Category: Today

October 19

202 BC – At the Battle of Zama, in modern northern Tunisia, Roman legions under Scipio Africanus inflict an overwhelming defeat of the forces under Hannibal Barca, leader of the army defending Carthage.

439 – The Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, defeat the roman garrison and occupy Carthage in North Africa. (bad date for Carthaginians)

1386 – The Universität Heidelberg holds its first lecture, making it the oldest German university.

1469 – Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country; Spain. (and 23 years later at the completion of the Reconquista, provide the financial capability to permit the Spanish crown to fund the first voyage of Columbus)

1512 – Martin Luther receives his doctorate of theology at the University of Wittenberg

1789 – John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.

1864 – While Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. Jubal Early are preliminarily successful in a surprise attack against Union forces under Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan at Cedar Creek near Strasburg, Virginia, they are ultimately defeated near Middletown, ending the campaign through the Shenandoah valley against Washington D.C.

1900 – Max Planck formulates his scientific law of black body radiation

1935 – The League of Nations places economic sanctions on Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia and deposing Ras Täfäri Mäkonnän Emperor Haile Selassie into exile.

1943 – Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.

1944 – U.S. forces land on Leyte island to begin the liberation of the Philippines from Japanese occupation

1950 – Chinese People’s Liberation Army forces defeat the Tibetan Army at Chambo, resulting in China annexing and occupying Tibet.

1956 – The Soviet Union and Japan sign a Joint Declaration, officially ending the state of war between the countries that had existed since August 1945.

1987 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 22%, 508 points, the highest one day percentage drop at that time.
The U.S. Navy conducts Operation Nimble Archer, attacking 2 Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in response to Iran’s missile attack 3 days earlier on Kuwaiti flagged MV Sea Isle City.

2004 –  Corporate Airlines Flight 5966, a British Aerospace Jetstream 32, crashes on approach to Kirksville Regional Airport, in Adair County, Missouri, killing both pilots and 11 of the 13 passengers aboard.

2005 – Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

October 18

614 – After the Synod of Paris ends, King Chlothar II seals the Edict of Paris –Edictum Chlotacharii – putting into effect an early declaration conceding and defending rights of the Frankish nobles, over 600 years before Magna Carta was signed in England.

1009 – The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem  is completely destroyed by caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah

1540 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s forces destroy the town of Mabila in present day Alabama, killing Chief Tuskaloosa.

1597 – King Philip II of Spain send his naval Armada against England for the 3rd – and last – time, but again it ends in failure, this time due to storms scattering the fleet, with half of the ships being captured or sunk by the English fleet.

1599 – Warlords of ancient Wallachia, Michael the Brave’s forces defeat the those of Andrew Báthory in battle near the village of Șelimbăr, in central Hungary, leading to the first recorded unification of the Romanian people.

1648 – Boston shoemakers form the “Company of Shoomakers”, the first American labor organization.

1775 – A British navy fleet bombards and invades Falmouth (now Portland) Maine, burning over 400 houses and other buildings in the city before leaving.

1779 – A combined French-American force fails to retake the British occupied city of Savannah, Georgia, with the British remaining in control until 1782.

1851 – Herman Melville’s book Moby-Dick is published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.

1867 – After purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million, the U.S. takes possession of Alaska

1898 – Under terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898, ending the Spanish–American War, the United States takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain.

1922 – The British Broadcasting Company is founded.

1931 – Thomas Edison dies, age 84, at his home, “Glenmont” in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey,

1945 – The Russians receive plans for the United States plutonium ‘Fat Man’ bomb from spy Klaus Fuchs employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1954 – Texas Instruments announces the first transistor radio, the Regency TR-1

1979 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) begins allowing people to have home satellite earth stations without a federal government license.

2019 – NASA Astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch make the first all-female spacewalk from the International Space Station.

2021 – General, retired,  Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State, dies, age 84, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

October 17

1448 – Starting a crusade revolt against the moslem Ottoman rule in the Balkans, John Hunyadi of Hungary joins with forces with some leaders in Albania, Serbia and Bosnia and engage the army of Sultan Murad II in central Kosovo but suffer a devastating defeat leading to the Ottomans ruing over all states in the Balkans for many centuries.

1771 – At age 15, Wolfgang Mozart premiers his 2nd opera, Ascanio in Alba, in Milan.

1777 – British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York.

1781 – British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders his army at the Siege of Yorktown, the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War in  North America.

1811 – Silver is discovered in the Atacama region of Chile becoming the financial backing for the Chilean War of Independence.

1850 – moslems begin a series of riots in Aleppo, Syria lasting until early November, killing over 5000 Christians.

1907 – The Marconi Company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service.

1912 – Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War.

1931 – Alphonse Capone is convicted of income tax evasion.

1933 – Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.

1941 – While still technically a neutral power, the destroyer USS Kearny becomes the first U.S. Navy vessel attacked during World War II, suffering heavy damage from a torpedo fired from a German U-Boat being depth charged by the vessel off Iceland.

1965 – The New York World’s Fair closes after 2 years and more than 51 million attendees.

1966 – The 23rd Street Fire in in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City kills 12 firefighters, the department’s highest loss until 9/11.

1973 – OPEC imposes an oil embargo against countries they deem to have helped Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

1979 – The Department of Education Organization Act creates the U.S. Department of Education.

1989 – A 6.9 magnitude earthquake of the San Andreas Fault, near Mount Loma Prieta, strikes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63 people and causing over $6 billion in damage.

2003 – Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper in Taipei, becomes the world’s tallest high-rise.

2019 – Heavily armed gangsters of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel force the Mexican government in Culiacán province to release the son of former cartel boss ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán after his arrest.

 

October 16

1793 – Queen Marie Antoinette is executed on the guillotine

1817 – Italian explorer and archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni, discovers the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I in the Valley of the Kings.

1846 – Dr. William T. G. Morton demonstrates the administration of ether anesthesia for surgical operations at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

1859 – John Brown, leading 21 men, raids the U.S. Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.

1882 – The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad opens for business, connecting Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Toledo.

1909 – Mexican President Porfirio Díaz visits President William Taft in El Paso and Taft returns the visit by traveling to Ciudad Juarez where they narrowly miss being assassinated by a lone gunman who was captured mere feet away from them.

1916 – Margaret Sanger opens the first “family planning” clinic in Brooklyn

1919 – Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party.

1939 – 603 Squadron RAF, flying Spitfires, intercepts the first Luftwaffe raid on Great Britain also making the first fighter kill of the war over the country.

1940 – The Warsaw Ghetto is established.

1946 – 10 Nazis found guilty by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg for crimes against humanity are executed by hanging.

1962 – President Kennedy is informed of the aerial photos taken on October 14 of Russian nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba

1964 – With the assistance of the Soviets,  China detonates its first nuclear device at their Lop Nur test site in Xinjiang province,  a uranium implosion device of equivalent power to the one the U.S. used to bomb Nagasaki

1975 – 3 year old Rahima Banu, from Bangladesh, is the last known case of naturally occurring smallpox.

1991 – A man kills 23 and wounds 20 more people after driving his truck into Luby’s restaurant in Killeen, Texas. One of the patrons, Suzanna Gratia Hupp, left her handgun in her vehicle instead of breaking the law, and later continued to campaign for Texas concealed carry until it was passed into law 4 years later.

1998 – Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a murder extradition warrant.

October 15

1066 – Following the death of Harold at the Battle of Hastings, Edgar the Ætheling is proclaimed King of England by the Witan, but is never crowned before William of Normandy claims the throne.

1529 – The First Siege of Vienna ends with Austrian troops routing the invading Ottoman forces.

1582 – The states of the Holy Roman Empire replace the Julian Calendar with the Gregorian version

1783 – The Montgolfier brother’s hot air balloon makes the first ascent with a human pilot; Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier aboard.

1793 – Queen Marie Antoinette of France is tried and convicted of treason.

1815 – Napoleon begins his second and final exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

1863 – The Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, sinks during a second test run, this time killing its inventor along with the rest of the 8 man crew.

1878 – The Edison Electric Light Company is incorporated in New York.

1917 – Margaretha “Mata Hari” MacLeod is executed by France for espionage.

1928 – The German airship D-LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States.

1939 – The New York Municipal Airport, later renamed LaGuardia Airport is dedicated.

1945 – The former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, is executed for treason.

1946 – Hermann Göring escapes the hangman by taking cyanide.

1954 – Hurricane Hazel strikes the eastern seaboard of North America, killing 95 people and causing massive floods as far north as Toronto.

1966 – The Black Panther Party is created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.

1979 – A coup d’état in El Salvador overthrows President Carlos Humberto Romero and starts the Salvadoran Civil War.

1997 – NASA  launches the Cassini–Huygens probe from Cape Canaveral to study Saturn, its rings and moons.

2006 – A 6.7 magnitude earthquake in Kiholo Bay, Hawaii, causing a small tsunami, over $200 million in property damage and injuring a few people.

2018 – 13 year old Jayme Closs is kidnapped from her Barron, Wisconsin home after her parents are murdered by Jake Patterson

October 14

1066 – Having been informed by his scouts of the approach of King Harold Godwinson’s army in an attempt at a surprise attack, Duke William of Normandy marches his troops and the armies engage a few miles northwest of the town of Hastings, resulting in a costly, but overwhelming, victory by the Normans.

1322 – The army of Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats the army of King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.

1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I of England

1656 – The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends

1774 – The First Continental Congress denounces the enactment by Parliament of what they term The Intolerable Acts in response to the ‘Boston Tea Party’ and demands British concessions.

1863 – At the Battle of Bristoe Station, Confederate troops under the command of A. P. Hill are repelled by Union rear guard troops under the command of Gouverneur K. Warren, failing in the effort to drive Union forces out of Virginia.

1884 – George Eastman receives a U.S. patent for strip type photographic film.

1908 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Detroit Tigers, 2–0, winning the World Series, which would be the last time until the 2016 World Series, the record so far for the longest time between winning a World Series championship.

1943 – Prisoners at the NAZI Sobibor extermination camp in Poland covertly assassinate most of the on duty SS officers and then stage a mass breakout.

1944 – Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is forced to commit suicide due to his involvement in an attempt to assassinate Hitler

1947 – Piloting the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis rocket plane over Rogers Dry Lake in California, Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to exceed the speed of sound

1949 – Leaders of the Communist Party USA are prosecuted under the Smith Act with all 11 defendants convicted of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the federal government.

1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when an American reconnaissance aircraft takes photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles being installed in Cuba.

1968 – The first live TV broadcast by American astronauts in orbit is performed by the Apollo 7 crew.

1982 – President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.
(really been successful, hasn’t it?)

2004 – Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, a Bombardier CRJ200 crashes near Jefferson City, Missouri, while the pilots, the only people aboard, try to perform an emergency landing due to engine failure, being killed in the attempt

2012 – Felix Baumgartner successfully jumps to Earth from a balloon from an altitude of 127,852 feet, setting a new world record at the time.

2021 – 10,000 American employees of John Deere go on a labor strike, the first in over 30 years, lasting a little over a month before being resolved.

October 13

54 – Roman emperor Claudius dies under mysterious circumstances and is succeeded by Nero

1775 – The Continental Congress establishes the Continental Navy

1792 – The cornerstone of the United States Executive Mansion is laid by President Washington.

1812 – During the War of 1812, Sir Isaac Brock’s British and native forces repel an invasion of Canada by General Rensselaer’s United States forces.

1884 – The International Meridian Conference establishes the meridian of the Greenwich Observatory as the prime meridian.

1885 – The Georgia Institute of Technology is founded in Atlanta, Georgia.

1892 – While on staff of the University of California’s Lick Observatory,  Edward Emerson Barnard makes the first discovery of a comet, Barnard 3 – later renamed 206P/Barnard–Boattini – by photographic means.

1903 – The Boston Red Sox win the first modern World Series, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the eighth game.

1976 – The first electron micrograph of an Ebola virus is taken at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by Dr. F. A. Murphy.

1983 – ‘Baby Bell’ company Ameritech Mobile Communications launches the first cellular network in the U.S. in Chicago.

2012 – U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Ryan Savard is killed in action in Konduz Province, Afghanistan.

October 12

539 BC – The army of Persia under the command of Gubaruva takes Babylon, bringing down the Babylonian empire, fulfilling the ‘writing on the wall’: מנא מנא תקל ופרסין Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

1492 – Christopher Columbus’ first expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, somewhere in the Bahamas.

1692 – The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Province of Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phips.

1773 – Eastern State Hospital, America’s first insane asylum, opens in Williamsburg, Virginia.

1792 – The first celebration of Columbus Day is held in New York City.

1793 – The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the U.S., is laid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

1810 – The citizens of Munich hold the first Oktoberfest.

1822 – After earlier declaring Brazil’s independence from Portugal, Pedro I of Brazil is proclaimed Emperor.

1849 – The city of Manizales, Colombia, is founded by ‘The Expedition of the 20’.

1870 – Robert E. Lee dies, age 63, at Lexington, Virginia of a stroke suffered 2 weeks earlier.

1892 –On the 400th anniversary of the Columbus expedition, President Harrison proclaims the day ‘Columbus Day’ .

1901 – President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the “Executive Mansion” to the “White House”.

1918 – A massive forest fire in western Carlton County, Minnesota, kills 453 people, and causes over $72 million in damages.

1928 – The “Iron Lung” negative pressure respirator is used for the first time at Boston Children’s Hospital on a patient suffering from polio.

1933 – The military Alcatraz Citadel is converted to the civilian Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

1945 – U.S. Army Combat Medic Corporal Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor.

1962 – A windstorm resulting from Typhoon Freda strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities, killing 46 people and causing over $230 million in damages.

1970 – ‘Vietnamization’ of the Vietnam war continues as President Nixon announces that the U.S. will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.

1973 – President Nixon nominates House Majority Leader Gerald R. Ford as the successor to Vice President Agnew.

2000 – The US Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer, USS Cole is damaged by two Al Qaida suicide bombers in the Yemeni port of Aden, during a port visit, killing 17 and wounding 39 crew members.

2017 – The United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

2019 – In New Orleans, the Hard Rock Hotel, which is under construction, collapses, killing 2 and injuring 20.

October 11

1614 – The New Netherland Company applies to the States General of the Netherlands for exclusive trading rights in what is now the northeastern United States.

1767 – Surveying for the Mason–Dixon line, separating Maryland from Pennsylvania is completed.

1776 – During the Revolution, a fleet of American boats on Lake Champlain is defeated by the Royal Navy, but delays the British advance until 1777.

1890 – The Daughters of the American Revolution is founded in Washington, D.C.

1906 – San Francisco sparks a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Japan by ordering segregated schools for Japanese students.

1910 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane.

1942 – Off the Solomon Islands between Guadalcanal and Savo, U.S. Navy ships intercept and defeat a Japanese force.

1950 – CBS receives a license to broadcast a color TV signal.

1968 – NASA launches Apollo 7 the first manned mission after the Apollo 1 disaster.

1971 – Retired Lieutenant General Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller USMC, recipient of 5 Navy Crosses, in addition to the Army’s Distinguished Service Cross, dies in Hampton, Virginia, age 73

1976 – George Washington is posthumously promoted to the grade of General of the Armies. Technically 0–12.

1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.

1986 – Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Iceland to continue discussions about scaling back IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) arsenals in Europe.

2000 – NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-92, the 100th Space Shuttle mission.

2007 – “Flying Tiger” and U.S. Army Air Force fighter pilot, retired Brigadier General David Lee “Tex” Hill, dies at age 92 in Terrell Hills, Texas.

 

October 10

732 – Charles Martel’s army of Franks and Aquitanians defeat an invading moslem Umayyad army near Tours, France.

1492 – The crew of the Santa Maria nearly mutiny against Columbus.

1814 – During the War of 1812, on and around Long Island, New York, sailors of the United States Revenue-Marine begins a 3 day battle to defend their beached cutter USRC Eagle during repair operations, from an ultimately successful attempt by the crews of the Royal Navy’s ships HMS Narcissus and HMS Dispatch to board and tow the ship away as a prize.

1845 – In Annapolis, Maryland, the first class of the Naval School, now the United States Naval Academy begins

1913 – President Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike, completing major construction on the Panama Canal.

1928 – Chiang Kai-shek is named Chairman of the government of the Republic of China and Generalissimo of the National Revolutionary Army.

1933 – United Airlines Trip 23, a Boeing 247 crashes near Chesterton, Indiana due to the explosion of an bomb aboard the plane, killing all 7 passengers and crew aboard, the first known instance of aerial sabotage, and which remains unsolved.

1963 – The international Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty comes into effect.

1973 – Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with evasion of federal income tax.

1985 – US Navy F-14 aircraft of Carrier Air Wing 17, launch off USS Saratoga and intercept Egyptian Airlines Flight 2843, carrying the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking, forcing it to land at the NATO base at Sigonella, Italy causing an international incident.

2002 – Congress approves a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq.

2013 – Mercury Aurora 7 Astronaut Scott Carpenter dies at the Denver Hospice Inpatient Care Center, after suffering a stroke.

2018 – Hurricane Michael makes landfall in the Florida Panhandle at Category 5 power, killing 57 people and causing an estimated $25 billion in damage.

October 9

768 – Brothers Carloman and Charlemagne are crowned kings of the Franks in Noyon, France.

1000 – The Norse sagas record that this day, Leif Ericson discovers “Vinland”, which is likely where a Viking village later named L’Anse aux Meadows, was founded on the island of Newfoundland, Canada.

1238 – After retaking Valencia from the moors during the Reconquista, Jaume el Conqueridor of Aragon is crowned as James I of the Kingdom of Valencia.

1604 –  Actually observing the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter, which was linked in the astrology of the time to the Star of Bethlehem, SN1604, (named “Kepler’s Supernova” after the european astronomical discoverer) Johanees Kepler observes what is now classed as a Type Ia supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus, visible even during the day for over 3 weeks with records of its sighting existing in Europe, China, Korea, and Arabia, and is the most recent supernova to be observed within the Milky Way galaxy

1635 – Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony after religious and policy disagreements and founds Providence Plantations on land bought from Wampanoag Chief Massasoit, which later becomes the English colony of Rhode Island.

1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut, later renamed Yale University, is chartered in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut

1812 –  In a naval engagement on Lake Erie during the War of 1812, American naval forces under the command of Lieutenant Jesse Elliott, capture the British ships; HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.

1825 – The private sloop Restauration arrives in New York Harbor from Norway, the first organized immigration from Norway to the U.S.

1873 – A meeting of 15 naval officers at the U.S. Naval Academy establishes the U.S. Naval Institute.

1936 – Boulder Dam, now renamed Hoover Dam, begins electric power generation

1967 – Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.

1974 – Oskar Schindler dies in Hildesheim, Germany

1986 – Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC) launches as the “4th” US television network.

1992 – The Peekskill meteorite, a 27.7 pound meteorite crashes into a parked car in Peekskill, New York

2006 – North Korea conducts its first nuclear test.

2007 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its then all time high of 14,164 points before rapidly declining due to the 2007/2008 financial crises.

2009 – NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program intentionally crashes the spent Centaur upper stage and data-collecting Shepherding Spacecraft in the crater Cabeus near the south pole of the Moon so that the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) can observe the impact

October 8

314 – The army of Roman Emperor Constantine defeats that of Co- Emperor Licinius,  near the town of Cibalae in the Roman province of Pannonia Secunda-modern Vinkovci, Croatia.

451 – The first session of the Council of Chalcedon, convened by Emperor Marcian to reassert the teachings of the Council of Ephesus, begins.

1645 – Jeanne Mance opens the first lay hospital of North America in Montreal.

1793 – John Hancock, preeminent signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, dies at his home, Hancock Manor, in Boston at age 56.

1862 – Around the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg’s Army of Mississippi wins a tactical victory against  a Corps of Maj. Gen. Don Buell’s Union Army of the Ohio but Bragg withdraws  to Tennessee, giving the Union a strategic victory as it remains in control of Kentucky for the remainder of the war.

1912 – The First Balkan War begins when Christian majority Montenegro declares war against the Ottoman Empire.

1918 –  As part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in World War I, the 328th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Infantry Division is tasked to capture German positions near Hill 223 along the Decauville railroad, north of Chatel-Chéhéry, France. Coming under heavy machinegun fire, a reinforced squad is detached to flank and take out the guns. During the attack, over half of the detail is killed or wounded and the only NCO left able to fight, Corporal Alvin C. York, single handedly kills 28 German soldiers and forces another 132 to surrender and is later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in combat.

1944 – As part of the Drive to the Siegfried Line in World War II, the 1st Battalion,  18th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division is tasked to capture Crucifix Hill outside Aachen, Germany. As the 1st Platoon of Charlie Company comes under heavy machinegun fire from multiple pillboxes, the Company Commander, Captain Robert E. Brown, uses Bangalore Torpedoes to destroy several emplacements and continues to draw fire to detect other emplacements even after being wounded and is later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in combat.

1956 – New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches the only perfect – no hits/runs/walks/errors – game in a World Series, in Game 5 against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1967 – Guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his revolutionary force is captured in Bolivia.

1970 – Aleksander Solzhenitsyn is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

1973 – During the Yom Kippur War, Israel loses more than 150 tanks in a failed attack on Egyptian occupied positions.

1974 – Franklin National Bank on Long Island, New York collapses due to fraud and mismanagement; at the time the largest bank failure in the history of the United States.

1990 –  During the First Intifada, Israeli police kill 17 Palestinians and wound over 100 near the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount

2001 – President George Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security.

2014 – Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola, dies, in patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

October 7

3761 BC – The world is created according to the Hebrew calendar.

1571 – The coalition fleet of the Holy League defeats the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras off Lepanto, Greece.

1691 – The charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is issued by King William and Queen Mary of England.

1763 – King George III issues a royal proclamation, closing indian lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlements.

1777 – American troops under General Gates defeat the British under General Burgoyne at Bemis Heights along the Hudson river in Saratoga county, New York

1780 – Revolutionary militia defeat royalist militia led by British Major Patrick Ferguson, who is killed in the battle, at King’s Mountain, South Carolina.

1826 – The Quincy Granite Railway begins operations as the first chartered railway in the U.S., for construction of the Bunker Hill Monument, carrying granite from Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Neponset River in Milton for further ferry downriver.

1864 – The Union sloop of war USS Wachusett, under Commander Napoleon Collins, illegally engages and captures the Confederate sloop of war CSS Florida, under Lieutenant Charles Morris, in the neutral Port of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, causing an diplomatic incident between the U.S. and Brazil.

1868 – Cornell University opens for business

1913 – Ford Motor Company begins operations using the first moving Model T assembly line, developed from an ideas of William Klann upon his return from visiting a slaughterhouse in Chicago where cattle were processed – ‘disassembled’ – on a moving conveyor.

1916 – Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222–0 in the most lopsided college football game in American history.

1940 –A memorandum sent to the Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Far East Asia section, Captain Dudley Knox, by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.

1949 – The communist German Democratic Republic -East Germany -is formed from the division of control of Germany between the victorious allies.

1958 – Per a directive from President Eisenhower, Project Astronaut, the U.S. crewed spaceflight project is renamed Project Mercury. 

1963 – President Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

1985 – 4 men from the Palestine Liberation Front hijack the MS Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt. 69 year old American, Leon Klinghoffer, is murdered by the hijackers and thrown overboard.

1996 – Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.

2001 – Less than a month after the al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S., the U.S. invades Afghanistan beginning with air strikes on Kabul,  Kandahar and Jalalabad.

2002 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-112 to continue assembly of the International Space Station.

2016 – Hurricane Matthew strikes the southeastern states at category 5 power, killing over 600 people and causing over $16 billion in damage.

October 6

1066 – Apparently unaware of the size of the invading force that landed in the south, King Harold Godwinson leaves most of his badly mauled army at York, England as he marches the rest south in an attempt to surprise Duke William’s forces as he did Harald Hardrada’s at Stamford Bridge earlier

1536 – Bible translator William Tyndale is executed for heresy in Belgium.

1539 – The Spanish expedition of Hernado DeSoto takes over the Apalachee tribe’s capital of Anhaica, near modern day Tallahassee Florida, for their winter quarters.

1683 – German immigrant families found (you guessed it) Germantown, Pennsylvania.

1777 – To create a diversion to split the American forces of General Gates defending the Hudson River valley, British forces under the command of General Sir Henry Clinton capture Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery, and dismantle the Hudson River Chain.

1884 – The Naval War College of the United States is founded in Rhode Island.

1898 – Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the largest American music fraternity, is founded at the New England Conservatory of Music.

1908 – Austria-Hungary takes the opportunity to formally annex Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Ottoman Empire as Bulgaria declares independence from the Ottomans causing a diplomatic crisis due to both events being seen as violations of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin between Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, Italy, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.

1927 – The Jazz Singer, the first feature length movie with both synchronized music and speech, opens at Warner Brother theater in New York

1942 – American troops complete operations to force Japanese troops from their positions east of the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal.

1973 – Egypt and Syria launch coordinated attacks against Israel, beginning the Yom Kippur War.

1981 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is assassinated at a military parade in Cairo, by members of Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya

1993 – A mortar attack on the U.S. compound at Mogadishu, Somalia kills 1 Delta Force soldier, Sergeant Matthew Rierson and wounds another 12 U.S. service members.

1995 – The first planet orbiting another sun, 51 Pegasi b, first named Bellerophon, but later officially Dimidium is discovered.

2007 – Jason Lewis aboard Moksha completes the first human powered circumnavigation of the Earth.

2010 – Instagram is founded.

2018 – Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as a Supreme Court Associate Justice.

October 5

1143 – Under terms of the Treaty of Zamora, King Alfonso VII of León and Castile recognizes Portugal as a separate Kingdom.

1813 –During the War of 1812, the Army of the Northwest defeats a British and Native Canadian force threatening Detroit.

1869 – The Eastman tunnel built under the Mississippi river in Minnesota,  collapses during construction, causing a landslide that nearly destroys St. Anthony Falls.

1877 – The Nez Perce War in the northwestern United States comes to an end as Chief Joseph surrenders to Brigadier General Nelson Miles.

1905 – The Wright brothers pilot the Wright Flyer III in world record flight of 24 miles in 39 minutes around Huffman Field, Ohio.

1914 – During World War I, French pilot Sgt. Joseph Frantz and his mechanic/gunner, Louis Quénault, flying a Voisin biplane,  shoot down a German Aviatik biplane near Reims, the first confirmed aerial combat victory.

1921 – The World Series between the New York Giants and the New York Yankees, is the first to be broadcast on radio and is also the last to use the best-of-nine games format

1938 – In Nazi Germany, Jews’ passports are invalidated.

1943 – 98 American prisoners of war are executed by Japanese forces on Wake Island.

1947 – President Truman makes the first televised address from the Oval Office

1966 – At the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station near Detroit, prototype reactor 1 suffers a partial meltdown.

1970 – The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is founded.

1982 – Tylenol products are recalled after bottles in Chicago, laced with cyanide, cause 7 deaths.

2003 – Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard are eaten by a bear in the Katmai National Park, Alaska.

October 4

1535 – The Coverdale Bible is printed, named for one of the English translators, Myles Coverdale.

1582 – The Gregorian Calendar is introduced by [drum roll]Pope Gregory

1597 – Spanish Governor, Admiral Gonzalo Méndez de Canço, begins to suppress a native uprising against his rule in what is now the state of Georgia.

1669 – Rembrandt van Rijn dies in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic

1777 – At Germantown, Pennsylvania, American troops under George Washington are forced to retreat from the city after engaging British troops under William Howe.

1853 – The Crimean War begins when the Ottoman Empire declares war on the Russian Empire.

1883 – The Orient Express begins service between Paris and Constantinople.

1895 – Horace Rawlins wins the first U.S. Open Men’s Golf Championship.

1918 – An explosion at the T. A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Company in Sayreville, New Jersey kills an estimated 100 people; estimated because the employee records were destroyed in the blast and many victims were consumed in the blast and resultant fires.

1927 – Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore.

1957 – Sputnik 1 is launched into orbit by the Soviet Union.

1960 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes on takeoff from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, after running into a large flock of birds, killing 62 of the 72 passengers and crew on board, those surviving due to being thrown clear of the plane on impact into Winthrop Bay.

1983 – Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour, driving the Thrust2 jet car, at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada which will stand for 14 years until his ThrustSSC jet car breaks the speed of sound.

1992 – The Rome General Peace Accords end a 16 year long civil war in Mozambique.

1993 – U.S. forces are relieved by U.N. UNISOM forces and exit the Bakarra market area of Mogadishu, Somalia

2004 – Mojave Aerospace Ventures’ SpaceShipOne wins the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.
On the same day, astronaut Gordon Cooper, the last U.S. astronaut to fly alone into space, dies at his home in Ventura, California, age 77.

2009 – The Battle of Kamdesh in Nuristan Province Afghanistan ends with the Combat Outpost Keating being nearly destroyed by attacking Taliban forces resulting in the deaths of 8 U.S. service members. For heroism in action, 2 of the surviving service members are awarded the Medal of Honor.

2017 – During Operation Obsidian Nomad, a combined task force of American and Nigerien Special Forces are ambushed by Islamic State militants outside the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, resulting in the deaths of 4 Nigerien, and 4 U.S. service members.

2021 – Bubba Wallace becomes the first African-American Driver in the modern era of NASCAR to win a major race.

October 3

42 BC – The Army of Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian defeats the forces of 2 of Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius, at Phillipi, Macedonia

382 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I concludes a peace treaty with the Goths, previous converts to Christianity, and settles them in the Balkans.

1789 – President Washington issues a proclamation creating “….Thursday the 26th day of November next…” as the first officially designated Thanksgiving Day

1863 – The last Thursday in November is declared as Thanksgiving Day by President Lincoln.

1873 – Chief Kintpuash (Captain Jack), Black Jim, John Schonchin, and Boston Charley are hanged for murdering General Edward Canby and Reverend Eleazar Thomas during a peace commission hearing which began the Modoc War in California and ended with the perpetrator’s executions.

1919 – Cincinnati Reds pitcher Adolfo Luque becomes the first Latin American player to appear in a World Series, playing in 2 games as relief.

1929 – The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed Yugoslavia by King Alexander I.

1932 – The Kingdom of Iraq under King Faisal I – of Lawrence of Arabia fame – gains independence from the United Kingdom’s Mandatory Mesopotamia.

1942 – A German V-2 rocket reaches a record 46 nautical miles in altitude.

1946 – American Overseas Airlines Flagship New England, a Douglas C-54/DC-4 crashes near Ernest Harmon Air Force Base in Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, killing 39 passengers and crew aboard.

1962 – Wally Schirra in NASA’s Project Mercury Sigma 7 spacecraft, launches from Cape Canaveral for a 6 orbit flight.

1985 –  USAF Colonel Karol J. Bobko, and a crew of 4, pilot Space Shuttle Atlantis on its maiden flight.

1989 – A coup attempt by Panamanian Army officers against dictator Manuel Noriega fails in Panama City, 11 participants are later executed.

1990 – Tag der Deutschen Einheit. The German Democratic Republic is abolished and becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany

1993 – An American attempt to capture a warlord in Mogadishu fails, resulting in 18 US soldiers being killed, and 1 taken prisoner.

1995 – The O. J. Simpson murder trial ends with a verdict of not guilty.

2008 – The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for the U.S. financial system is finally passed by Congress and signed by President Bush.

October 2

1780 –John André, a British Army officer, is hanged as a spy by the Continental Army during the Revolution.

1803 – Revolutionary and Anti-Federalist Founder Samuel Adams, dies at his home in Cambridge Massachusetts, age 81

1835 – Having refused the order to return a cannon stationed at the city of Gonzales since 1831, Texian Militia flying the flag ‘Come And Take It‘, repulse Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea’s Mexican dragoons sent to seize the cannon, in the first battle of the Texas Revolution.

1919 – President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him incapacitated for several weeks.

1967 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1970 – A Golden Eagle Aviation chartered Douglas DC-6  crashes on the east slope of Mount Trelease near Silver Plum Colorado, killing 31 of the 40 passengers and crew aboard, among them 14 team members of the Wichita State University football team.

1996 – The Electronic Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – Amendments are signed by President Clinton.

1980 – demoncrap U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, Michael Myers becomes the first member of either chamber of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War, due to his involvement in the ABSCAM bribery scandal.

2002 – In the area around the District of Columbia Beltway, sniper attacks begin with one shooting at a store with no injuries and a single murder in a grocery store parking lot

2006 – 5 of 8 Amish girls taken hostage are murdered by a man in a shooting at the school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before he commits suicide as police immediately begin to enter the building.

2019 – A Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, owned by the Collings Foundation, conducting a living history exhibition flight, crashes shortly after takeoff from Windsor Locks, Connecticut, killing 7 of the 13 passengers and crew aboard and with 1 person on the ground suffering burns as he helps pull people out of the wreckage.

October 1

331 BC – Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia for the second, and last time, in the Battle of Gaugamela, near modern-day Erbil, Iraq, conquering Babylon.

1787 – Russian troops under Alexander Suvorov defeat invading Turks under Serben Ağa at Ochakiv in Mykolaiv Oblast near modern Kherson, Ukraine

1800 – Via the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain cedes Louisiana to France.

1827 –  A Russian army under Ivan Paskevich storm and retake Yerevan, ending a millennium of moslem domination of Armenia.

1832 – Texian political delegates convene at San Felipe de Austin to petition for changes in the governance of Mexican Texas.

1890 – Yosemite National Park is established by Congress.

1903 – The American League Boston Americans play the National League Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series with Pittsburgh winning the first game at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds, 7-3, but ultimately loosing the pennant.

1908 – The Ford Motor Company offer its  Model T automobiles for sale at the price of $825 (about $23,000 today)

1910 – A large bomb destroys the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21 people.

1918 – During World War I, the Allied Egyptian Expeditionary Force captures Damascus.

1931 – The George Washington Bridge in the United States, linking New Jersey and New York, is opened.

1936 – During the Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco is promoted Generalissimo and named head of the Nationalist government of Spain.

1942 – On her second combat patrol, Lt Commander C. E. Duke commanding USS Grouper torpedoes the Lisbon Maru, not knowing that she is carrying British prisoners of war from Hong Kong.

1946 – Nazi leaders are sentenced, most to be hanged like common criminals, at the Nuremberg trials.

1947 – The North American F-86 Sabre flies for the first time.

1957 – The U.S. Treasury beings printing In God we trust on paper currency

1958 – The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) is replaced by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

1961 – The United States Defense Intelligence Agency is formed

1966 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956, a Douglas DC-9, crashes in Clackamas County, Oregon, with no survivors of the 18 passengers and crew aboard. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9.

1969 – The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde flies supersonic for the first time.

1971 – Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida.

1982 – EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) opens at Walt Disney World in Florida.

1987 – A 5.9 Mw  earthquake shakes the San Gabriel Valley in California, killing 8 people and injuring 200.

2015 – A student at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Oregon shoots and kills 9 faculty and students and wounds 8 more, then engages police officers in a gunfight before committing suicide after being wounded.

2017 – A man shooting from a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel kills 59 people and injures another 869, 2 of which later die of complications of their wounds, at a country music festival at the Las Vegas Strip before committing suicide.

2018 – The International Court of Justice rules that Chile is not obliged to negotiate access to the Pacific Ocean with Bolivia.

2019 – 1 student is killed died and 10 injured when Joel Marin, armed only with a sword, attacks a school class at Savo Vocational School in Kuopio, Finland.

September 30

737 – An army of Turgesh Khaganate under Qughan Suluk, drives back a moslem Umayyad invasion under Asad ibn Abdallah al-Qasri, of Khuttal  -modern northern Afghanistan – and continue to pursue them south of the Oxus river, even capturing their baggage train.

1541 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces enter the Tula indian tribe territory in present day western Arkansas

1791 – Wolfgang Mozart’s opera; Die Zauberflöte –The Magic Flute – premieres at the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna

1863 – Georges Bizet’s opera; Les pêcheurs de perles –The Pearl Fishers – premieres at the Theatre Lyrique in Paris.

1882 – Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant -the Vulcan Street Plant- begins operation in Appleton, Wisconsin

1888 – Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.

1907 – The McKinley National Memorial, the mausoleum of assassinated President McKinley and later his family, is dedicated in Canton, Ohio.

1915 – During World War I,  defending Kragujevac Serbia, Private Radoje Ljutovac of the Serbian Army becomes the first soldier noted to shoot down an enemy – Austro Hungarian – aircraft with ground fire.

1935 – The Hoover Dam, on the border between the states of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated.

1938 – Britain and France, in a futile attempt to appease Germany and Italy,  sign the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

1939 – NBC broadcasts the first televised American football game between the Fordham University Rams and the Waynesburg University Yellow Jackets at Triborough Stadium on New York City’s Randall’s Island.

1946 – Lt. General Takashi Sakai IJA, is executed by firing squad for war crimes committed by his troops during the occupation of Hong Kong.

1947 – The 1947 ‘Subway’ World Series between the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers is the first to be televised

1954 – The U.S. submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear powered vessel.

1968 – The Boeing 747 is shown to the public for the first time.

1970 – The Jordanian government makes a deal with the PFLP for the release of the remaining hostages from the Dawson’s Field hijackings.

2005 – Controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in a Danish newspaper.

Nyahhhhh-

2016 – Hurricane Matthew strengthens to a Category 5 hurricane, making it the strongest hurricane to form in the Caribbean Sea since 2007.