Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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19911776 Club

Nations in Madrid sign a pact banning mining across Antarctica

The protocol declares the continent a natural reserve devoted to peace and science, closing the door on a mineral treaty that never won approval.

For two years, Antarctic Treaty nations had tried and failed to agree on rules for mining the continent's mineral wealth. On October 4, 1991, in Madrid, representatives opened for signature the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, declaring Antarctica "a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science." Article 7 banned all mineral resource activity except scientific research. The original 26 nations signed the protocol, the first step toward a protocol that would not take legal effect for another seven years…

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More from October 4
1777

Fog swallows Washington's attack; his own columns fire on each other at Germantown

A fortified stone mansion and a morning fog stopped Washington's most ambitious attack of the war so far.
1862

Galveston's mayor surrenders the city after a truce the Confederates used to haul away its cannons

A single disabled gun was all that stood at Fort Point when 150 Union sailors raised the flag over the city.
1993

By dawn, a relief convoy finally reaches the surrounded Americans in Mogadishu

Seventeen hours after the first Black Hawk fell, Pakistani and Malaysian armor opens a corridor out of the city.
19971776 Club
David Ghantt sends a new co-worker home early, then empties the Charlotte vault into private cars at a printing shop across town.
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Read the full October 4 edition →Everything that happened on October 4 →
More from Cold War America
1952

U.S. detonates Ivy Mike at Enewetak; Elugelab Island is gone

The 7:15 a.m. shot, fired just before a presidential election, yields 10.4 megatons from a device more than twenty feet tall.
1983

Reagan signs the King holiday bill, fifteen years after the first one was introduced

Congress passed it by wide margins, but the President had once dismissed the push behind it as "an image, not reality."
1988

A Cornell graduate student's program slips onto the Internet from a computer at MIT

Robert Tappan Morris, 23, launches it at about 8:30 p.m. from another campus so it won't trace back to Cornell; the network holds roughly 60,000 machines.
1948

The Tribune's early edition crowns Dewey; the returns say otherwise

A printers' strike pushed the press deadline hours earlier, and about 150,000 copies roll before the count turns.
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