acted in retaliation for the global killing of Muslims.

Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi clashed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for the first time since Morsi assumed office more than three months prior. The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting peace on a continent that had been plagued by war for centuries.

Five years ago, the Trump administration announced it would “immediately” cease payments to insurers under the health care law enacted during the Obama administration. President Donald Trump lashed out at hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, stating that the federal government cannot continue sending aid “forever” and implying that Puerto Rico was to blame for its financial difficulties.