Today in History: Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

Today is Thursday, Oct. 9, the 282nd day of 2025. There are 83 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Oct. 9, 2009, President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Also on this date:

In 1910, a coal dust explosion at the Starkville Mine in Colorado left 56 miners dead.

In 1962, Uganda won independence from British rule.

In 1963, a mega-tsunami triggered by a landside at Vajont Dam in northern Italy destroyed villages and caused approximately 2,000 deaths.

In 1967, Marxist revolutionary guerrilla leader Che Guevara, 39, was executed by the Bolivian army a day after his capture.

In 1985, Strawberry Fields in New York’s Central Park, a memorial to former Beatle John Lennon, was dedicated.

In 1992, the highly visible Peekskill Meteorite streaked through Earth’s atmosphere for hundreds of miles over the U.S. Northeast before a small chunk of it crashed into the trunk of a parked car in Peekskill, New York. The car, a bright red 1980 Chevrolet Malibu, later went on exhibition at several museums worldwide.

In 2010, a drill broke through into an underground chamber where 33 Chilean miners had been trapped for more than two months.