October 4 is:
Crunchy Taco Day
Founder, Glenn Bell, first opened a hot dog and taco franchise, ‘Bell’s Drive-In’, in San Bernardino, California in 1948. He then started Taco-Tia’s and El Tacos. He opened the first Taco Bell in 1962.
He was the first to fry his taco shells in advance. Before then, they were fried on demand.
In 1962, a taco only cost 19 cents.
Fun Fact: Taquito is a Spanish word that translates to small taco. It is believed that the word “taco” originally referred to pieces of paper that silver miners in Mexico would wrap around gunpowder and use in holes that were carved into the face of the rock.
From Today in Science
Birthday of James Lind
Born 4 Oct 1716; died 13 Jul 1794 at age 77.
Scottish physician, “founder of naval hygiene in England,” who investigated sickness of sailors. On 20 May 1747, while a ship’s surgeon on the HMS Salisbury, he began an experiment to remedy scurvy. He regulated the diets of the sailors, and especially included lemons and oranges. With a clearly positive outcome, he recommended fresh citrus fruit and lemon juice be incorporated in the diet of seamen on long voyages. When made a requirement by Sir Gilbert Blane, this resulted in the prompt eradication of scurvy from the British Navy. (The Dutch had implemented this practice almost two centuries earlier.) Lind also recommended shipboard delousing procedures and suggested the use of hospital ships for sick sailors in tropical ports. In 1761, he arranged for the shipboard distillation of seawater for drinking water.
The German festival Oktoberfest was first held in Munich in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. It’s been cancelled this year due to the Coronavirus.
Birthday of Eliza McCardle Johnson (October 4, 1810), wife of Andrew Johnson, first lady 1865-1869. Andrew Johnson, 18, married Eliza McCardle, 16, on May 17, 1827; at 16, Eliza Johnson married at a younger age than any other First Lady. Johnson credited his wife for teaching him to do arithmetic and to write, as he had never attended school.
Aside from two public appearances – one at a reception for Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands and the other at a birthday party for her husband – Eliza Johnson remained totally out of the public eye due to her poor health from tuberculosis.
Birthday of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822), ninteenth president of the United States. Hayes won the election of 1876 by only one electoral vote. He declined to run for a second term.
1853: The Crimean War began as Ottoman Turks (later joined by England and France) declared war on Russia; the fighting lasted more than two years and ended with Russia’s defeat.
Birthday of Frederic Remington (October 4, 1861), American artist and author famous for his drawings and paintings of frontier life, Indians, and horses.
1923-
Birthday of Charlton Heston, actor, former president of the NRA, who won Academy Award for title role of Ben Hur in 1959, starred in The Ten Commandments 1956 and Planet of the Apes 1968.
“Leave It to Beaver,” debuts on CBS in 1957. It ran until 1963.
From Today in Science
Sputnik
In 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union, to the dismay of the United States, launched Sputnik, the first manmade satellite, into orbit around the earth. The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour 500 miles above the Earth. The Sputnik (meaning “companion” or “fellow traveler”) was launched from Kazakhstan. It stayed in orbit for about three months. Sputnik fell from the sky on 4 Jan 1958. The 184-lb satellite had transmitted a radio signal picked up around the world, and instrumentation for temperature measurement.
1970: American singer 
Janis Joplin , who was known for her fierce and uninhibited musical style, died of an accidental overdose of heroin. Remembered for her rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee”