October 9

1000 - Leif Ericson landed in North America, discovering 'Vinland' (possibly New England).

Ericson is one of the great astronauts of his time...And like the lunar explorers of our time he was unable to settle and colonize the land he found.

It took almost 500-years for the problem of the 'New World' to be solved...Makes you wonder if we can do the same with the Moon 500-years from our time?

I'm noting this as a significant event, because of the feat more than its significance. But, it's important to keep this event in perspective, because Ericson's discovery was hardly important at all...He showed up, he left, and nothing came of his discovery. That's it.

1936 - The first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles.

Gotta love the City of Angels stealing it’s water from Northern California and it’s electricity from Nevada...Without doing such, there would be no Los Angeles, however.

1975 - Andrei Sakharov, Soviet bomb-maker, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sakharov was a giant in the Soviet sciences, and played a role in their atomic and hydrogen bomb programs.

Like many of the nuclear scientists of the 50's-70's (worldwide), Sakharov became an opponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and wanted to put the genie back in the bottle...A genie he helped bring out of the bottle.

1989 - The official Soviet news agency Tass reported an unidentified flying object, complete with a trio of tall aliens, visited a park in the city of Voronezh.

It was really the ghosts of the 'Holy Trinity of the Communist State' (Marx, Lenin and Stalin), not UFO’s.