Category: Today

November 8

1519 – Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration.

1605 – Robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plotters planning on blowing up Parliament in London, is killed in a gunfight with his pursuers  at Holbeche House in Staffordshire

1837 – Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts -later Mount Holyoke College – the first of a group of historically female colleges in the Northeastern United States.

1861 – During the American Civil War, The USS San Jacinto stops the British mail ship RMS Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US, with President Lincoln finally releasing the envoys.

1887 – John ‘Doc’ Holliday dies in bed, with his boots off, in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, age 36.

1889 – Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state.

1895 – While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.

1923 – In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government later called the ‘Beer Hall Putsch‘ due to the Nazi beginnings at the Bürgerliches brewery’s Bürgerbräukeller in Munich.

1932 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected as the 32nd President of the United States, defeating incumbent President Herbert Hoover.

1933 – During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than four million unemployed during the winter of 1933-34

1950 – Over Korea, U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down 2 North Korean MiG-15s, the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight.

1957 – Pan Am Flight 7, a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, disappears between San Francisco and Honolulu with the loss of all 44 passengers and crew aboard. Wreckage and bodies are discovered a week later.

1960 – John F. Kennedy is elected as the 35th President of the United States

1965 – American Airlines Flight 383, a Boeing 727, crashes in Constance, Kentucky on final approach to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, killing 54 of the 57 passengers and 4 of the 5 crew aboard.

1966 – President Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the American Football League.

1972 – American pay television network Home Box Office (HBO) launches.

1973 – The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper outlet along with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay $2.9 million.

1977 – Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon – the father of Alexander the Great – at Vergina.

1988 – Vice President George H. W. Bush is elected as the 41st President of the United States.

1994 – The midterm election demoncrap losses result in massive Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. The passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which included an ‘assault weapon’ ban is seen as playing a significant part in this.

2002 –The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves resolution 1441 on Iraq, warning Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”.

2011 – Asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth – about 201,700 miles – the closest known approach by an asteroid of its size since 2010 XC15 in 1976.

2016 – Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States

2020 – Alex Trebek, noted longtime host of Jeopardy!, dies, age 80, of pancreatic cancer, at his home in Los Angeles

 

November 7

680 – The Sixth Ecumenical Council commences in Constantinople.

1492 – The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the Earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, France.

1504 – Christopher Columbus returns to Sanlúcar, Spain from his fourth and last voyage.

1775 – John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, offering freedom to slaves who abandon their colonial masters and fight with Murray and the British.

1811 – North of present day Lafayette, Indiana, near the convergence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers, U.S. forces under the command of William Henry Harrison repulse an attack by Shawnee warriors and continue on to drive them from their settlement.

1861 – At Belmont, Missouri, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp but are forced to retreat when Confederate reinforcements under Gen. Leonidas Polk arrive.

1874 – A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly magazine, is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party.

1893 – Women in the state of Colorado are granted the right to vote

1910 – The first air freight shipment, from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio is undertaken by the Wright brothers and department store owner Max Moorehouse.

1916 – Jeannette Rankin is the first woman elected to Congress.
Woodrow Wilson is reelected as President.
Boston Elevated Railway Company’s streetcar No. 393 smashes through the warning gates of the open Summer Street drawbridge in Boston, and plunging into the Fort Point Channel, killing 46 people.

1917 – красный октябрь – Red October – Bolsheviks storm the Russian Imperial Winter Palace in St Petersburg, beginning the Russian Communist Revolution. Due to the Russians having not changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar at the time, the commies use the date of 25 October.

1919 – The first anti-communist/radical raid by U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in 23 U.S. cities.

1940 – In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, 4 months after the bridge’s completion.

1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected for a record 4th term as President of the United States.

1957 – A report titled Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age submitted to the National Security Council by the chairman of the Office of Defense Mobilization, H. Rowan Gaither, calls for a strengthening of US missile technology, along with offensive and defensive military capabilities.

1967 –President Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1972 – President Richard Nixon is re-elected as President of the United States.

1973 – Congress overrides President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.

1983 – A bomb set by the Resistance Conspiracy of the May 19th Communist Order, explodes inside the United States Capitol causing only building damage.

1994 – WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world’s first internet radio broadcast.

2000 – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country’s largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

2004 – U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, Iraq.

2016 – Janet Reno dies after a long illness of Parkinson’s disease

2020 – Joe Biden is reported to have been elected the 46th president of the United States.

November 6

1217 – A little over 2 years after Magna Carta was signed by King John, which dealt with rights for nobility, Carta Foresta, the Charter of the Forest is signed by King Henry III, which re-established for free men, rights of access to the royal forest and lands that had been increasingly restricted since William the Conqueror was king.

1816 – Gouverneur Morris, signer of the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, Ambassador to France and Senator, dies at his family estate, Morrisania in the Bronx, New York City of an accidentally self inflicted injury.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States with only 40% of the popular vote, defeating John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A. Douglas in a 4 way race.

1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University, 6–4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.

1900 – President William McKinley is re-elected, along with his vice-presidential running mate, Governor Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt of New York

1906 – Teddy Roosevelt travels to Panama, the first President to make an official diplomatic tour outside of the Continental United States.

1947 – Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history,  debuts

1971 – The U.S. tests its largest underground hydrogen bomb, 5 megatons, code named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians because the expected yield was too large to be detonated in the Nevada testing site.

1977 – The Kelly Barnes Dam on Toccoa Creek, near Toccoa, Georgia, fails due to several days of heavy rains, killing 39 people

1985 – In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement assault and seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, killing 2 security guards and a building manager, to finally hold about 100 people, including the Columbian Supreme Court, hostage.

2012 – Barack Hussein Obama is reelected President of the United States

November 5

1605 – Guy Fawkes is discovered hiding under Parliament in London along with enough barrels of gunpowder to blow the building to smithereens.

1688 – Prince William III of Orange lands with a Dutch fleet at Brixham to challenge the rule of King James II of England, the beginning of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, one result being the establishment of the English Bill Of Rights, a direct predecessor and inspiration to an improvement; the U.S. Bill Of Rights

1768 – The Treaty of Fort Stanwix is signed between the Iroqois and the British, which adjusted and set the boundary line between Indian lands and the Colonies along the Ohio River to the Tennessee River at the end of the French and Indian War

1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia for rebellion and insurrection.

1862 – In Minnesota, 303 Santee Lakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites during the U.S.-Dakota War, and are sentenced to death. 38 are ultimately hanged by direct order of President Lincoln, and the others reprieved

1872 – Suffragette Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, in defiance of New York state law, and is later fined $100.

1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile

1912 – Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the United States

1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is the first and only President of the United States to be elected to a third term.

1968 – Richard Nixon is elected as 37th President of the United States.

1986 – The Frigate USS Rentz, Cruiser USS Reeves and Destroyer USS Oldendorf pay a port call at Tsing Tao, China – the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.

1996 – Bill Clinton is reelected President of the United States.

2006 – Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, is sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the 1982 massacre of 148 Shia Muslims.

2007 – The Android ‘smart phone’ operating system is unveiled by Google.

2009 – Shouting Allahu Ackbar, U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 soldiers and wounds another 32 at Fort Hood, Texas. He is later tried, convicted and sentenced to death, which has yet to be executed.

2017 – Devin Patrick Kelley kills 26 people and wounds another 20 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas before being confronted, engaged and wounded by Stephen Willford and finally committing suicide.

2021 – A crowd crush during the first night of the 2021 Astroworld Music Festival at NRG Park in Houston, Texas results in the death of 10 people with 25 more injured

November 4

1429 – During the 3rd phase of the Hundred Years War, French forces lead by Jean of Arc liberates the city of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier from Elglish occupation.

1493 – Christopher Columbus reaches the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico on his second voyage.

1677 – The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange, later jointly reigning as William and Mary.

1780 – Aymara and Quechua indians, led by Túpac Amaru II revolt against Spanish rule in Peru.

1783 – Wolfgang Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria.

1791 – The Western Confederacy of American Indians, led by Chiefs Little Turtle of the Miami, Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, and Buckongahelas of the Delaware, wins a major victory over U.S forces led by General Arthur St. Clair, in the Battle of the Wabash, near Fort Recovery, Ohio

1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, discovers the anesthetic properties of chloroform.

1864 – Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee, destroying millions of dollars of war materiel.

1918 – During World War I, Italy and Austria-Hungary sign an armistice.

1922 –British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt

1924 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female elected as governor in the United States.

1939 – President Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash and carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.

1942 – During the Africa campaign of World War II: General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel disobeys a direct order by Adolf Hitler and begins a retreat of his forces after being defeated at El Alamein.

1952 – The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.

1962 – The United States concludes Operation Fishbowl, its final above-ground series of high-altitude nuclear weapons tests, before the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty goes into effect

1979 – A group of purported Iranian college students overruns the U.S. embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages.

1980 – Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th President of The United States

1995 – Israel prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Israeli.

2008 – Barack Hussein Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States.

November 3

1493 – On his second voyage to the new world, Christopher Columbus first sights the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.

1534 – English Parliament passes the first Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Anglican Church.

1783 – The American Continental Army is disbanded.

1868 – John Willis Menard (R-LA) is the first African American elected to Congress. Because of an electoral challenge, he is never seated.

1903 – Panama declares independence and separates from Colombia.

1908 – William H. Taft is elected the 27th President of the United States.

1911 – Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant, a former manager of General Motors, found the Chevrolet Motor Company in Detroit with investors William Little of Little Automobile, and former Buick owner James H. Whiting

1926 – Phoebe ‘Annie Oakley’ Butler dies at Greenville, Ohio, age 66.

1936 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected President of the United States.

1946 – Written under supervision of General MacArthur, by occupation officers, the new Constitution of Japan is adopted, ending ‘Imperial Japan’ and reducing the Emperor to a symbolic position

1957 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik with the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.

1964 – Lyndon B. Johnson is elected to a full term as President of the United States.

1973 – NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.

1978 – Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

1986 – The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States government has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon and secretly finance the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

1992 – Arkansas Governor William J. Clinton is elected the 42nd President of the United States.

2014 – One World Trade Center officially opens as the replacement for the World Trade Center Twin Towers

2020 – The United States presidential election takes place, but not until 5 days later is Joe Biden declared to be the winner.

November 2

1675 – Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial Militia against the Narragansett tribe during King Philip’s War.

1734 – Daniel Boone is born in a log cabin in Oley Valley, Pennsylvania.

1889 – North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.

1912 – Engaging in the bloodiest battle of the 1st Balkan War, with both sides suffering over 20% casualties, the heavier armed Bulgarian Army defeats Ottoman Empire Army at modern day Lüleburgaz, Turkey, east of the Bosphorus, opening the way to Constantinople.

1914 –The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire, closing the Dardanelles passage from the Mediterranean Ocean to the Black Sea.

1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.

1920 – Station KDKA in Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial U.S. radio station.

1930 – Le’ul Ras Täfäri Mäkonnän is crowned Haile Selassie I  – Negusa Nagast – Emperor of Ethiopia

1947 – Howard Hughes performs the maiden, and only, flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” seaplane off Cabrillo Beach, Los Angeles.

1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu are assassinated following a military coup.

1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31 year old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

1967 –  A group of retired former presidential advisors termed,”The Wise Men” who had been formed and advised Democrat administrations since the days of President Roosevelt in World War II, advise President Johnson that the American people should be given more ‘optimistic’ reports on the progress of the war.

1983 – President Reagan signs the bill into law creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

1984 – Serial murderer Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States, in this case, North Carolina, since 1962.

1999 – A disgruntled employee of the Xerox corporation in Honolulu, Hawaii, shoots and kills 7 co-workers and wounds another before fleeing and later surrendering to police.

2000 – Expedition 1 arrives at the International Space Station for the first long duration stay onboard. From this day to present, a continuous human presence in space on the station remains uninterrupted.

2016 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians to win their first World Series in 108 years.

November 1

365 – The Alemanni tribe cross the Rhine and invade Gaul. This is considered the beginning of the rivalry between what would later be Germany and France, that nearly 1500 years later would result in the Franco-Prussian War, which was a major factor in the alliances of World War I and finally led to World War II.

1503 – Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere is elected Pope Julius II

1512 – The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo under the patronage of Pope Julius II, is exhibited to the public for the first time.

1520 –  On All Saints Day, Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet enters the Strait of Magellan. He names it Estrecho de Todos los Santos  -Strait of All Saints – and plants a flag to claim the land on behalf of the King of Spain

1604 – Shakespeare’s play Othello opens at Whitehall Palace in London.

1611 – Shakespeare’s play The Tempest opens at Whitehall Palace in London.

1683 – The British Crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties.

1765 – The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.

1800 – John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the White House.

1848 – The first U.S. medical school for women opens; Boston Female Medical School, which later merges with the Boston University School of Medicine

1870 – The United States Weather Bureau makes its first official meteorological forecast.

1897 – The first Library of Congress building opens to the public

1911 – Italian Army Air Corp Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, flying a Etrich Taube monoplane, makes the first aerial combat bomb run, dropping several grenades on the Tagiura Oasis in northwest Libya during the Italo-Turkish War

1918 – The worst rapid transit accident in U.S. history occurs on the New York City Subway BMT Brighton Line, when a train derails under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, killing 102 and injuring 250 of the 650 passengers and crew aboard.

1922 – The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, abdicates ending the empire.

1942 – The 1st Marine Division, reinforced by a regiment of the 2nd Division, and the U.S. Army Americal Division begin offensive operations on Guadalcanal, crossing the Matanikau river to engage the Japanese.

1943 – The 3rd Marine Division stages landings on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands

1949 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 537, a Douglas DC-4, enroute from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C., collides in midair with a Bolivian Air Force Lockheed P-38 Lightning over Alexandria, Virginia killing all 55 passengers and crew aboard, the pilot of the fighter surviving.

1950 – Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate President Truman at Blair House, mortally wounding White House Police officer Leslie Coffelt, who kills Torresola before dying, while Secret Service agents wound and arrest Collazo.

1951 – During Operation Buster–Jangle, in Nevada, 6500 U.S. soldiers are purposefully exposed to 3 atomic explosions.

1952 – During Operation Ivy, at the Eniwetok atoll, the U.S. detonates the first thermonuclear device, code named Mike resulting in a 10.4 megaton explosion.

1955 – United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6 enroute from Denver to Seattle, is destroyed in flight by a bomb placed in luggage and crashes near Longmont, Colorado, killing all 44 passengers and crew aboard.

1957 – The Mackinac Bridge opens to traffic connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.

1968 – The Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system is officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.

1982 – Honda opens the first Asian automobile factory in Marysville, Ohio.

1993 – The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union.

2008 – Xtabay singer Yma Sumac dies in Los Angeles, age 86.

2015 – Actor, lawyer, and politician Fred Dalton Thompson, dies in Nashville, age 73.

October 31

1517 – Martin Luther, at the time the professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, posts his 95 Theses on Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences , on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

1837 – Approximately 300 members of the Upper Creeks band of the Muscogee tribe, passengers aboard the steamboat Monmouth, being removed to the Indian Territory, die when the boat collides with the steamboat Warren off Profit island in the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, and sinks.

1864 – Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state.

1895 – A 6.8 power earthquake, the strongest in the Midwestern States since 1812, strikes near Charleston, Missouri, killing 2 people.

1903 – Two special trains operated by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, chartered to carry the Purdue football team and over 1,500 passengers from Lafayette to Indianapolis, Indiana, collide with a coal train after rounding a curve at the Mill Street Power House near 18th Street in Indianapolis, killing 17 people, including 14 players of the Purdue University football team.

1917 – What is called ‘the last successful cavalry charge in history’ occurs  when the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s 4th Light Horse Brigade, consisting of the Australian Mounted Division’s 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments, attacks and captures the Yildirim Army Group garrison at Beersheba

1926 – Harry Houdini dies after being injured 4 days previously by a fan.

1940 – The ‘Battle of Britain’ ends, causing Germany to abandon Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England, due to the Luftwaffe being unable to achieve air superiority.

1941 – Before the U.S. officially enters World War II, the destroyer USS Reuben James, under the command of by LtC Heywood Edwards, is torpedoed and sunk by German Kriegsmarine submarine U-552, under the command of, K.Kapt. Erich Topp, near Iceland, killing more than 100 crew members, the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII.
The sculpture work on Mount Rushmore is completed.

1943 – An F4U Corsair accomplishes the first successful radar guided interception by a United States Navy or Marine Corps aircraft.

1963 – A gas explosion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis kills 81 people and injures another 400 during an ice show.

1968 – Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, President Johnson announces that he has ordered a complete cessation of “all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam” effective November 1.

1979 – Western Airlines Flight 2605, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, enroute from Los Angeles, crashes on landing in Mexico City, killing 73 of the 89 passengers and crew aboard.

1994 – American Eagle Flight 4184, an ATR-72, enroute from Indianapolis, to Chicago, crashes near Roselawn, Indiana killing all 68 passengers and crew on board.

1999 – EgyptAir Flight 990, a Boeing 767, enroute from Los Angeles to Cairo, is purposefully crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Nantucket island by the relief 1st officer, killing all 217 passengers and crew on board.

2000 – Soyuz TM-31 carries the first resident crew to the International Space Station.

2011 – The global population of humans reaches 7 billion. This day is now recognized by the United Nations as the Day of Seven Billion.

2014 – During a test flight, the VSS Enterprise, a Virgin Galactic experimental spaceflight test vehicle, suffers a catastrophic in flight breakup and crashes in the Mojave Desert, California, killing one of the pilots.

2017 – An moslem Uzbek immigrant, claiming allegiance with ISIL, drives a truck into a crowd in Lower Manhattan, killing 8 people and injuring another 11 before being shot and taken into custody by New York City Police.

2020 – Actor, Sean Connery dies, aged 90, at his home in the Lyford Cay community of Nassau, Bahamas.

October 30

637 – The Byzantine city of Antioch surrenders to the Rashidun Caliphate after failing to keep the moslem army from crossing the ‘Iron Bridge’ over the Orontes River about 12 miles from the city.

1270 – The Eighth Crusade ends by an agreement between Charles I of Anjou and the Hafsids of Tunis

1340 – During the Reconquista, the armies of King Afonso IV of Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile halt a Muslim invasion by the armies of Sultan Abu al-Hasan and Ali Yusuf I of Granada, at Río Salado near Tarifa, Spain

1817 – Simón Bolívar becomes President of the Third Republic of Venezuela.

1831 – Nat Turner is arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in U.S. States history.

1918 – The Ottoman Empire signs the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies during World War I.

1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds

1941 – President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.

1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers

1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the foundation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is signed.

1953 – President Eisenhower approves the top secret document,  NSC 162/2 to create and maintain a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union.

1959 – Piedmont Airlines Flight 349, a Douglas DC-3, crashes on approach to Charlottesville–Albemarle Airport in Albemarle County, Virginia, killing 26 of the 27 passengers and crew on board.

1961 – A U.S. KC-135R reconnaissance aircraft, flying near the Russian Novaya Zemlya archipelago on Operation Speedlight Delta, detects the Soviet Union’s detonation of the 50 megaton thermonuclear Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated

1985 – Shuttle Challenger lifts off in mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.

2014 – A Gilliland Aviation Beechcraft Super King Air crashes into the FlightSafety International building at Wichita’s Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport shortly after takeoff, killing the only person aboard, the pilot, 3 more people on the ground and injuring another 6 people.

 

October 29

312 – Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and stages a grand adventus in the city.

1792 – Mount Hood, Oregon is named after Samuel, 1st Viscount Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton on sighting the mountain.

1863 – 18 countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross, reversing the Swiss Colors as the logo of the organization in honor of the nation.

1888 – The Convention of Constantinople is signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace.

1901 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1914 – The Ottoman Empire enters World War I on the side of Germany by staging naval raids in the Black Sea against Russian ports, with ships bought and crewed by Germans.

1922 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashes again, dropping an additional 30.57 points (11.73%) , for a total drop of 23% in 2 days.

1942 – Leading clergymen and political figures in the United Kingdom hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews.

1953 – British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines Flight 304, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near San Francisco killing all 19 passengers and crew aboard.

1960 – An Arctic-Pacific Company, Curtiss C-46 Commando, chartered to  carry the California Polytechnic university Mustangs football team, crashes on takeoff in Toledo, Ohio, killing 26 of the 48 passengers and crew aboard.

1969 – The first ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

1972 – The 3 surviving perpetrators of the Munich Olympic massacre are released from prison in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.

1980 – The secret demonstration flight of a C-130 aircraft, specially modified for extremely short landing and takeoff, to be used in a second Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt, ends in a crash landing, with no casualties, at Eglin Air Force Base’s Duke Field, Florida, leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.

1994 – Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House, and is later convicted of trying to kill U.S. President Bill Clinton.

1998 – Space Shuttle mission STS-95 blasts off with 77-year-old John Glenn on board Shuttle Discovery, making him the oldest person to go into space, at the time, and the only Mission Mercury astronaut to fly on a Shuttle.

2004 – The news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video in which the terrorist Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

2012 – Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States at category 3 power, killing 148 people and causing $70 billion in damage.

October 28

306 – Maxentius is proclaimed Roman co-emperor, with Constantine, Severus, and Maximian in the West, and Galerius in the East.

312 – Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge over the river Tiber to become the sole emperor of the Western Roman empire.

969 – The Byzantine Empire retakes the city of Antioch from Hamdanid Arabs

1344 – The army of the first Smyrniote crusade retakes the lower town of Smyrna from Aydınid Turks.

1492 – Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba on his first voyage to the New World.

1520 – Ferdinand Magellan and his fleet finishes transiting the straight, later named after him, and reaches the Pacific Ocean.

1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony votes to establish a theological college, later called Harvard University.

1726 – Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels is published.

1776 – Following General Washington’s retreat from New York, British troops attack and capture Chatterton Hill at White Plains, New York from the Continental Army.

1793 – Eliphalet Remington is born in Suffield, Connecticut.

1886 – President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.

1919 – Under authority of the 18th amendment, Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson’s veto with Prohibition to begin the following January.

1922 – Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange drops another 38.33 points (12.82%) continuing the economic crisis that started on the 24th.

1942 – The Alaska Highway reaches and connects Alaska to the North American railway network at Dawson Creek in Canada.

1948 – Paul Hermann Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.

1962 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.

2007 – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first directly elected female President of Argentina.

2009 – NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X test flight mission for its manned Constellation program.

2014 – A rocket carrying NASA’s Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, Virginia.

2018 – Jair Messias Bolsonaro is elected President of Brazil

2022 – Musician Jerry Lee Lewis dies at his home in Nesbit, Mississippi, age 87.

October 27

312 – The night before engaging in battle against Roman co-emperor Marcus Maxentius, Constantine sees a vision in the sky -a cross – and the words Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα “In this [you shall] conquer“, more well known in Latin; ‘IN HOC SIGNO VINCES‘ and paints it on the shields of his soldiers.

939 – Æthelstan, the first king of all England, dies

1553 – Physician Michael Servetus is burned at the stake at Geneva, for attacking trinitarian Nicene doctrines.

1682 – Philadelphia is founded in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

1775 – King George III declares a Proclamation of Rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies at Parliament.

1795 – The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, which established the boundaries between Spanish colonies and the states

1810 – The United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.

1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be killed.

1904 – The first underground New York City Subway line opens, later designated as the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line.

1936 – Mrs. Wallis Simpson divorces her husband, which allows her to marry King Edward VIII, resulting in him abdicating the throne and changing world history.

1954 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African American Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force.

1961 – NASA tests the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1.

1962 – During the Cuban Missile Crisis:
Major Rudolf Anderson of the U. S. Air Force becomes the only direct casualty of it when his U-2 airplane is shot down over Cuba
This is because, Senior Lieutenant Vasily Arkhipov, executive officer of the Soviet Foxtrot Class submarine B-59, and Chief of Staff of the submarine flotilla assigned to the area, refused his Captain’s independent order to launch a nuclear torpedo at the U.S.’s naval blockading fleet.

1964 – Ronald Reagan launches his political career by delivering a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater.

1988 – President Ronald Reagan suspends construction of the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow due to Soviet listening devices being found in the building structure.

1997 – A  financial crisis in Asian markets causes a crash in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 554 points, or 7.18% of its value, at the time, the 12th largest percentage drop in its history.

2004 – The Boston Red Sox defeat the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series in 86 years.

2018 – A gunman opens fire on a Pittsburgh synagogue killing 11 people and wounding another 6  before surrendering after being shot while engaging police in a gunfight.

2019 – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State,  commits suicide by blowing himself up instead of being captured by U.S. Army Special Operations Forces near Barisha, Syria.

October 26

1774 – The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia.

1825 – The Erie Canal opens, allowing direct passage from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

1864 – Confederate William ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson is killed in battle against Federal troops in Albany, Missouri.

1881 – The Earp brothers and Doc Holliday engage the Clanton and McLaury brothers, along with Billy Claiborne, in a gunfight in an alley about 6 doors west of the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, killing the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, Ottoman troops are forced to abandon the cities of Thessaloniki in Greece and Skopje in Northern Macedonia, to reinforce the Çatalca Line, their final defensive line protecting the peninsula and Constantinople

1917 – During World War I,  Brazil declares war on the Central Powers.

1918 – During World War I, Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.

1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.

1942 – In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, the U.S. carrier Hornet and destroyer Porter are sunk, the carrier Enterprise, battleship South Dakota and cruisers Portland and San Juan damaged, while 2 Japanese carriers Shōkaku and Zuihō and cruiser Chikuma are damaged.

1944 – Off Cape Engaño north of Luzon Island Philippines, the final battle between Japanese and U.S. naval fleets results in an overwhelming American victory.

1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris.

1967 – On his 48th birthday, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran.

1977 – Ali Maow Maalin, the last natural case of smallpox, develops the disease in Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date to be the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, not that that stops the U.S. Army from going bonkers from time to time and mandating all troops get inoculated.

1994 – Jordan and Israel sign the Wadi Araba Treaty ending the state of war between the 2 nations.

1995 – Israeli Mossad agents kill Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shaqaqi in Malta.

2001 – The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.

2003 – The Cedar Fire forest fire, started by a hunter as a rescue signal,  kills 15 people, burns 250,000 acres of land and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.

2012 – Microsoft releases Windows 8

 

October 25

285 – Crispin and Crispinian are martyred by Governor Rictus Varus of Gaul on order of Emperor Diocletian

1147 – During the Reconquista, crusader knights retake Lisbon after a 4 month long siege.

1415 – The army of Henry V of England, mostly light armored infantry and archers, defeats the heavily armored French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt, during the Hundred Years War.

1760 – George III succeeds to the British throne on the death of his grandfather, George II.

1812 – The American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian commanded by John Surman Carden, south of the Azores islands.

1854 – At Balaklava in the Crimea, after an ineffective cavalry charge of the British Heavy Brigade, the British Light Brigade is ordered to charge but is pointed in the wrong direction, suffering heavy casualties after heading down a valley defended by massed Russian artillery.

1921 – Bartholemew ‘Bat’ Masterson dies at his desk from a massive heart attack after writing what became his final column for the New York Morning Telegraph

1940 – Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is promoted the first African American General Officer in the U.S. Army.

1944 – The main force of the U.S. Navy sights and re-engages the main force of the Japanese Navy in the Surigao Straight and off Samar Island in the Phillipines

1962 – U.S Ambassador Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba.

1968 – Northeast Airlines Flight 946, a Fairchild F-27,  crashes into Moose Mountain while on approach to Lebanon Municipal Airport in Lebanon, New Hampshire, killing 30 of the 39 passengers and 2 of the 3 crew members aboard.

1973 – Egypt and Israel accept a United Nations Security Council Resolution  calling for a ceasefire of the Yom Kippur War.

1983 – United States and Caribbean coalition forces begin Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of the island of Grenada, 6 days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d’état by Cuban backed communist forces.

1994 – U.S Navy F-14 pilot Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen is killed when her plane crashes on landing approach to USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego.

1995 – A Cary-Grove High School bus driver fails to clear the tracks near Fox River Grove, Illinois, and the bus is struck by a Metra Union Pacific/ Northwest Line commuter train, enroute to Chicago, killing 7 students and injuring 24 more.

1999 – A SunJet Aviation chartered Learjet 35, enroute from Orlando, Florida, to Dallas, Texas, looses pressure shortly after takeoff, incapacitating and likely killing the 4 passengers, including Springfield, Missouri born golfer Payne Stewart, and 2 crew aboard, then crashes near Aberdeen, South Dakota, when it finally runs out of fuel nearly 4 hours later.

2001 – Microsoft releases Windows XP

2009 – Targeting the Ministry of Justice and the Baghdad Provincial Council building, Al Qaida suicide bombers detonate 2 car bombs, killing 155 Iraqis and wounding at least 721 more people, among which were 3 American contractors.

2013 – Actor and stuntman Hal Needham dies in Los Angeles, age 82.

October 24

1590 – John White, the governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the “lost” colonists.

1596 – The second Spanish armada sets sail to strike against England, but is smashed by storms off Cape Finisterre, off the northwest coast of the Iberian peninsula,  forcing a retreat to port.

1861 – Western Union, a combined partnership of the Pacific Telegraph Company and Overland Telegraph Company, completes construction of the first transcontinental telegraph line across the United States.

1900 – The U.S. government announces plans to buy the Danish West Indies islands of St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix and later Water- now called the Virgin Islands – for $7 million

1901 – Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

1911 – Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds flying a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, Bulgarian forces near modern Kırklareli, Turkey and Serbians near modern Kumanovo, North Macedonia, are victorious against those of the Ottoman Empire.

1929 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average on the New York Stock Exchange crashes  12.82% (38.33 points) marking the beginning of a world wide economic crisis.

1930 – A coup d’état in Brazil ousts President Washington Luis, ending the First Republic

1931 – The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic over the Hudson River.

1944 – Off Leyte Gulf, the Japanese naval force attacked earlier by U.S. submarines is engaged and repulsed by U.S. naval surface forces in the Sibuyan Sea

1945 – The United Nations Charter comes into effect.
Vidkun Quisling is executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress, Oslo, Norway for high treason against the Norwegian state

1946 – A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket, launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, takes the first photograph of earth from outer space.

1947 – United Airlines Flight 608, a Douglas DC-6, crashes over the Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, killing all 52 passengers and crew onboard.

1954 – President Eisenhower pledges United States support to South Vietnam.

1960 – A prototype of the R-16 ICBM ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union, killing over 100 people.

1963 – An oxygen leak from an R-9 Desna missile at the Baikonur Cosmodrome triggers a fire that kills 7 people.

1992 – The Toronto Blue Jays become the first Major League Baseball team based outside the United States to win the World Series.

1998 – NASA’s probe, Deep Space 1 is launched to explore the asteroid belt and test new spacecraft technologies.

2002 – Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, D.C.

2003 – The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde makes its last commercial flight.

2005 – After earlier crossing the Yucatan peninsula at category 5 power, Hurricane Wilma, at category 3 power, strikes Cape Romano, Florida, resulting in 35 direct and 26 indirect fatalities and causing over $20 billion in damage.

2008 – Many of the world’s stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices while the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the New York Stock Exchange drops 3.6%. (312 points)

2015 – A driver intentionally crashes into the Oklahoma State Homecoming parade, killing 4 people and injuring 34. The murderer is later convicted  and sentenced to life imprisonment.

October 23

4004 BC, 1800 hours Coordinated Universal Time– The Earth is created according to calculations of Irish Archbishop James Ussher in 1650

42 BC – Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar, commits suicide instead of being captured after his army is defeated by that of Octavian and Mark Antony near Philippi in Macedonia.

1086 – During the Spanish Reconquista the Almoravid army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the Castilians of Alfonso VI, at Sagrajas, but are unable to take advantage of their victory.

1850 – The first National Women’s Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts.

1864 – During the Civil War, the Battle of Westport in what is now Kansas City, is the last significant engagement west of the Mississippi River.

1911 – The first use of an airplane in combat occurs when an Italian pilot makes a reconnaissance flight during the Italo-Turkish War.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, Serbian forces engage and are victorious over the  Ottomans in battle near Kumanovo in the Kosovo Vilayet.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, Japanese forces begin what will turn out to be their last major offensive action to retake Henderson Field from American forces.

1944 – During World War II, in Leyte Gulf of the Philippines, the U.S. submarines USS Darter and USS Dace sight and attack a large Japanese naval force as it passes Palawan island to attack the U.S. landings on Leyte island.

1965 – During the Vietnam War, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), combined with forces of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, launch an operation to destroy Communist forces besieging Special Forces Camp Plei Me, 25 miles south of Pleiku, under command of Colonel Charles Beckwith.

1970 – Gary Gabelich sets a land speed record of just over 622 miles per hour, driving the rocket powered Blue Flame automobile on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

1973 – President Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.

1982 – In Miracle Valley Arizona, a gunfight breaks out in the early morning between members of Christ Miracle Healing Church and Cochise County Deputy Sheriffs who had arrived the previous evening to arrest several church members, leaving 2 church members dead and many on both sides wounded.

1983 – In Beirut Lebanon, the building used as barracks by U.S. Marines is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 Marines. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58.

1989 – An explosion at the Houston Chemical Complex in Pasadena, Texas, powerful enough to which register a 3.5 on the Richter magnitude scale, kills 23 people and injures 314 more.

1998 – At the Aspen Institute Wye River Conference Centers, Wye Mills, Maryland, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat negotiate an agreement to resume the implementation of the Oslo II Accord, the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

2001 – Apple Computer releases the iPod

2015 – The lowest sea level pressure in the Western Hemisphere, 25.75 inches Hg, and the highest reliably measured non-tornadic sustained wind speed of 215 mph, are recorded in Hurricane Patricia, which strikes Mexico hours later, killing at least 13 people and causing over $280 million in damages.

October 22

451 – The Chalcedonian Creed, a further refinement of the original Nicene Creed of 325 A.D.  that defines that Christ is acknowledged in two natures, truly God and truly Man, which come together into one person and one hypostasis, is adopted by the 4th ecumenical council held at Chalcedon in what is now modern western Turkey.

1746 – The College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University,  is chartered

1777 – During the Revolutionary War, American defenders of Fort Mercer  on the left, New Jersey side, of the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia, repulse several attacks by Hessian mercenary forces, delaying British plans to consolidate gains in Philadelphia, and relieving pressure on General Washington’s forces to the north of the city.

1784 – Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

1836 – Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1879 – Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb with it lasting over 13 hours before burning out.

1883 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod’s Faust.

1884 – The International Meridian Conference designates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich as the world’s prime meridian.

1907 – A run on the stock of the Knickerbocker Trust Company sets events in motion that will spark the financial Panic of 1907.

1934 – Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents led by Melvin Purvis in a corn field in East Liverpool, Ohio

1962 – President Kennedy announces to the public that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval quarantine of the island.

1981 – The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) for its strike the previous August.

1983 – Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons.

2012 – Cyclist Lance Armstrong is formally stripped of his 7 Tour de France titles after being charged for doping.

2015 – During hostage rescue operations near Hawijah, Iraq, in which then U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Thomas Payne, for his actions, becomes the first living member of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment- Delta, to be awarded the Medal of Honor; U.S. Army Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler, also a Delta Operator, is killed in action and is posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action and later, as a member of the Cherokee Nation, awarded its Medal of Patriotism.

October 21

1096 – The Seljuk Turks defeat in detail the ‘People’s Army’ of the First Crusade at Helenopolis in Bythnia – the modern port city of Hersek, Turkey.

1097 – The ‘Princes Army’ of the First Crusade, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV of Toulouse, begin the Siege of Antioch.

1512 – Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg.

1520 – During is voyage of circumnavigation, Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait near the lower end of South America now named after him and makes preparations to transit it by sending one of his ships to scout ahead.

1774 – The flag of Taunton, Massachusetts is the first to include the word “Liberty”.

1797 – The 44 gun U. S. Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.

1854 – Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.

1861 – Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops at Ball’s Bluff Virgini, in the second major battle of the war.

1867 – The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by the southern great plains tribes; Kiowa, Comanche, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho, requiring them to relocate to reservations in western Oklahoma.

1879 – Thomas Edison applies for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb.

1892 – Opening ceremonies for the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world fair celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus discovery of the New World are held in Chicago.

1944 – During the Allied invasion of the Phillipines at Leyte, the first kamikaze attack damages HMAS Australia.
The city of Aachen -Aix-la-Chapelle- site of Charlemagne’s Court, falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, the first German city to fall to the Allies during World War II

1959 – President Eisenhower approves the transfer of all US Army space-related activities to NASA

1973 – Fred Dryer of the Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game during play against the Green Bay Packers.

1983 – The definition of the meter is redefined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

1986 – In Lebanon, pro-Iran kidnappers abduct American writer Edward Tracy, eventually releasing him in August 1991.

2005 – Photographs of the solar system’s dwarf planet Eris taken in January by astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in California are used to confirm its discovery.

2011 – President Obama announces that the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq will be complete by the end of the year.

2021 – On a movie set in New Mexico, Alec Baldwin discharges a prop weapon, which had been loaded with live ammunition, killing the director of photography, Halyna Hutchins, and injuring director Joel Souza.

October 20

1774 – The Continental Association, a nonconsumption and nonimportation agreement against the British Isles and the British West Indies, is adopted by the First Continental Congress.

1803 – The Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 – The Convention of 1818 is signed between the United States and the United Kingdom, which settles the Canada–United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.

1941 – Thousands of civilians in German occupied Serbia are murdered by Nazi soldiers in the Kragujevac massacre.

1944 – Liquefied natural gas leaks from East Ohio Gas Company storage tanks in Cleveland and then explodes, leveling 30 blocks and killing 130 people.

1947 – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of the Hollywood film industry

1973 –  President Nixon fires Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Solicitor General, Robert Bork.

1976 – On the Mississippi river in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, the Luling–Destrehan Ferry George Prince is struck by the Norwegian tanker SS Frosta, killing 78 of the 96 passengers and crew aboard the ferry with no casualties on the tanker.

1977 – A L & J Company owned Convair CV-240 aircraft, leased by the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, runs out of fuel enroute to Baton Rouge Louisiana and crashes while the pilots attempt an emergency landing in a field near Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing 6 of the 24 passengers aboard, 3 of them, members of the band.

1981 – Two police officers and a Brink’s armored car guard are killed during an armed robbery carried out by members of the Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground in Nanuet, New York.

1991 – Starting from an incompletely extinguished grass fire in the Berkeley Hills, a massive firestorm breaks out on the hillsides of northern Oakland, and southeastern Berkeley, California killing 25 people and destroying more than 3,000 homes, apartments and condominiums.

2003 – The Sloan Great Wall, a cosmic galactic filament structure formed by a giant wall of galaxies, is discovered within the region of the constellations Corvus, Hydra and Centaurus, by astronomers studying data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at Princeton University

2011 – Libyan rebel forces capture and kill dictator Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte.