This Day in History: Oct. 4

On this day, Oct. 4 …

2002: A tearful "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh receives a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Islamic radicals to kill his countrymen.

Also on this day:

1777: Gen. George Washington's troops launch an assault on the British at Germantown, Pa., resulting in heavy American casualties.
1861: During the Civil War, the U.S. Navy authorizes construction of the first ironclad ship, the USS Monitor.
1940: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini confer at Brenner Pass in the Alps.
1951: The MGM movie musical "An American in Paris," starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, has its U.S. premiere in New York City.

A Soviet technician works on Sputnik 1 before the satellite's Oct. 4, 1957, launch. (NASA)

1957: The Space Age begins as the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.

1970: Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, is found dead in her Hollywood hotel room.
1989: Triple Crown-winning racehorse Secretariat, suffering a hoof ailment, is humanely destroyed at age 19.
1990: After six decades apart, lawmakers gather in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany's parliament.
1991: The U.S. and 25 other nations sign the Madrid Protocol, which imposes a 50-year ban on oil exploration and mining in Antarctica.
2002: In a federal court in Boston, a laughing Richard Reid pleads guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives in his shoes (the British citizen was later sentenced to life in prison).
2003: A Palestinian woman blows herself up inside a restaurant in Haifa, Israel, killing 21 bystanders.
2009: Greek socialists trounce the governing conservatives in a landslide election; Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, 74, dies in Buenos Aires.
2004: The SpaceShipOne rocket plane breaks through Earth's atmosphere to the edge of space for the second time in five days, capturing the $10 million Ansari X prize aimed at opening the final frontier to tourists; Pioneering astronaut Gordon Cooper dies in Ventura, Calif., at age 77.
2014: North Korea's presumptive No. 2 leader, Hwang Pyong So, and other members of Pyongyang's inner circle meet with South Korean officials in the rivals' highest-level, face-to-face talks in five years.
2014: Former Haitian "president for life" Jean-Claude Duvalier, 63, dies in Port-au-Prince.
2018: Former rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight is sentenced in Los Angeles to 28 years in prison for running down and killing a Compton businessman with a pickup truck.
2018: The Senate Judiciary Committee says it has received an FBI report on sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.