► Today is Saturday, Oct. 24, the 297th day of 2009. There are 68 days left in the year.
► Today’s birthdays: Football Hall of Famer Y.A. Tittle is 83. Rock musician Bill Wyman is 73. Actor-producer David Nelson is 73. Actor F. Murray Abraham is 70. Actor Kevin Kline is 62. Former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume is 61. Country musician Billy Thomas (Terry McBride and the Ride) is 56. Actor B.D. Wong is 49. Rock musician Ben Gillies (Silverchair) is 30. Singer-actress Monica Arnold is 29. Rhythm & blues singer Adrienne Bailon (3lw) is 26. Actress Shenae Grimes (“90210’’) is 20.
► In 1537, Jane Seymour, the third wife of England’s King Henry VIII, died 12 days after giving birth to Prince Edward, later King Edward VI.
► In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and effectively destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.
► In 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph message was sent as Chief Justice Stephen J. Field of California transmitted a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln.
► In 1901, widow Anna Edson Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
► In 1931, the George Washington Bridge, connecting New York and New Jersey, was officially dedicated. It opened to traffic the next day.
► In 1939, Benny Goodman and his orchestra recorded their signature theme, “Let’s Dance,’’ for Columbia Records in New York.
► In 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence as its charter took effect. (On this date in 1949, construction began on the UN headquarters in New York.)
► In 1952, Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower declared in Detroit, “I shall go to Korea’’ as he promised to end the conflict. He made the visit over a month later.
► In 1989, former television evangelist Jim Bakker was sentenced by a judge in Charlotte, N.C., to 45 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy. (The sentence was later reduced to eight years; it was further reduced to four for good behavior.)
► In 1999, an Israeli court sentenced American teenager Samuel Sheinbein to 24 years in prison for killing an acquaintance in Maryland in 1997. Senator John Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital at 77.
► In 2004, the Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-2 for a 2-0 World Series lead.
► In 2008, singer-actress Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were found slain in their Chicago home; the body of her 7-year-old nephew was found three days later. (Hudson’s estranged brother-in-law has been arrested in the killings.) A Russian Soyuz capsule touched down in Kazakhstan after delivering the first two men to follow their fathers into space, a Russian and an American, to the international space station.
