Earlier, similar bombs rocked the Hotel Geneva, Kelley's Tavern in Lake Geneva and the Como Hotel on Lake Como. The night before in Madison, Willkie charges that President Franklin D. Roosevelt is moving toward dictatorship. Kenneth Bienash shows Pvt. John Higgins the bolt action on a .22-caliber rifle at the Janesville Armory. Both were members of Company B, 32nd Quartermaster Regiment, a National Guard unit that was mobilized for federal service Oct. 15, 1940.
Registration starts for the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.
In Janesville, the number is 2,646 of 4,000 expected. Only three men in southern Wisconsin are reported to object to the first round of registration. Roosevelt narrowly wins in Wisconsin, one of the 39 of 48 states he carries. Sen. Robert La Follette Jr., a Progressive and a leading isolationist in Congress, finishes second in Rock County but wins re-election. Voters in the 1st District return the Republican Stephen Bolles, former Gazette editor, to Congress by a 3-1 margin.