This Day in History: Oct. 31

On this day, Oct. 31 ...

1941: Work is completed on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

Also on this day:

• 1926: Escape artist Harry Houdini dies in Detroit of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix.
• 1941: The Navy destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat off Iceland with the loss of some 100 lives, even though the United States has not yet entered World War II.
• 1961: The body of Josef Stalin is removed from Lenin’s Tomb as part of the Soviet Union’s “de-Stalinization” drive.
• 1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson orders a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hopes for fruitful peace negotiations.
• 1975: The Queen single “Bohemian Rhapsody” is released in the United Kingdom by EMI Records.
• 1984: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards.
• 1992: Pope John Paul II formally proclaims the Roman Catholic Church erred in condemning the astronomer Galileo for holding that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
• 1998: A genetic study is released suggesting President Thomas Jefferson did, in fact, father at least one child by his slave Sally Hemings.
• 1999: EgyptAir Flight 990, bound from New York to Cairo, crashes off the Massachusetts coast, killing all 217 people aboard.
• 2013: The Federal Aviation Administration issues new guidelines allowing airline passengers to keep their electronic devices turned on throughout the entire flight, but not to talk on their cellphones.

Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood, left, and Robin Wright as Clair Underwood in a scene from "House of Cards" (AP Photo/Netflix, Nathaniel E. Bell)

• 2017: Netflix says it is suspending production on “House of Cards” following sexual harassment allegations against its star, Kevin Spacey. (Spacey would later be fired from the show, and production would resume without him. The final season of “House of Cards” would be released in November 2018.) 
• 2017: At least eight people are killed and 11 injured after a motorist drives a rented pickup truck onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial in Lower Manhattan.