Today in History: October 11, Anita Hill testifies at Clarence Thomas hearings

Today is Sunday, Oct. 11, the 284th day of 2026. There are 81 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Oct. 11, 1991, Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee; Thomas denounced the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching” and was confirmed on Oct. 15 by a 52-48 vote.

Also on this date:

In 1776, the Battle of Valcour Island was fought on Lake Champlain off present-day New York State; British forces captured or destroyed most of an American fleet under the command of Benedict Arnold but were stalled in their attempts to seize control of the lake and Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered the city’s Asian students to be assigned to their own, segregated school. (The order was later rescinded at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, who in exchange promised to curb Japanese immigration to the U.S.)

In 1968, Apollo 7, the first crewed flight of the Apollo program, was launched with astronauts Walter Schirra Jr., Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard.

In 1984, Challenger astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space as she and fellow Mission Specialist David C. Leestma spent 3 1/2 hours outside the shuttle.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks in Reykjavik, Iceland, concerning arms control and human rights.

In 1987, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was first displayed during the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on the National Mall.

In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of work to resolve international conflicts and advocate for human rights through The Carter Center and other means.

In 2017, the Boy Scouts of America announced that it would admit girls into the Cub Scouts starting the following year and establish a new program for older girls based on the Boy Scout curriculum.

In 2022, NASA announced that the Dart spacecraft had plowed into a small asteroid millions of miles away and succeeded in shifting its orbit. The space agency conducted the test two weeks earlier to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth’s way.

In 2024, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, for its efforts to free the world of nuclear weapons.

Today’s Birthdays: Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry is 99. Actor Amitabh Bachchan is 84. Singer Daryl Hall (Hall and Oates) is 80. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, of Washington state, is 76. Actor David Morse is 73. Football Hall of Famer Steve Young is 65. Actor Joan Cusack is 64. Actor Jane Krakowski is 58. Rapper MC Lyte is 56. Actor Emily Deschanel is 50. Actor Matt Bomer is 49. Four-time NBA All-Star Mike Conley Jr. is 39. Golfer Michelle Wie West is 37. Rapper Cardi B is 34. NFL Pro Bowl linebacker T.J. Watt is 32. NBA forward and Olympic gold medalist Keldon Johnson is 27.