Today in History: October 7, Fox News Channel's debut

Today in History Today is Friday, Oct. 7, the 280th day of 2022. There are 85 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Oct. 7, 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him; Thomas denied Hill’s allegations and would go on to win Senate confirmation. On this date: In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England. In 1916, in the most lopsided victory in college football history, Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland University 222-0 in Atlanta. In 1949, the Republic of East Germany was formed. In 1982, the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical ‘œCats’� opened on Broadway. (The show closed Sept. 10, 2000, after a record 7,485 performances.) In 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro (ah-KEE’-leh LOW’-roh) in the Mediterranean. (The hijackers shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American tourist in a wheelchair, and pushed him overboard, before surrendering on Oct. 9.) In 1989, Hungary’s Communist Party renounced Marxism in favor of democratic socialism during a party congress in Budapest. In 1992, trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement during a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, in the presence of President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (muhl-ROO’-nee) and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In 1996, Fox News Channel made its debut. In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten and left tied to a wooden fencepost outside of Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. (Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving life sentences for Shepard’s murder.) In 2001, the war in Afghanistan started as the United States and Britain launched air attacks against military targets and Osama bin Laden’s training camps in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In 2003, California voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger their new governor. In 2020, President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office for the first time since he was diagnosed with COVID-19; he credited an experimental drug treatment with helping his recovery. Debating from behind plexiglass shields, Vice President Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris zeroed in on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Harris labeling it ‘œthe greatest failure of any presidential administration’� while Pence defended the overall response. Ten years ago: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez won re-election for the third time. (Chavez died in March 2013 at age 58 after a two-year battle with cancer; he was succeeded by Vice President Nicolas Maduro.) Five years ago: Country music star Jason Aldean, who had been on stage at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas less than a week earlier when a gunman opened fire on the crowd, paid tribute to the victims and to the late Tom Petty by opening ‘œSaturday Night Live’� with Petty’s song, ‘œI Won’t Back Down.’� Protesters rallied across Russia in a challenge to President Vladimir Putin on his 65th birthday; heeding calls from opposition leader Alexei Navalny to pressure authorities into letting him enter the presidential race.