On Oct. 9, 2004, Afghan voters went to the polls for the first time in their nation’s history to vote for a president and elected Hamid Karzai, who had served as their interim president after the collapse of the Taliban regime three years earlier.
■On Oct. 10, 1845, George Bancroft -- historian, educator and secretary of the Navy -- founded the U.S.
Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, to improve t…