October 11, 1981 (Sunday)
- The Super Chicken III, piloted by John Shoecroft and Fred Gorrell, became the first balloon to ever make a nonstop crossing of the United States. The 2,515 mile journey from Costa Mesa, California to Blackbeard Island in Georgia, took 55 hours and 25 minutes to complete.
- Died: Brooks Hays, 83, former U.S. Congressman (D-Arkansas) who was voted out of office in 1958 after taking a stand against segregation in the schools
Read more about this topic: October 1981
Famous quotes containing the word october:
“The autumnal change of our woods has not yet made a deep impression on our own literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)