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The events of October 19 · Read the full edition → · More from October 19 →
19871776 Club

Four U.S. destroyers open fire on Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf

Three days after a Silkworm missile blinded an American tanker captain, Reagan sends four destroyers to answer.

A Silkworm missile had slammed into the Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City on October 16, wounding eighteen crewmen and blinding its American captain. On October 19, 1987, four U.S. destroyers, Hoel, Leftwich, Kidd, and John Young, opened fire at 2 p.m. on two Iranian platforms in the Rashadat field that the Revolutionary Guard used to track shipping and coordinate small-boat attacks. Navy boarding teams raided one platform for documents, then destroyed it with planted explosives. President Reagan called it "an appropriate and proportionate response."…

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More from October 19
1781

Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown; he sends a stand-in rather than face Washington

Eight thousand British and German troops lay down arms as a band reportedly played "The World Turned Upside Down."
1950

Pyongyang falls to UN troops; by nightfall, China's army is already crossing the border

Church bells rang over the North Korean capital hours before Beijing's soldiers began wading the Yalu.
1948

Truman stands on Union Square to honor three presidents North Carolina gave the nation

A sitting president stood before bronze and granite to mark where Jackson, Johnson and Polk were born.
19731776 Club
Archibald Cox has three days to accept Stennis's word for what's on the recordings, or else.
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More from Cold War America
1971

The Times begins printing the Pentagon Papers; four presidents, the documents show, misled the country on Vietnam

A 7,000-page classified Defense Department study reveals the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations each obscured the true scope of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
1961

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

The agreement, signed in 1959 after Argentine marines fired on British researchers, designates everything south of 60°S as a scientific preserve open to all signatories.
1972

Nixon signs 37 words into law; no federal program may turn away a student on the basis of sex

Senator Birch Bayh's passage, buried in the Education Amendments of 1972, draws almost no public attention at the signing.
1972

Nixon tells Haldeman to use the CIA to block the FBI's Watergate inquiry

Six days after the break-in at Democratic headquarters, the Oval Office recording system captures the President invoking national security to shut down investigators.
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