October 22 in History

362 – The temple of Apollo at Daphne, outside Antioch (in modern-day Turkey), was destroyed in a fire.

1746 – The College of New Jersey (renamed Princeton University in 1896) received its charter.

1836 – Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1879 – Thomas Edison tested the first practical electric incandescent light bulb, lasting 13 1/2 hours.

1883 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opened (with a performance of Gounod’s Faust).

1926 – J. Gordon Whitehead punched magician Harry Houdini while he was still preparing for it) in the stomach in Montreal, later causing his death.

1934 – Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents shot and killed bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd in East Liverpool, Ohio.

1962 – US President John F. Kennedy announced that American reconnaissance planes had found Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he had ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.

1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but turned down the honor because “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.”

1976 – Red Dye No. 4 was banned by the US Food and Drug Administration.

1978 – The inauguration of Pope John Paul II took place in Saint Peter’s Square.

1988 – #1 Hit October 22, 1988 – November 4, 1988: Phil Collins – A Groovy Kind of Love