_ On Oct. 21, 1797, the USS Constitution, a 44-gun U.S. Navy frigate, is launched in Boston Harbor. She was built to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli and won the nickname “Old Ironsides” during the War of 1812, when British shots merely bounced off Constitution’s sides._ On Oct. 19, 1931, David Cornwell, known as spy novelist John le Carre, is born in Poole, England. He published his first spy novel, “Call for the Dead,” in 1961. The novel, like his second, “A Murder of Quality” (1962), featured spy George Smiley._ On Oct. 22, 1957, in Saigon, Vietnam,