Event of Interest
1492 Christopher Columbus' fleet anchors at "Fernandina" (Long Island, Bahamas)
Christopher Columbus
- 1502 Storm ravages Friese coast
- 1551 English Edward Seymour Duke of Somerset re-arrested
- 1600 Olivier van Noorts ships reach Philippines
- 1674 Emperor Leopold I fires chancellor Fürst Wenzel Lobkowitz
- 1710 British troops occupies Port Royal, Nova Scotia
- 1757 Austrian troops occupy Berlin
- 1775 Portland, Maine burned by British
- 1780 Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War
- 1793 Battle of Wattignies: French defeat Allied forces and lift siege of Maubeuge
- 1795 M von Böhms "Oorlogscantate" premieres
Victory in Battle
1813 Battle of Leipzig, largest battle in Europe prior to WWI, Napoleon's forces defeated by Prussia, Austria and Russia
Napoléon Bonaparte
- 1829 Tremont Hotel, 1st US modern hotel opens (Boston)
- 1834 Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster (parliament) in London is burnt down.
- 1841 Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is chartered
- 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
- 1846 Dentist William T Morton demonstrates effectiveness of ether
Historic Publication
1847 Charlotte Brontë's book "Jane Eyre" published
Charlotte Brontë
Event of Interest
1859 Abolitionist John Brown leads 21 in raid on federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Viringia
John Brown
Event of Interest
1875 Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
Brigham Young
- 1876 Race riot at Cainhoy SC (5 whites & 1 black killed)
- 1882 The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
- 1900 Great Britain and Germany sign the Anglo-German Treaty, agreeing to maintain territorial integrity of China and support 'open door' policy called for by US Secretary of State
- 1901 Baron Hayashi of Japan begins negotiations in London to make an alliance with the British and strengthen Japan's position against Russians
- 1903 Homel, 1st Jewish self defense organization founded in Russia
- 1904 Russian Baltic fleet departs to Port Arthur
- 1905 The Partition of Bengal (India) occurred.
- 1907 Belasco Theater opens at 111 W 44th St NYC
- 1907 David Belasco's "Grand Army Man," premieres in NYC
Theater Premiere
1913 George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" premieres in Hofburg Theatre in Vienna, Austria
George Bernard Shaw
Event of Interest
1916 Margaret Sanger opens 1st birth control clinic in the US at 46 Amboy St, Brooklyn
Margaret Sanger
Meeting of Interest
1916 T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) meets with Fasal Hoessein
T. E. Lawrence
- 1923 John Harwood patents self-winding watch (Switzerland)
- 1925 Peace accord of Locarno signed (Rhine Pact)
- 1925 Texas School Board prohibits teaching of evolution
- 1926 Mohammed Nadir Khan begins coup in Afghanistan, 1200 killed
- 1926 Troop ship sinks in Yangtze River, killing 1,200
- 1928 Mickey Cochrane wins AL MVP honors, edging Heinie Manush by 2 points
- 1931 US trunk murderess Winnie Ruth Judd murders two friends then dismembers one of them in Phoenix
Event of Interest
1934 Mao Zedong & 25,000 troops begin 6,000 mile Long March
Mao Zedong
Event of Interest
1936 Jean Batten reaches Auckland, New Zealand after flying solo from Kent, England in a record 11 days and 45 minutes
Jean Batten
Event of Interest
1940 Warsaw Ghetto is formed by German Governor-General Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Mordecai Anielewicz
- 1941 "Gordo" comic strip (by Gus Arriola) 1st appears in newspapers
- 1941 Germany advances within 60 miles (96 K) of Moscow
- 1941 Romanian Legionnaires enter Odessa, Russia
- 1942 Cyclone in Bay of Bengal kills some 40,000 south of Calcutta India
- 1943 Anti Jewish riot in Rome
- 1943 Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly opens city's new subway system
- 1943 Jewish quarter of Rome surrounded by Nazis, they are sent to Auschwitz
- 1943 US 1st Army establishes headquarter in Bristol
- 1944 Hungary: Horthy government falls/nazi count Szalasi becomes premier
- 1945 UN's Food & Agriculture Organization comes into existence
Nuremberg Trials
1946 10 Nazi leaders are hanged as war criminals after Nuremberg trials, including Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Alfred Jodl
More >>
Event of Interest
1948 Demonstration by Moscow Jews honoring Israeli ambassador Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Event of Interest
1950 The first edition of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is released in London
C. S. Lewis
Event of Interest
1953 Fidel Castro sentenced to 15 years (Havana)
Fidel Castro
Event of Interest
1957 Queen Elizabeth & Prince Philip visits Williamsburg Virginia
Prince Philip
Cuban Missile Crisis
1962 Cuban missile crisis begins as JFK is shown photos confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba
More >>
Election of Interest
1964 Harold Wilson's Labour party wins British election
Harold Wilson
- 1964 Indians' directors vote to keep franchise in Cleveland, rejecting bids by Seattle, Oakland & Dallas
- 1967 Joean Baez and 123 other anti-draft protesters are arrested in Oakland, California
- 1968 China reports removal of president Li Sjao-tji
- 1968 Czechoslovakia & Russian "accord" rules allies Soviet forces
- 1968 The People's Democracy (PD), formed on Oct 9, organise a march of 1,300 students from the Queen's University of Belfast to the City Hall in the centre of the city, Northern Ireland
- 1969 Soyuz 6 returns to Earth
Event of Interest
1970 Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act as a response to the October Crisis, the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act in Canadian history.
Pierre Trudeau
- 1971 Amphitheater in McLaren Park is dedicated in San Francisco
- 1972 2 members of the Offical Irish Republican Army are shot dead by the British Army in County Tyrone
- 1972 A Protestant youth member (15) of the Ulster Defence Association, and a UDA member (26) are run over by British Army vehicles during riots in east Belfast
- 1973 Israeli tanks under Gen Sharon move through Suez Canal
Nobel Prize
1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho controversially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam that later failed
Henry Kissinger
- 1973 Maynard Jackson elected 1st black mayor of Atlanta
- 1973 Monks Heng Yo & Heng Ju, start 1000 mile SF to Seattle pilgrimage
- 1973 The Gulf Six (Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) unilaterally raise the posted price of Saudi Light marker crude-oil by 17 percent
- 1974 As' Ken Holtzman, who hasn't batted all season, belts 3rd inning home run in Game 4 & gets the win, 5-2
- 1976 Soyuz 23 returns to Earth
- 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Herbert A Simon
Papal Inauguration
1978 Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla elected Pope John Paul II
John Paul II
- 1980 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
- 1981 2nd Dutch government of Van Agt resigns
- 1981 Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy," premieres in NYC
- 1982 Mt Palomar Observatory 1st to detect Halley's comet on 13th return
- 1982 Shultz warns US will withdraw from UN if they vote to exclude Israel
- 1982 USSR performs underground nuclear test
Nobel Prize
1984 Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican Archbishop, wins Nobel Peace Prize
Desmond Tutu
- 1985 Challenger vehicle moves to launch pad for STS 61A mission
Andrew Grove
Event of Interest
1986 US government shuts down due to disputes between President Reagan and the House
Ronald Reagan
- 1986 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1986 Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and poet, becomes the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1987 175-kph winds cause blackout in London, much of southern England
- 1987 338,500,000 shares traded on NY stock exchange (record)
- 1987 Dow Jones for 1st time falls more than 100 pts (108.35)
- 1987 Jessica McClure rescued 58 hrs after falling 22' into a well shaft
- 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1987 Great Storm of 1987: hurricane force winds to hit much of the South of England killing 23 people.
- 1988 "Smile Jamaica" concert for Hurricane Gilbert victims held in London
- 1989 Bikenibau Paeniu installed as premier of Tuvalu
- 1989 Jan Syse becomes premier of Norway
- 1990 Reds beat A's 7-0, ending Oakland's 10-game post-season winning streak
- 1990 US forces reach 200,000 in Persian Gulf
- 1991 George Jo Hennard, 35, kills 23 & himself & wounds 20 in Texas
- 1991 US Supreme Court begins to hear Joseph Doherty case
- 1991 Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India.
Event of Interest
1993 General Omar al-Bashir appointed Sudan president
Omar al-Bashir
- 1993 IRA bomb attack on fish & chips restaurant in Belfast, 10 killed
- 1993 Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching British National Party headquarters
- 1995 Allan Donald takes 8-71 as South Africa defeat Zimbabwe
- 1995 Brian Lara scores 169 in Sharjah ODI versus Sri Lanka
- 1995 Million Man March held in Washington, D.C. (over 830,000 African American men attend)
- 1995 ODI in Sharjah WI 7-333 in 50 overs beat Sri Lanka 329 all out
- 1996 Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
Murder of Interest
1998 Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a Spanish warrant requesting his extradition on murder charges
Augusto Pinochet
- 2001 The US Coast Guard lifts a ban on liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers entering Boston Harbor to make deliveries to Distrigas' Everett LNG terminal that had been imposed on September 26 in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11
- 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.
- 2012 Conflict in Maiduguri, Nigeria, leads to 24 militant deaths and several structures set ablaze
- 2013 21 people are killed after a minibus hits a land mine in Nawa, Syria
- 2013 The United States ends its 16-day government shut down and avoids default in a Bi-partisan deal in the Senate
- 2013 49 people are killed after Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes in the Mekong River, Laos
- 2013 18 people are killed after Typhoon Wipha strikes Japan
- 2014 New Zealand, Malaysia, Angola, Spain and Venezuela are elected to the United Nations Security Council
- 2017 Iraqi army seizes control of oil-rich Kirkuk, from Kurdish peshmerga
- 2017 Storm formed from Hurricane Ophelia lashes Ireland, killing 3 people
- 2017 Findings published of neutron star collision that occurred two months prior on August 17, the first cosmic event seen in gravitational waves and light. Confirms heavy elements such as gold the result of such collisions
- 2017 Panama Papers Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia killed in a suspicious car bomb in Malta
Event of Interest
2018 Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denies knowledge of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi according to President Trump
Mohammed bin Salman
Donald Trump
Jamal Khashoggi
- 2018 Man Booker Prize is won by Anna Burns' "Milkman", the first winner from Northern Ireland
Event of Interest
2018 Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Duchess of Sussex begin their first royal tour visiting Australia and New Zealand
Prince Harry
- 2018 Chairman of China's Xinjiang’s government defends its detention camps for Uighur Muslims saying they provided “vocational education and training”
October in History
![Grim History of London's Speakers' Corner]()
Grim History of London's Speakers' Corner
Nowhere in England is the principal of free speech embodied more than at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. But this right was won through death and protest.
October 14, 1855![Hurricane on the Way? Don't Worry]()
Hurricane on the Way? Don't Worry
A cosy assurance from a BBC weather forecaster for viewers not to worry about an impending storm has gone down as the most spectacular mis-forecast in history.
October 15, 1987![The Tragedy of Aberfan]()
The Tragedy of Aberfan
One hundred and sixteen young children died on this day when an avalanche of coal tip waste and debris thundered down a hillside and engulfed their school.
October 21, 1966![Jumping Jacques Makes First Parachute Descent]()
Jumping Jacques Makes First Parachute Descent
Daredevil André-Jacques Garnerin took to the sky in a hydrogen balloon on this day and after cutting himself adrift performed the first ‘parachute’ descent.
October 22, 1797
