October 19
1781
British General Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown, Va., bringing an end to the last major battle of the American Revolution.
1812
French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte began their retreat from Moscow.
1960
The United States imposes a partial embargo on goods exported to Cuba.
1983
The Senate passed a bill (78–22) making Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birthday a public holiday.
1987
The stock market crashed on what came to be known as “Black Monday.” Stocks dropped a record 508 points, or 22.6%, topping the drops on October 28 and 29 in 1929 that ushered in the Great Depression.
Birthdays
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
1910—1995 , American astrophysicist, born. Lahore, India (now Pakistan).
Thomas Browne
author and physician (1605)
Edmund Beecher Wilson
zoologist (1856)
Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown
baseball player (1876)
Lewis Mumford
social philosopher (1895)
Jack Anderson
newspaper columnist (1922)
John Lithgow
actor (1945)
Philip Pullman
writer (1946)
John le Carr
boxer (1962)