TITLE: October 27: Cities, Close Calls, and Broken Curses
October 27 is an unusually varied date in history. It includes a medieval toll document, an essay about how people should govern themselves, a new kind of fiber, and a Saturday in 1962 when one man's refusal may have kept the Cold War from turning nuclear. Here are seven moments from this date that are still felt today.
1. 1275 – Amsterdam Appears on Paper for the First Time
In 1275, Count Floris V of Holland issued a charter that excused the "people living near the Amstel dam" (homines manentes apud Amestelledamme) from paying tolls on bridges and locks across his county. It looks like routine paperwork, but it is the first written record of the name that became "Amsterdam," and the city still uses October 27, 1275 as its official birthday. The name describes what the place was: a dam on the Amstel River, where a small fishing community had grown up on marshy ground. The toll exemption mattered a great deal to people who lived by moving goods over water, because it made trade cheaper and pulled merchants toward the settlement. That advantage grew over the following centuries. By the 1600s Amsterdam was the busiest port in Europe, home to the Dutch East India Company and the world's first modern stock exchange. A city known for global trade started with a tax break for people living beside a dam.
2. 1787 – The Federalist Papers Begin
Just over a month after the Constitutional Convention ended in Philadelphia, New Yorkers opening the Independent Journal found an essay addressed "To the People of the State of New York" and signed "Publius." Alexander Hamilton wrote it as the first of 85 essays, later joined by James Madison and John Jay, arguing that New York should ratify the new Constitution. Federalist No. 1 framed the stakes in terms that still hold up. Hamilton asked whether societies of men are "really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their constitutions on accident and force." He presented America's decision as a test case for that question. The essays were partisan writing meant to win a political fight, and scholars still argue about how much they changed actual votes. They have since become the most authoritative guide to what the framers intended. Federalist No. 10 (on factions) and No. 51 (on checks and balances) are cited by the U.S. Supreme Court to this day.
3. 1858 – Theodore Roosevelt Is Born
Theodore Roosevelt was born at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan to a wealthy family. He had severe asthma as a child and was often too ill to attend school. His father told him to "make your body," and young Teddy took up boxing, hiking and weightlifting. That effort to remake himself defined the rest of his life. He became a rancher in the Dakota Badlands, led the Rough Riders in Cuba, and in 1901 became the youngest president in American history at 42. He broke up monopolies, pushed for food and drug safety laws, and in 1906 became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War. His longest-lasting legacy may be conservation. As president he protected roughly 230 million acres of public land through national forests, wildlife refuges, national monuments and national parks. Many Americans who visit public lands today are using land he set aside.
4. 1904 – The New York City Subway Opens
At about 2:35 in the afternoon, Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. took the controls of the first train at City Hall station. He was supposed to hand them back to a motorman right away, but he enjoyed it so much that he drove the train most of the way uptown. The Interborough Rapid Transit line ran 9.1 miles from City Hall to 145th Street, and when it opened to the public that evening, more than 100,000 people paid a nickel to ride. The subway changed the city. It made it practical to live far from where you worked, which helped development spread into upper Manhattan and the Bronx. It also took the city's growing crowds off the congested streets and elevated railways. The original City Hall station, with its Guastavino tile arches, chandeliers and skylights, was designed as a showpiece. It closed in 1945 because its tight curve couldn't fit newer, longer trains. Today the system has 472 stations and remains one of the largest rapid transit networks in the world.
5. 1938 – Nylon Is Introduced to the World
DuPont vice president Charles Stine announced the new material at a New York Herald Tribune forum, describing it as a fiber made from "coal, water and air" that was as strong as steel and as fine as a spider's web. Nylon was the first fully synthetic fiber. It came out of fundamental polymer research led by chemist Wallace Carothers, whose team first produced it in 1935. Carothers died in 1937 and never saw his invention announced. When nylon stockings went on sale nationally in May 1940, about four million pairs sold in four days. Then World War II began for the United States, and nylon was diverted to parachutes, tow ropes, tire cords and tents. Wartime shortages led to the "nylon riots" of 1945–46, when crowds of thousands lined up for the stockings once they returned to stores. Nylon marked the beginning of the age of plastics. Toothbrush bristles, guitar strings, carpets, car parts and fishing line all come from the research DuPont made public that day. It is also an early example of corporate basic research turning into a new industry.
6. 1962 – "Black Saturday" in the Cuban Missile Crisis
On October 27, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis reached its most dangerous point, and several things went wrong at once. A Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over Cuba and killed its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., the crisis's only combat death. Another U-2 strayed into Soviet airspace over Siberia, and Soviet fighters were scrambled to intercept it. In Washington, many of President Kennedy's advisers pressed for air strikes. The closest call happened underwater. U.S. destroyers were dropping practice depth charges to force the Soviet submarine B-59 to surface. Cut off from Moscow and suffocating in the heat, Captain Valentin Savitsky believed war might already have started and wanted to fire the submarine's nuclear-tipped torpedo. Launching it required agreement from three senior officers. Vasili Arkhipov, the flotilla's second-in-command, refused, and the submarine surfaced. That evening Robert Kennedy met secretly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and offered a deal: the U.S. would promise not to invade Cuba and would quietly remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The next morning Khrushchev announced that the Soviet missiles would be withdrawn. Arkhipov's role stayed largely unknown for decades, and he is now often called "the man who saved the world."
7. 2004 – The Red Sox Break the Curse
For 86 years, Boston Red Sox fans blamed their team's championship drought on the "Curse of the Bambino," supposedly caused by selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920. On October 27, 2004, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, closer Keith Foulke fielded a ground ball from Edgar Rentería and tossed it to first base. The Red Sox had beaten the Cardinals 3–0 to finish a four-game World Series sweep. How they got there made the win even more remarkable. Just days earlier, the Red Sox had trailed the Yankees three games to none in the American League Championship Series and were three outs from elimination. They won four straight games and became the first team in Major League Baseball history to come back from a 3–0 deficit in a postseason series. Even the sky took part. A total lunar eclipse took place during the deciding game, and the red-tinted moon became part of Boston sports lore. For many New Englanders the win was very personal: some fans visited the graves of parents and grandparents who had waited their whole lives for it and died without seeing it.
A Reflection: How One Date Connects Us
These seven events are spread across 729 years, but they have something in common. Each one depended on ordinary people and choices that seemed small when they were made: a fishing village's toll exemption, a newspaper essay under a pen name, a sick boy deciding to build himself up, a mayor who wouldn't let go of the controls, a chemist's lab experiment, one officer's refusal in a hot submarine, and a fan base that kept believing. History usually isn't made by grand plans that unfold as expected. It is made by people facing their own present, uncertain how things will turn out, who do something that ends up mattering. When we look back at October 27, we see what Floris V, Hamilton and Arkhipov could not: what their choices led to. The rest of us are also living through days that someone may look back on later.