Today in History: October 3

1226: The founder of the Order of Friars Minor, Giovanni Bernardone, who is better known by his nickname “Francis” (“Frenchie”), dies at Assisi in Italy.

1863: President Lincoln, by proclamation, fixes the last Thursday in November as a “day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

1872: Brothers Lyman and Joseph Bloomingdale open their “Great Eastern Bazaar” in New York City.  Critics argue that no one will go that far north in the city to shop.

1873: Emily Post (née Price) is born into a prominent family in Baltimore, Maryland.  After a divorce, financial distress will make her turn to writing, and she’ll reestablish her fortune with her 1922 book, Etiquette.

1901: The Victor Talking Machine Co. (“His Master’s Voice”) is incorporated in New Jersey as a combination of the Berliner Gramophone Co. and the Consolidated Talking Machine Co.

1919: Nobel-winning public choice economist James McGill Buchanan Jr. (The Calculus of Consent) is born at Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

1941: Warner Bros. releases The Maltese Falcon (“A guy without a conscience — a dame without a heart!”), starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor.

1960: The Andy Griffith Show introduces America to Mayberry, North Carolina.  The original pilot episode featured an interesting contract question: Was Aunt Bea obliged to pay forever for the rented tuxedo her husband was buried in?

1995: A Los Angeles jury acquits O.J. Simpson of murder in the most widely covered trial in U.S. history.