#Middlebury
On Oct. 27, 1659, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, two Quakers who came from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, are executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. The colony had banned Quakers under penalty of death.- On Nov. 1, 1765, despite widespread opposition in the American colonies, Parliament enacts the Stamp Act, designed to raise revenue for British military in America. The Stamp Act was designed to force colonists to use special stamped paper in the printing of newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs and playing cards.
- On Oct. 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicates The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France, in New York Harbor. Originally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World,” the statue was to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution.
- On Oct. 30, 1890, Oakland, California, enacts a law against opium, morphine and cocaine. It allowed only doctors to prescribe these drugs, which had been legal for cures or pain relief.
- On Oct. 31, 1957, Toyota hopes to saturate the American market with its inexpensive Toyopet Crown sedans. It was a flop: The car could barely meet California’s roadworthiness standards, guzzled extraordinary amounts of gas and oil, and tended to shake violently, overheat and stall.
- On Oct. 29, 1971, Duane Allman, leader of the Allman Brothers Band, is killed when he loses control of his motorcycle and hits a flatbed truck in Macon, Georgia. He was 24. One year later, the band’s bassist Berry Oakley died in a very similar motorcycle accident just a few blocks away.
- On Oct. 26, 1984, at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, Dr. Leonard Bailey performs the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl’s defective heart. “Baby Fae” survived the operation, but died of heart failure after 20 days.
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