1930 Oct 9, Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, Calif.

1940 Oct 9, Otto Kallir, owner of the Galerie St. Etienne in Manhattan, opened a show featuring the art work of Anna Mary Moses (77). A reported embellished her name as Grandma Moses. Three paintings of 34, priced from $20-250, were sold. Her popularity rose rapidly following a Thanksgiving show at Gimbels department store.
1973 Oct 9, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (b.1915), pioneering gospel singer and recording artist, died. She became the first great recording star of Gospel music in the late 1930s and also became known as the "original soul sister" of recorded music. In 2007 Gayle F. Wald authored “Shout, Sister, Shout: The Untold story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe."
1982 Oct 9, Anna Freud (b.1895), Austrian-English psychoanalyst and daughter of Sigmund Freud, died in London.
1987 Oct 9, Clare Boothe Luce (b.1903), former journalist, playwright and congresswoman, died in Washington DC. Her biography by Sylvia Jukes Morris, "Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce," was published in 1997.

2002 Oct 9, Aileen Wuornos (46), a former prostitute, was executed for killing 6 men along Florida highways. She became the 10th woman executed in the US since capital punishment resumed in 1977.


2004 Oct 9, Queen Elizabeth opened Scotland's new parliament building in Edinburgh, which was finished late and cost 430 million pounds ($845 million), 10 times over budget.


2004 Oct 9, In Nottingham, central England, a teenage girl was gunned down near her home in an apparently random attack. Danielle Beccan (14) was shot as many as six times from a passing car while walking back from a funfair with friends.

2010 Oct 9, It was reported that Madeleine Pickens, the wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, has acquired a Nevada ranch for use as a wild horse sanctuary, the Mustang Monument Preserve. The 14,000 acre property included grazing rights to 540,000 acres of public land. She was also said to be negotiating for and adjoining 4,000-acre ranch with grazing rights to 24,000 acres. She hoped to return all 34,000 in government funded holding facilities and pastures to their natural habitat.



2011 Oct 9, In Afghanistan ousted parliamentarian Simeen Barakzai began her eighth day of a hunger strike. Through chapped lips and in a rough voice, she said she would not drink or eat anything until President Hamid Karzai opened an investigation into vote fraud by the woman who has taken over her seat in Herat province.

2012 Oct 9, In New Hampshire Seth Mazzaglia raped and murdered college student Elizabeth Marriott (19) of Westborough, Mass. Kathryn McDonough, his girlfriend, had lured Marriott to their apartment as a sexual offering to her boyfriend. The couple packed Marriott’s body into a suitcase, drove to Portsmouth, and threw it into the Piscataqua River. Her body has never been found.

2012 Oct 9, In Syria Ankhar Kochneva, a Ukrainian woman who worked as an interpreter for a Russian TV crew, was kidnapped by rebels in the country's west. Kochneva was reported free on March 12, 2013.


2013 Oct 9, In France Leonarda Dibrani, a 15-year-old Roma girl, was taken off a school bus and deported with her family to Kosovo.