On this day
Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
In 1986, the world population was approximately 4,958,072,838 people[†]
1986Sayaka Kanda, Japanese actress and singer (died 2021)[†]
Sayaka Kanda , also known professionally as Sayaka, Lily, and Jun Uehara , was a Japanese actress, singer, and model. She was the only child of actor Masaki Kanda and pop singer Seiko Matsuda.
1986Jurnee Smollett, American actress[†]
Jurnee Diana Smollett is an American actress. She began her career as a child actress appearing on television sitcoms, including On Our Own (1994–1995) and Full House (1992–1994). She gained greater recognition with her role in Kasi Lemmons's independent film Eve's Bayou (1997), which earned her a Critics' Choice Movie Award.
1986Ricardo Vaz Tê, Portuguese footballer[†]
Ricardo Jorge Vaz Tê is a Portuguese former professional footballer who played as a forward.
1986Archie League, American air traffic controller (born 1907)[†]
Archie William League is generally considered the first air traffic controller in the United States. League had been a licensed pilot, and licensed engine and aircraft mechanic. He had barnstormed around in Missouri and Illinois with his "flying circus," prior to St. Louis hiring him as the first U.S. air traffic controller in 1929. He was stationed at the airfield in St. Louis, Missouri. Before the installation of a radio tower, he was a flagman who directed traffic via flags. His first "control tower" consisted of a wheelbarrow on which he mounted a beach umbrella for the summer heat. In it he carried a beach chair, his lunch, water, a notepad and a pair of signal flags to direct the aircraft. He used a checkered flag to indicate to the pilot "GO", i.e. proceed, or a red flag to indicate the pilot should "HOLD" their position. He kept warm out on the field in the winters by wearing a padded flying suit. When a radio tower was installed in the early 1930s, he became the airport's first radio controller.
The United States and the Soviet Union announced today that President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, will meet in Iceland next week. The announcement came after Gennadi F. Zakharov, a Soviet employee of the United Nations, pleaded no contest to a spying charge in a Brooklyn court and was released. The Soviet Union also agreed to let two dissidents emigrate - Yuri F. Orlov, who has been in Siberian exile, and his wife and fellow dissident, Irina L. Valitova, who lives in Moscow. The White House referred to the prospective two-day meeting, Oct. 11 and 12 in Reykjavik, Iceland, as preliminary to a regular summit meeting in the United States that was agreed on in Geneva last November. The new summit meeting was supposed to be held this year, but a date has not been set.
A longshoremen's strike threatened to halt container-ship operations at major East Coast ports today. The dockworkers' union, the International Longshoremen's Association, called the strike at 12:01 A.M. today after failing to agree with shipping associations on a contract extension and on a variety of local issues. ''They all voted, from Maine to Norfolk, not to work,'' the union president, Thomas W. Gleason, told The Associated Press. ''It was a majority vote, almost unanimous.'' #40,000 Members in East The strike is the first walkout to threaten all major East Coast ports since a two-month strike in 1977, an industry official said.
Mayor Sharpe James today warned that he would not allow homeless families from New York City to remain at a hotel here after Oct. 15. The Mayor said he had been moved by compassion to authorize several displaced families to be housed temporarily at the Lincoln Motel on Broad Street, based on assurances the move would be for a short time. ''It was our initial understanding that these families would be housed at the Lincoln Motel for a short period of time, but this may no longer be the case,'' Mr. James said. ''We understand that displaced families from New York City may be permanently dumped in Newark, and I want to go on record setting a deadline after which total responsibility for the persons shall be assumed by their own city's administration.
In a sign that the economy faces at least several more months of weak growth, the Government said today that its index of leading economic indicators fell two-tenths of 1 percent in August. ''This is still a disappointing number,'' said Robert Ortner, Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. The modest decline in the index, which is designed to predict the course of the economy, was its third drop in four months. After declines of one-tenth of 1 percent in May and two-tenths of 1 percent in June, the index rose a revised 1 percent in July.
In a move reflecting soft demand for books and the sharp inroads made by discounters, the Dayton-Hudson Corporation said yesterday that it would sell B. Dalton, the nation's second-largest chain of bookstores. With 777 outlets in 48 states, including 4 in New York City, B. Dalton had sales last year of $538 million, exceeded only by Waldenbooks at $565 million. But its earnings have slipped in recent years as it cut its margins to compete with discount stores, analysts said. And retail book sales have been flat generally this year, they added, because of the high prices of hardcover books and interest in new electronic products, particularly videotapes.
New York City's Parking Violations Bureau was turned into ''an enterprise for plunder'' by a small group of public officials and business executives, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani, told jurors today. Mr. Giuliani, his gaze fixed intently on the jury of seven women and five men, made his assertion in a courtroom here as he opened his case against Stanley M. Friedman and four co-defendants in the Federal Government's major trial on corruption in New York City. The prosecutor's opening statement lasted one hour and 12 minutes. It was a detailed recounting of events of the case that he said would give the jury ''a blueprint or road map'' to the ''pattern of bribery and fraud'' that, the Government charges, pervaded the parking bureau between 1979 and 1986. A defense lawyer quickly countered by attacking the Government's chief witness in the case, Geoffrey G. Lindenauer, the former deputy director of the parking bureau. And Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that the jury would hear about ''bad acts'' that Mr. Lindenauer had committed, including his claim to a ''phony Ph.D. for himself and procuring phony Ph.D.'s for others.''
President Reagan said today he wants American interest rates to decline ''even further'' than they have already this year. In reinforcing his Administration's so-far-unsuccessful appeals to Japan and West Germany to help the sluggish American economy by cutting their interest rates, he urged other industrial nations to contribute their ''fair share'' to world growth. ''And we must do more than repeat this high-sounding sentiment,'' he said. ''We must take practical steps.'' In a welcoming address to 10,000 bankers and foreign economic officials attending the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the President also called for freer world trade and for new policies to stabilize the exchange rates of the dollar and other currencies.
AT 5 o'clock every weekday morning, Man Cheung Ho, dim sum chef for the five H.S.F. restaurants in Manhattan and on Long Island, climbs the stairs to a third-floor loft at 413 West 14th Street. There, in a cavernous 8,000-square-foot commercial kitchen, Mr. Ho and Joe Tam, the manager, supervise eight assistants in producing thousands of the restaurants' popular dim sum. As long ago as the Sung Dynasty, 960 to 1279, the Chinese produced dim sum dumplings and filled and steamed buns by hand in large workshops. Today the buns are made with a remarkable Japanese machine, but the dumplings are still handmade. Mr. Ho, who has been a dim sum chef for 15 years, came to this country from Guangdong Province 9 years ago. He says it takes 4 years to train his assistants.
The Economy The nation's trade deficit improved strongly in August, shrinking by $4.7 billion, to $13.3 billion, the biggest one-month drop on record, the Commerce Department said. The improvement, which resulted entirely from a decline in imports, prompted the Administration to suggest that the nation's most worrisome economic problem might be easing. But most private economists remained skeptical, pointing out that exports remained unchanged. [ Page A1. ] Exports of West Germany's machine-building industry fell 28 percent in August, partly because of the weakened dollar. [ D4. ] The U.S. faces continued weak growth for several months, a major economic barometer indicates. The index of leading indicators fell 0.2 percent in August for its third drop in four months. [ D1. ] Sales of new homes fell 13.4 percent in August, for the fifth consecutive monthly decline. [ D4. ] Prices received by farmers for raw products fell 2.4 percent in September. [ D4. ]
IN a final, desperate effort to have a family, hundreds of infertile couples across the country have turned to surrogate motherhood in recent years. The half-dozen major centers in the United States that match infertile couples with surrogates report that business is flourishing. But even though the surrogate arrangement has been a happy solution to a traumatic problem for a great many couples, it has been shrouded with an unresolved question: What if the surrogate changes her mind and wants to keep the baby? She is, after all, the child's biological mother. That question is at the heart of an emotional legal battle in New Jersey. The surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead of Brick Township, N.J., was artificially inseminated with sperm from William Stern, whose wife, Elizabeth, contends she cannot bear a child with significant risk to her health. Mrs. Whitehead changed her mind after she gave birth to the child. She does not want to relinquish custody, as she originally had agreed to do.
THE early evening starts at the Odeon with elegant, spare, three- and four-course dinners served to a basically Brooks Brothers and Eurostyle crowd with, perhaps, a smattering of movie celebrities. But around 11 P.M. the rock music in the TriBeCa restaurant is turned up. Artist by artist, the bar deepens, and the floor becomes a billiard table of chance encounters - Jeffrey Smith, a freelance hairdresser, for example, after his roast duck, runs into Donald Sultan, an artist and client, who bumps into Louisa Chase, a painter, who caroms off Keith Sonnier, a sculptor, who sees Phyllis Kind, a gallery owner. By the time the green and pink neon clock sweeps past midnight, the restaurant has shed its sitdown formality and is well on its way to becoming a type of local, table-hopping artists' diner, but with white tablecloths. After 1:30 A.M., when the kitchen starts its lighter supper menu, the transformation is complete: hamburgers, fries and omelets appear. Occasionally there is a late-late rush, when a crowd arrives after a gallery opening or a special occasion at Area, the nearby club.
Administration officials and outside foreign-policy experts are asking themselves three questions about the events leading to today's announcement that President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev would meet next week. First, who won and who lost in the various releases, trades and arrangements between the two leaders? The answer, policy makers and outside experts say, depends whether the public comes to see the result as Mr. Reagan's getting two for one - an American journalist and a Soviet dissident in exchange for a convicted Soviet spy - or whether it is seen as a case of Mr. Reagan's abandoning the principle of refusing to trade spies for innocent hostages. The answer also turns on which of the two leaders believes he has the stronger personal position in their continuing test of wills. Second, did the package represent any change or weakening from the way in which past administrations managed similar cases?