October 23 ...

In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, DC, for all military-related cases; Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana, the previous April. The next year, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the entire country. In 1863 Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act, formally suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the US. In 1864 forces led by Union Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate Gen. Stirling Price's army in Missouri. In 1915 25,000 women marched in New York City, demanding the right to vote. In 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged, starting the stock-market crash that began the Great Depression. In 1942 Britain launched a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein in Egypt. In 1944 the World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf began. In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow. In 1956 an anti-Stalinist revolt that was subsequently crushed by Soviet troops began in Hungary. In 1973 President Nixon agreed to turn over White House tape recordings requested by the Watergate special prosecutor to Judge John J. Sirica. In 1980 the resignation of Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin was announced. In 1983 241 US Marines and sailors in Lebanon were killed in a suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers. Both attacks were carried out by radical Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah, which was sponsored by Iran and Syria. In 1987 the US Senate rejected, 58-42, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork. In 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a "land-for-peace" agreement. In 2004 gunmen ambushed a group of US-trained Iraqi soldiers on a road east of Baghdad; around 50 of the soldiers, who were unarmed, were killed execution-style.