October 2018 in History

Events in History

Event of Interest

Oct 2 Saudi American journalist Jamal Khashoggi enters the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, never to be seen again prompting a diplomatic crisis

Event of Interest

Oct 2 The Queen's Window, with stained glass designed by David Hockney, celebrating the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, is consecrated at Westminster Abbey

Oct 3 259 people have died taking selfies since 2011 according to study in "Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care"
Oct 3 Cervical Cancer could be eliminated in Australia within decades because of government vaccination program, according to report in "The Lancet Public Health"
Oct 3 First exomoon, moon outside the solar system, discovered 8,000 years away (size of Neptune) by astronomers at Columbia University
Oct 3 Most expensive whisky ever sold at auction for $1.1 million, the Macallan Valerio Adami 1926, in Edinburgh, Scotland
Oct 3 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Frances Arnold, Gregory Winter and George Smith for their use of evolution to produce new enzymes and antibodies [1]
Oct 3 Wife of former Malaysian Prime Minister Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor arrested on corruption charges
Oct 5 Banksy work "Girl With Balloon" automatically shreds moments after being sold for 1 million pounds in London, renamed "Love is in the Bin"
Oct 5 Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad for "efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war"
Oct 5 Record price at auction for a living female artist as Jenny Saville's "Propped" sells for £9.5 million in London
Oct 5 US unemployment figures hit lowest level since 1969 - 3.7% according to Department of Labor

Event of Interest

Oct 6 Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed and sworn onto the US Supreme Court amid protests and after an FBI investigation

Oct 6 Oil tanker collision with a car leaves at least 50 people dead and one hundred with serious burns near Kisantu, Democratic Republic of Congo
Oct 7 China confirms it has detained Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, who resigns from his position after being reported missing
Oct 7 Limousine crash kills 20 people, including two pedestrians in Schoharie, New York
Oct 7 Romanian referendum to ban same sex marriage fails with only 20.4% voting
Oct 8 Major climate report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the UN says planet will warm 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) by 2040 with dire results
Oct 8 Nobel prize for Economics awarded to William Nordhaus for climate change and Paul Romer for endogenous growth theory

Event of Interest

Oct 9 President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley says she is resigning at the end of the year

Oct 10 Flash floods kills at least 10 in Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, Majorca, Spain
Oct 10 Hurricane Michael makes landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, as a category 4 hurricane with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h), going on to kill 27, having killed 15 in Central America
Oct 11 Russian Soyuz spacecraft makes emergency landing when rocket fails two minutes after liftoff, with American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut aboard
Oct 11 World's new longest flight flies from Singapore to Newark Airport, New Jersey takes 17 hours 52 mins
Oct 12 US air strike in central Somalia kills about 60 al-Shabab militants
Oct 13 Oldest known human remains from Poland at 115,000 years from revealed to be Neanderthal child from Ciemna Cave eaten by a large bird

Event of Interest

Oct 13 Pope Francis defrocks two Chilean bishops for alleged sexual abuse of minors

Oct 14 Flash floods in Aude region, France kill at least 10 people
Oct 15 American retailer Sears files for bankruptcy
Oct 15 At least 180,000 migrants driven out of Anglo and back into the Democratic Republic of Congo
Oct 15 Caravan of up to 4,000 Central American migrants that started in Honduras reaches Guatemala, heading for Mexico and the US
Oct 15 Indian minister and editor MJ Akbar files a defamation case after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women in #MeToo case
Oct 16 Chairman of China's Xinjiang’s government defends its detention camps for Uighur Muslims saying they provided “vocational education and training”
Oct 16 Man Booker Prize is won by Anna Burns' "Milkman", the first winner from Northern Ireland

Event of Interest

Oct 16 Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denies knowledge of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi according to President Trump

45th US President, Businessman and TV Personality Donald Trump

Oct 17 Australian state of Queensland decriminalizes abortion
Oct 17 Canada legalizes the sale of recreational cannabis, the second country after Uruguay
Oct 17 India's junior foreign minister MJ Akbar is highest official to resign in #MeToo case after sexual harassment accusations by numerous women
Oct 17 Student shoots and detonates a bomb killing 20 with 40 injured at Kerch polytechnic college, Crimea
Oct 20 12,000 year old fossil called "Luzia", oldest known fossil in South America announced found mostly intact after devastating fire at Brazil's National Museum
Oct 20 Australia's center-right coalition government loses its 1-seat majority by losing the Wentworth by-election

Agreement of Interest

Oct 20 President Trump threatens to pull the US out of an arms control agreement with Russia because Russia has violated its terms

Oct 21 Sectarian fighting between Muslim and Christian youths kill 55 at Kasuwan Magani, Nigeria
Oct 21 Train derails in Yilan County, Taiwan, killing 18 and injuring 178

Event of Interest

Oct 22 Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison makes a public apology to victims of child sexual abuse in institutions

Oct 22 Cameroon's President Paul Biya wins seventh term in office, extending his 36 years in office, in election marred by intimidation and low turnout

Event of Interest

Oct 22 Pipe bomb sent to George Soros' New York home address, first Democrat to receive series of pipe bombs in US

Oct 23 European Commission rejects Italy's budget, first country to be rejected
Oct 23 Microplastics found in human stools for the first time by Austrian scientists
Oct 23 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejects Saudi claim journalist Jamal Khashoggi killed accidentally, says it was premeditated murder

Event of Interest

Oct 23 World's longest sea-crossing bridge, the Hong Kong Macau Zhuhai bridge at 55km, opened by Chinese President Xi Jinping

Oct 23 World's oldest intact shipwreck, ancient Greek vessel 2,400 years old, found at bottom of the Black Sea by archaeologists
Oct 24 EU directive bans single-use plastics by 2021
Oct 24 Largest jackpot in US history at $1.6 billion won by one person in South Carolina
Oct 24 Scientists confirm East Island in Hawaii, half a mile long, has been wiped out after contact with Hurricane Walaka
Oct 25 First work of art produced by artificial intelligence "Edmond de Belamy" conceived by Obvious sells for $432,500 at Christie's in New York
Oct 25 Flash floods near the Red Sea in Jordan kill 17 as a school bus is washed away
Oct 25 Google says it has fired 48 people for sexual harassment after New York Times reveals Android software creator Andy Rubin got $90M package when let go for sexual harassment
Oct 25 Sahle-Work Zewde becomes Ethiopia's first female President and Africa's only female head of state after being elected by parliament
Oct 25 Super Typhoon Yutu strikes the Northern Mariana Islands of Saipan and Tinian with winds of 180mph (290km/h)
Oct 26 Rhine River in drought with lowest levels since 1920s forces German government to release oil reserves after barge shipments disrupted
Oct 26 Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc arrested for sending 14 pipe bombs to prominent US Democrats
Oct 27 Australian 7-year old mare Winx wins unprecedented fourth consecutive Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in Melbourne; her record 29th-straight win and her 22nd Group 1 racing success
Oct 27 Gunman shoots and kills 11 people and injures six at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in an anti-Semitic attack
Oct 28 Michael D. Higgins is re-elected Irish president
Oct 28 Political crisis in Sri Lanka after President Sirisena sacks Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and the cabinet, suspends parliament for two weeks with one man killed in protests

Election of Interest

Oct 29 Far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro wins Brazil's presidential election defeating Fernando Haddad

Event of Interest

Oct 29 German Chancellor Angela Merkel announces she will not seek re-election in 2021 and step down as party leader

Oct 29 Japanese Princess Ayako of Japan marries commoner Kei Moriya at Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, giving up her royal status
Oct 29 Lion Air flight JT 610 crashes into the sea just after takeoff near Jakarta, Indonesia, with the loss of all 189 on board

Event of Interest

Oct 29 New mega airport opened in Istanbul by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, planning to be world' busiest with 90 million passengers by 2021

President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Oct 29 New research says cacao tree first used in Ecuador by Mayo Chinchipe culture, 5000 years ago, not in central America as previously thought
Oct 29 Storms in Italy kill at least 11 with 75% of Venice flooded and two tornadoes striking Terracina
Oct 29 World Scrabble Championship won for the fourth time by New Zealand Malaysian Nigel Richards with the word "groutier" (bad-tempered)
Oct 30 German ex-nurse Niels Högel admits in court to killing over 100 patients, making him one of the world's worst serial killers
Oct 30 US Pentagon sends 5,200 troops to Mexican border in advance of migrant caravan from Central America
Oct 30 WWF conservation group says "exploding human consumption" has caused a 60% decline in all wildlife between 1970 and 2014
Oct 31 In landmark verdict, Pakistani Supreme Court acquits Christian woman of blasphemy against the prophet Mohammed after eight years on death row
Oct 31 US and Great Britain call for a cease-fire in Saudi-led war in Yemen, in 3-year war that has claimed over 10,000 lives and created famine conditions

Statue of Unity

Oct 31 World's biggest statue, the Statue of Unity at 182m is unveiled of Indian independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat state

Weddings in History

Oct 12 Britain's Princess Eugenie marries Jack Brooksbank at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England

Deaths in History

Oct 2 Saudi Arabian dissident, author, Washington Post columnist and editor in chief (Al-Arab News Channel), assassinated in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul at 59, reportedly on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Oct 3 Leon M. Lederman, American experimental physicist (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1988 - for research on quarks and leptons) and author (The God Particle), dies from complications of dementia at 96 [1]
Oct 9 Thomas A. Steitz, American Biochemist (2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for ribosome discoveries), dies at 78
Oct 10 Mary Midgley, British-American philosopher (Animals and Why They Matter), dies at 99
Oct 13 Patricia Hollis, Baroness Hollis of Heigham, English Labour politician, dies at 77
Oct 16 Berthold Leibinger, German entrepreneur (Trumpf) and philanthropist, dies at 87
Oct 20 Wim Kok, Dutch politician, Dutch Prime Minister (1994-2002), dies at 80
Oct 21 Robert Faurisson, British-born French academic, dies at 89
Oct 26 György Károly, Hungarian poet and author, dies of cancer at 65
Oct 27 Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, Thai businessman, sports team owner (Leicester City FC), dies in helicopter crash at 60
Oct 30 Hardy Fox, American member of avant-garde band The Residents, dies at 73
Oct 30 Jin Young [Louis Cha Leung-yung], Chinese Wuxia novelist, dies at 94