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THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

First Crossing of the English Channel by Air (1785)
In the dangerous, early days of balloon flight, French inventor Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to travel across the English Channel by air. Not long after, another pair of balloonists attempted to repeat this feat, but the two were killed when their balloon exploded. Blanchard himself eventually died in a ballooning accident, and his widow suffered a similar fate about a decade later.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

Crazy Horse's Last Stand: The Battle of Wolf Mountain (1877)
At the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, American Indian forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull soundly defeated US Lt. Col. George Custer in what would come to be known as "Custer's Last Stand." Six months later, Crazy Horse made a final stand of his own. At Wolf Mountain in Montana, he and his men engaged US Cavalry forces in harsh winter weather, despite being outnumbered, weak, and starving.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters Executed for Murder (1923)
Frederick Bywaters was convicted of murder after admitting to the brutal stabbing of Percy Thompson, the husband of his lover Edith Thompson. In an extremely controversial decision, Edith was also convicted of her husband's murder, even though Bywaters himself claimed that Edith had had nothing to do with it. Public sympathy for Edith could not prevent her execution, which was carried out at the same time as her former lover's.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

Caesar Crosses the Rubicon (49 BCE)
When it appeared that the Roman Senate would replace him as governor of the province of Cisalpine Gaul, the increasingly powerful Julius Caesar set out for Rome with an army. By law, he was allowed to command troops only within his own province, so by crossing the Rubicon River into Italy proper, he committed an act of war. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has thus come to refer to passing the point of no return.

The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has thus come to refer to passing the point of no return.

Interestingly, the phrase "The die is cast" also comes from this event as Caesar allegedly said it just before the crossing. 

"On October 15, 1962, right in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis—literally the most dangerous week in human history when nuclear war felt imminent—Jackie Kennedy did something that still gives me chills: she noticed Jack hadn't eaten in nearly 48 hours and was running on coffee and adrenaline, so she personally made him a roast beef sandwich, walked into the Cabinet Room during a tense meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set it down in front of him, and said 'Gentlemen, the President needs to eat, and you all need to take a ten-minute break because exhausted men make terrible decisions,' and then she stood there until every single advisor left the room. What's incredibly powerful is that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara later told historians that Jackie's interruption 'actually may have prevented catastrophe because we were all operating on fumes and fear, and those ten minutes she forced us to take allowed cooler heads to prevail.' What makes this even more beautiful is that during those ten minutes alone, Jackie sat with Jack while he ate, and she didn't ask about missiles or strategy—she told him funny stories about Caroline's antics at preschool and showed him a drawing Caroline had made of their family, and Jack's secretary Evelyn Lincoln wrote in her diary that when Jack emerged from that break, 'his shoulders were straighter, his voice was calmer, and he approached the crisis with renewed clarity because Jackie had reminded him what he was actually fighting for—not abstract geopolitical theory, but his daughter's future, his family's safety, the simple human moments that make life worth protecting.' Arthur Schlesinger documented that throughout the thirteen days of the crisis from October 16-28, Jackie would quietly appear with food, pull Jack away for brief walks around the Rose Garden, and create small pockets of normalcy in absolute chaos, and Jack told his brother Bobby 'Jackie's keeping me human when this job is trying to turn me into a calculating machine—her insistence that I remain a father and husband even while being Commander in Chief is the only thing keeping me sane.' The most touching detail is that on October 28th, when Khrushchev finally agreed to remove the missiles and the crisis ended, the first thing Jack did was find Jackie in the residence, hug her tightly, and whisper 'You saved me this week—not just my sanity, but my soul—thank you for reminding me that being strong doesn't mean forgetting I'm human.' It reminds us that sometimes the most important thing we can do during someone's crisis isn't solving their problems but insisting they take care of their basic humanity, that great leadership requires partners who protect our souls when pressure threatens to destroy them, and that small acts like making a sandwich and demanding rest can literally change the course of history.