• Archaeologists with the Greek Ministry of Transport and Communications reported that shipwrecks from the
Battle of Actium had been located off of the coast of
Actium near the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf. The battle had been fought more than 2,000 years earlier, on September 2,
31 BCE, during the civil war in the
Roman Republic as two rival members of the
Second Triumvirate engaged the fleets under their command in combat. The forces under the command of
Gaius Octavianus defeated those of
Marcus Antonius Creticus, supplemented by Egyptian Queen
Cleopatra. • More than 150 people were killed in
Iran in the city of
Dizful by three
Frog-7 missiles fired by Iraq. The Soviet made missiles, long, were part of an arsenal of 26 such missiles, referred to by
NATO as FROG for "
Free
Rocket
Over
Ground". In another attack on Dizful on October 26, another 100 people were killed when Iraq used three more of the Frog-7 weapons. • Nine passers-by were killed and 28 others injured in
Ecatepec de Morelos, a suburb of
Mexico City, after of liquefied
ammonia spilled from a ruptured pipe while the toxic liquid was being pumped into a pressurized railroad car. At 6:30 in the morning local time, the vapor from the liquid spread in a cloud across the San Pedro Xalostoc, an industrial district at Ecatepec. Three of the dead were passengers on a bus and four others died when they drove their cars through the cloud, while two pedestrians were killed as they walked through the street. •
Syria and the
Soviet Union signed a treaty in
Moscow during the visit of Syrian president
Hafez al-Assad as the guest of Soviet Communist Party leader
Leonid Brezhnev. Though not a defense pact, the 20-year treaty of friendship provided for the Soviets to provide weapons to Syria. • The new military government of
Turkey carried out the first executions in that republic since 1972 in a move "evidently meant to show the determination of the country's new military rulers to act severely against political terrorism, which was one of the factors in bringing about the military coup." Necdet Adali, a leftist convicted of the 1977 murder of two opponents in 1977, and Mustafa Pehlivangolu, a right wing extremist who had killed five people in 1978, were both hanged at 4:00 in the morning at the prison in
Ankara. •
Pope John Paul II told his weekly general audience that "even if a man looks at woman who is his own wife" with lust, he was committing the sin of
adultery. The Pontiff based his reasoning on the New Testament statement that Jesus was speaking of looking at any woman with lustful desire, with no exception for marriage. • Stuntman Jaromir Wagner of West Germany set a record in the sport of
wing walking as he became "the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean on the outside of an airplane." Wagner, who spent his entire time in the air standing and walking on top of the wing of a twin-engine
biplane, had departed
Giessen, in West Germany on September 27 and made stops along the way in Scotland, the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland before reaching North America, then stopped at the Canadian province of Newfoundland and the U.S. state of Vermont before touching down in
Fairfield, New Jersey. • An attempt by the
Jordache clothing company to fly a
dirigible, as part of a promotional campaign for its fashion designer jeans, ended when the airship crashed on its maiden flight after takeoff from
Lakehurst, New Jersey, half a mile from the site of the
1937 Hindenburg disaster. The long blimp took off at 8:15 with a destination of a fashion show at New York City's
Battery Park, but after traveling , it split a seam and began deflating. Pilot James Boza was uninjured after making a controlled descent. •
Born: •
Nick Cannon, American comedian and TV host; in
San Diego •
The Miz (ring name for Michael Mizanin), American professional wrestler; in
Parma, Ohio •
Died: Dr.
Pearl Kendrick, 90, American bacteriologist known for her co-development (with Grace Eldering and Loney Gordon) for the vaccine against
pertussis (whooping cough) == October 9, 1980 (Thursday) ==