October 22 in Pop Culture History

October 22nd History, Trivia, and Fun Facts

October 22nd History Highlights

  • 1844 – End of World predicted by William Miller and his followers. #falsealarm
  • 1883 – New York’s Metropolitan Opera House opened.
  • 1962 – President John F. Kennedy addressed the country, demanding that Cuba removed Soviet missiles and equipment that had been secretly placed on the island.
  • If you were born on October 22nd,
    You were likely conceived the week of… January 29th (same year)

Cuban Missile Crisis

The clock in the Cuban missile crisis ticked on October 16, 1962, when President Kennedy was informed that a US spy plane had detected medium-range missiles that could target large parts of the United States. On October 22, Kennedy announced the discovery on television, saying he would impose a two-day naval quarantine on Cuba. The missiles were discovered after U-2 spy planes photographed their presence in the west of the island.

Although Kennedy called on Russian Prime Minister Nikita S. Khrushchev to dismantle the missiles, he ordered a naval quarantine and blockade of Cuba to prevent Russian ships from bringing additional missile-building materials to the island. In response to the American naval blockade, Prime Minister Khrushchev authorized his military to launch an attack on US troops who were warned of an invasion of Cuba on October 23, 1962, the eve of the Cuban missile crisis. Stuck in this way, they stared at each other for seven days until Khrushchev blinked.

Cuba’s communist leader Fidel Castro was furious, but he was powerless, and his communist leaders were frustrated. Better reflecting on extending his challenge to the United States, the Russian Prime Minister relented, and ordered Soviet supply ships to leave Cuban waters, and agreed to withdraw the missiles from the Cuban mainland.

The Cuban missile crisis marked the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era of peace and cooperation between the United States and Russia. But the crisis also marks the closest the world has ever come to global nuclear war.

October 22nd is…

Caps Lock Day
Eat a Pretzel Day
Nut Day
Smart is Cool Day
Stuttering Awareness Day

October 22nd Birthday Quotes

“I hope the time will never come when I shall feel satisfied. To reach the goal of one’s ambitions must be tragic.”
– N.C. Wyeth

“Focusing on the negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult.”
– TobyMac

“I am the creator of my reality.”
– Annette Funicello

“The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety.”
– Deepak Chopra

“In life, one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.”
– Franz Liszt

“Something in me wanted to find out how far I could run without stopping.”
– Zac Hanson

October 22nd Birthdays

1811 – Franz Liszt, Hungarian pianist, and composer (died in 1886)
1882 – N.C. Wyeth, American painter, and illustrator (died in 1945)
1903 – Curly Howard, American comedic actor, Third Stooge (died in 1952)
1917 – Joan Fontaine, British-American actress (died in 2013)
1920 – Timothy Leary, American LSD psychologist (died in 1996)
1942 – Annette Funicello, American actress, and singer (died in 2013)
1943 – Catherine Deneuve, French actress
1946 – Deepak Chopra, Indian-American physician, and author
1964 – TobyMac, American singer-songwriter
1965 – Valeria Golino, Italian actress
1968 – Shaggy, Jamaican singer-songwriter and DJ
1969 – Spike Jonze, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1985 – Zac Hanson, American singer-songwriter and drummer

October 22nd 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 – it lasted 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 – In East Liverpool, Ohio, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents shot and killed bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.

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

October 22, 1995 Birthday (fictional) Daphne Vasquez and Bay Kennish, Switched at Birth, TV

October 22, 2009 – Windows 7 was released

Today’s Random Trivia and Shower Thoughts

Bruce Lee died at the young age of 32 from what doctors ruled a “misadventure.”

“There’s no crying in baseball!” – Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) in A League of Their Own, 1992

If I had a dime for every time I didn’t know what was going on…

I’d be like, “Why ya’ll keep giving me all these dimes?”

The English word “warranty” was borrowed from French, then after the French word evolved (replacing ‘w’ with ‘g’) it was borrowed again as the word “guarantee”. Thus the same word was borrowed twice and given different meanings.

All of Bill Murray’s lines in Caddyshack were improvised.

Literally everything you’ve ever seen was an interaction with gravity somehow. Your thoughts, even, are physical phenomena with a relationship to gravity.

The Capital of Ireland is Dublin

Sonic pitchmen T.J. Jagodowski (the passenger) and Peter Grosz (the driver) like to talk about Sonic while sitting in the car.

God Save the Queen royal anthem can also be called “God Save the King”, depending on the gender of the monarch.

The US Postal Service handles 47% of the entire world’s mail.

The color is now known as “School bus yellow” and was specially formulated for use on school buses in North America because this yellow is noticed quicker in peripheral vision than any other color.

Prince – Real Name: Prince Rogers Nelson

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