In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, a graduate makes aviation history, a campus group protests the Iraq War, and more.

October 4, 1931—Hugh Herndon, Jr. ’27 and Clyde Pangborn make the world’s first transpacific flight.

October 5, 2002—The Princeton [University] Peace Network joins with others in Palmer Square in a demonstration in opposition to the United States going to war with Iraq.

October 7, 1951—Influential avant-garde composer John Cage performs on a piano with various screws, tacks, coins, nuts, bolts, and other items strategically placed among the strings in McCosh 50.

October 9, 1962—Two journalists from the Daily Princetonian report for their readers on conditions at the University of Mississippi, where a riot has recently broken out in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. One Ole Miss student is quoted as saying to the Prince: “Boys may go off to West Point, Princeton and other northern schools and accept the fact of integration in the North. But if those same boys were here, they’d fight like hell to keep the university, Mississippi, and the South segregated.”

For last week’s installment in this series, click here.

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