Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October

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October 1: Unification Day in Cameroon (1961); National Day in China (1949); Independence Day in Tuvalu (1978); Defenders Day in Ukraine (2015)

• 959 – Edgar acceded to the English throne upon the death of his brother Eadwig.
• 1386 – The Wonderful Parliament met at Westminster Abbey to address King Richard II's need for money, but soon changed focus to the reform of his administration.
• 1890 – At the encouragement of preservationist John Muir and writer Robert Underwood Johnson, the U.S. Congress established Yosemite National Park (pictured) in California.
• 1918 – First World War: British and Arab troops captured Damascus from the Ottoman Empire.
• 2003 – A levy was imposed on the hiring of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands at the time.

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October 2: International Day of Non-Violence; Gandhi Jayanti in India

• 1766 – As part of wider food riots, citizens in Nottingham, England, looted large quantities of cheese; one man was killed during attempts to restore order.
• 1879 – Qing China signed the Treaty of Livadia with the Russian Empire, but the terms were so unfavorable that the Chinese government refused to ratify the treaty.
• 1913 – The Shubert Theatre opened on Broadway with a production of Hamlet.
• 1967 – Thurgood Marshall (pictured) was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• 2005 – Typhoon Longwang made landfall in China as the deadliest tropical cyclone in that year to impact the country.

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October 3

• 1392 – Muhammad VII became the twelfth sultan of the Emirate of Granada.
• 1602 – Anglo-Spanish War: An English fleet intercepted and attacked six Spanish ships at the Battle of the Narrow Seas (pictured).
• 1849 – American author Edgar Allan Poe was found semi-conscious and delirious in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances; it was the last time he was seen in public before his death four days later.
• 1952 – The United Kingdom successfully conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the world's third state with nuclear weapons.
• 1991 – Nadine Gordimer became the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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October 4: Cinnamon Roll Day in Sweden and Finland

• 1209 – Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor (seal pictured), was crowned.
• 1363 – Red Turban Rebellions: The rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang won the Battle of Lake Poyang by deploying ships intentionally set aflame when the emperor tried to escape.
• 1918 – An ammunition plant in Sayreville, New Jersey, U.S., exploded, killing around 100 people and destroying more than 300 buildings.
• 1957 – The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
• 2003 – A suicide bomber killed 21 people, including a two-month-old baby, and injured 60 others inside a restaurant in Haifa, Israel.

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October 5: World Teachers' Day

• 1143 – The Treaty of Zamora (pictured) established Portugal as a kingdom independent of the Kingdom of León.
• 1970 – The environmental organization Greenpeace was incorporated as the Don't Make a Wave Committee in British Columbia, Canada.
• 1994 - Swiss police found the bodies of 48 members of the Order of the Solar Temple, who had died in a cult mass murder-suicide.
• 1999 – Two trains collided head-on in Ladbroke Grove, London, killing 31 people, injuring 417, and severely damaging public confidence in the management and regulation of safety of Britain's privatised railway system.
• 2011 – Two Chinese cargo ships were attacked and their crews murdered on a stretch of the Mekong River in far northern Thailand.

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October 6: German-American Day in the United States

• 1762 – Seven Years' War: The Battle of Manila concluded with a British victory over Spain, leading to a twenty-month occupation.
• 1927 – The Jazz Singer, one of the first feature-length motion pictures with a synchronized recorded music score, was released.
• 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was attacked and fatally wounded near Laramie, Wyoming, U.S., dying six days later.
• 2002 – Al-Qaeda bombed the oil tanker Limburg, causing oil to leak into the Gulf of Aden.
• 2008 – The MESSENGER probe discovered Mercury's Rembrandt (pictured) – the second largest impact crater on the planet.

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October 7

• 1571 – Ottoman–Habsburg wars: The Battle of Lepanto was fought near the Gulf of Corinth, a significant setback for the Ottoman Empire and the last major naval battle fought entirely with galleys.
• 1878 – The state funeral of Mindon Min (pictured), who ruled Myanmar for 25 years, took place; his death was reportedly preceded by strange omens, and his senior princes were unable to attend as they had all been arrested.
• 1916 – Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland University 222–0 in the most lopsided college football game in American history.
• 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: The Yugoslav People's Army conducted an air strike on Banski Dvori, the official residence of the president of Croatia in Zagreb.
• 2008 – 2008 TC₃ exploded above the Nubian Desert in Sudan, in the first time that an asteroid impact had been predicted prior to atmospheric entry.

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October 8

• 451 – The Council of Chalcedon, a Christian ecumenical council, opened, and went on to repudiate the Eutychian doctrine of monophysitism and set forth the Chalcedonian Creed.
• 1604 – Kepler's Supernova (remnant pictured), the most recent supernova in the Milky Way, was observed worldwide.
• 1918 – World War I: After his platoon suffered heavy casualties during the Meuse–Argonne offensive in France's Forest of Argonne, American Corporal Alvin York led the 7 remaining men on an attack against a German machine gun nest; 25 German soldiers were killed and 132 captured.
• 1932 – The Indian Air Force was founded as an auxiliary air force of the British Royal Air Force.
• 2019 – Anti-government protests calling for free and fair elections began in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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October 9: Leif Erikson Day in the United States, parts of Canada, and communities in the Nordic countries

• 1676 – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society describing "animalcules" – the first known description of protozoa (pictured).
• 1740 – European soldiers and Javanese collaborators massacred Chinese Indonesians in the port city of Batavia, modern-day Jakarta.
• 1888 – The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at the time the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public.
• 1952 – A footman shot and killed two colleagues and wounded the lady of the house at Knowsley Hall, England.
• 1986 – The Phantom of the Opera, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and currently the longest-running Broadway show in history, opened in London's West End.

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October 10

• 680 – Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of Muhammad, was killed at the Battle of Karbala by the forces of Yazid I, whom Husayn had refused to recognize as caliph.
• 1903 – Emmeline Pankhurst (pictured) founded the Women's Social and Political Union, a militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
• 1911 – The Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising, marking the beginning of the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China.
• 1943 – World War II: The Kempeitai, the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army, arrested and tortured fifty-seven civilians and civilian internees on suspicion of their involvement in a raid on Singapore Harbour.
• 2004 – Eight-year-old Huang Na was abducted and murdered; her body was found three weeks later after a search across Singapore and Malaysia.

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October 11: Feast day of Saint James the Deacon (Anglicanism); Double Ninth Festival in China (2024); National Coming Out Day

• 1311 – The peerage and clergy of the Kingdom of England published the Ordinances of 1311 to restrict King Edward II's powers.
• 1852 – The University of Sydney (pictured), Australia's oldest university, was inaugurated two years after being established by the University of Sydney Act.
• 1865 – The Morant Bay rebellion, led by Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, began in Jamaica; after protestors burned down the courthouse, it was brutally suppressed by Governor Edward John Eyre.
• 1937 – Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, arrived at Berlin Friedrichstraße station to begin a tour of Nazi Germany, where they were greeted with Nazi salutes and dined with high-ranking members of the state apparatus.
• 1973 – Typhoon Nora, the fourth-most intense tropical cyclone on record, dissipated after killing 40 people and leaving more than a million homeless across Taiwan and the Philippines.

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October 12

• 1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin became the first woman to make a parachute descent, falling 900 metres (3,000 ft) in the gondola of a hot air balloon.
• 1890 – The Uddevalla Suffrage Association was founded in Uddevalla, Sweden, with the purpose of bringing about universal suffrage.
• 1928 – The iron lung (example pictured), a type of medical ventilator, was used for the first time, to treat an eight-year-old girl paralyzed by polio.
• 1933 – The United States Department of Justice acquired a military prison on Alcatraz Island, transforming it over the next year into the last-resort Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
• 2013 – Part of an apartment building in Colombia collapses, killing 12 and leading to the passage of several building safety laws in Colombia.

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October 13

• 645 – Goguryeo–Tang War: Led by Emperor Taizong, the Tang army was forced to abandon a siege of Ansi Fortress.
• 1843 – B'nai B'rith (membership certificate pictured), the world's oldest continually operating Jewish service organization, was founded in New York City.
• 1917 – At least 30,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun in the fields of Cova da Iria near Fátima, Portugal.
• 1961 – Newly elected Burundian prime minister Louis Rwagasore was assassinated by his political rivals.
• 2013 – During the Hindu festival of Navaratri at a temple in Madhya Pradesh, India, rumours about an impending bridge collapse caused a stampede that resulted in 115 deaths.

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October 14: Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples' Day (United States) (2024); Thanksgiving in Canada (2024)

• 1758 – Third Silesian War: At the Battle of Hochkirch, an Austrian army under Leopold Joseph von Daun surprised the Prussians commanded by Frederick the Great, overwhelming them and forcing a general retreat.
• 1888 – French inventor Louis Le Prince filmed Roundhay Garden Scene (featured), the earliest surviving motion picture, in Leeds, England.
• 1956 – B. R. Ambedkar, a leader of India's "Untouchable" caste, publicly converted to Buddhism and became the leader of the Dalit Buddhist movement.
• 2021 – Approximately 10,000 John Deere employees went on strike in one of the largest private-sector strikes in the United States.

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October 15

• 1529 – Ottoman–Habsburg wars: The siege of Vienna ended with Austrian forces repelling the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of conquest in Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
• 1888 – George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in London, received the "From Hell" letter, allegedly from Jack the Ripper.
• 1965 – Vietnam War protests: At an anti-war rally in New York City, David J. Miller burned his draft card (example pictured), the first such act to result in arrest under a new amendment to the Selective Service Act.
• 1979 – President Carlos Humberto Romero of El Salvador was overthrown and exiled in a military coup d'état.

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October 16

• 1793 – War of the First Coalition: The two-day Battle of Wattignies concluded with Jean-Baptiste Jourdan leading French forces to victory over Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.
• 1841 – The Church of Scotland established Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario, in Canada.
• 1923 – Roy and Walt Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood, which eventually grew to become one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world.
• 1964 – With the success of Project 596 (mushroom cloud pictured), China became the world's fifth nuclear power.
• 1991 – A man drove his vehicle through the window of a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and opened fire, killing 23 people before fatally shooting himself.

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October 17:

• 1346 – Hundred Years' War: King David II of Scotland (pictured) was captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross following his invasion of England under the terms of Scotland's Auld Alliance with France.
• 1931 – American gangster Al Capone was convicted on five counts of income-tax evasion.
• 1952 – Indonesian Army elements surrounded the Merdeka Palace, demanding that President Sukarno disband the Provisional People's Representative Council.
• 1973 – Yom Kippur War: Egyptian forces retreated from the Battle of the Chinese Farm, allowing Israeli forces to build their first bridge across the Suez Canal.
• 2000 – A fatal rail accident at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, led to the introduction of widespread speed limit reductions throughout the British rail network and eventually caused the collapse of the railway management group Railtrack.

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October 18: Alaska Day (1867)

• 1565 – The first recorded naval battle between Europeans and the Japanese occurred when a flotilla of samurai attacked two Portuguese trade vessels at the Battle of Fukuda Bay in Nagasaki.
• 1748 – The War of the Austrian Succession ended with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
• 1873 – Renton defeated Kilmarnock 2–0 in the opening match of the inaugural Scottish Cup.
• 1968 – At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American athlete Bob Beamon (pictured) achieved a distance of 8.90 m (29.2 ft) in the long jump event, setting a world record that stood for 23 years.
• 2019 – Protests in Santiago that started 11 days prior escalated into open battle against the Chilean national police, forcing President Sebastián Piñera to declare a state of emergency.

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October 19

• 1579 – A ceremony was held in Edinburgh marking the coming of age of James VI of Scotland as an adult ruler.
• 1752 – The Pennsylvania Gazette published a statement by Benjamin Franklin describing a kite experiment (depicted) to determine the electrical nature of lightning.
• 1914 – First World War: Allied forces began engaging German troops at the First Battle of Ypres.
• 1987 – Iran–Iraq War: U.S. Navy forces destroyed two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in response to an Iranian missile attack on a Kuwaiti oil tanker three days earlier.
• 2013 – British YouTube collective the Sidemen were formed as a Rockstar Games Social Club group in Grand Theft Auto Online.

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October 20

• 1939 – Pope Pius XII (pictured) published his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, which critiqued ideologies such as racism, cultural superiority and totalitarianism.
• 1951 – African-American college football player Johnny Bright was the victim of an on-field assault, eventually leading to changes in NCAA football rules that mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.
• 1967 – Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin filmed an unidentified subject, which they claimed was Bigfoot, at Six Rivers National Forest in California.
• 1984 – The Spanish trawler Sonia sank in British waters after a five-hour chase by the Irish Naval Service patrol vessel Aisling, during which almost 600 shots were fired.
• 1991 – An earthquake struck the Indian state of Uttarakhand, killing at least 768 people and destroying thousands of homes.

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October 21

• 1096 – First Crusade: At the Battle of Civetot, the Seljuk forces of Kilij Arslan destroyed the army of the People's Crusade as it marched toward Nicaea.
• 1867 – The first and second of three treaties were signed near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, between the United States federal government and several Native American tribes in the Great Plains, requiring them to relocate to areas in present-day western Oklahoma.
• 1941 – World War II: German soldiers massacred nearly 2,800 Serbs in Kragujevac in reprisal for insurgent attacks in the district of Gornji Milanovac.
• 1968 – At the height of the Japanese university protests, protestors occupied Tokyo's Shinjuku Station and clashed violently with police.
• 1994 – In Seoul, South Korea, 32 people were killed and 17 others injured when a span of the Seongsu Bridge collapsed (pictured).

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October 22

• 1633 – At the Battle of Liaoluo Bay Ming Chinese naval forces defeated a Dutch East India Company fleet in the Taiwan Strait, the largest naval encounter between Chinese and European forces before the First Opium War more than two hundred years later.
• 1877 – Scotland's worst mining accident occurred when an explosion at a colliery in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, killed 207 miners.
• 1907 – A bank run forced New York's Knickerbocker Trust Company to suspend operations, triggering the Panic of 1907 (pictured).
• 1936 – The Royal Navy cutlass was withdrawn from combat service.
• 2015 – A sword-wielding man attacked students and teachers at a high school in Trollhättan, killing three people in Sweden's deadliest school attack.

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October 23: Mole Day

• 1798 – War of the Second Coalition: The Ottoman–Albanian forces of Ali Pasha of Janina defeated French troops and captured the town of Preveza at the Battle of Nicopolis.
• 1850 – The inaugural National Women's Rights Convention, presided over by American activist Paulina Wright Davis (pictured), began in Worcester, Massachusetts.
• 1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his biplane 14-bis for 50 metres (160 ft) at an altitude of about four metres (13 ft).
• 2001 – Grand Theft Auto III was released, helping to popularize open-world and mature-content video games.
• 2022 – Myanmar civil war: Burmese military forces launched airstrikes that killed at least 80 concertgoers in Kachin State.

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October 24

• 1260 – Qutuz (bust pictured), the sultan of Egypt, was assassinated and replaced by fellow Mamluk leader Baybars.
• 1796 – War of the First Coalition: The Battle of Schliengen was fought between the French and Austrian armies, who both claimed victory.
• 1945 – The Charter of the United Nations entered into force after being ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of the other signatories.
• 1975 – In protest against wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices, 90 percent of Iceland's female population went on strike for a day.
• 2003 – The inaugural Afro-Asian Games opened in Hyderabad, with 2,040 athletes from 96 nations competing.

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October 25

• 1415 – Hundred Years' War: The army of Henry V of England, consisting mostly of archers, unexpectedly defeated the numerically superior French cavalry at the Battle of Agincourt on Saint Crispin's Day.
• 1760 – George III became King of Great Britain and Ireland, succeeding his grandfather George II.
• 1920 – Irish playwright and politician Terence MacSwiney (pictured) died after a hunger strike in Brixton Prison, bringing the Irish struggle for independence to international attention.
• 1927 – The Italian cruise liner SS Principessa Mafalda sank when a propeller shaft broke and fractured the hull, resulting in 314 deaths.
• 1980 – Proceedings on the Hague Abduction Convention, a multilateral treaty providing an expeditious method to return a child taken from one member nation to another, concluded at The Hague.

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October 26

• 1597 – Japanese invasions of Korea: Thirteen Korean ships commanded by Admiral Yi Sun-sin defeated a far larger Japanese invading fleet at the Battle of Myeongnyang in the Myeongnyang Strait.
• 1813 – War of 1812: British forces and Mohawk allies under Charles de Salaberry repulsed an American attempt to invade Canada.
• 1905 – The Saint Petersburg Soviet held its first meeting, becoming the first elected body in Russia to represent workers.
• 2000 – Following protests against military leader Robert Guéï, Laurent Gbagbo became the president of Ivory Coast.
• 2001 – President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law (pictured), significantly expanding the authority of United States law enforcement agencies.

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October 27

• 1904 – The first underground segment of the New York City Subway opened, connecting New York City Hall (station pictured) with Harlem.
• 1914 – World War I: The Royal Navy dreadnought HMS Audacious was sunk by a mine, but its loss was kept secret for four years.
• 1946 – Inter-religious riots in which Hindu mobs targeted Muslim families began in the Indian state of Bihar, resulting in 2,000 to 30,000 deaths.
• 1967 – American Catholic priest Philip Berrigan led a protest against the Vietnam War by pouring blood over Selective Service records in Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1993 – Widerøe Flight 744 suffered a controlled flight into terrain while on approach to Namsos Airport, Norway, killing two crew members and four passengers.

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October 28

• 1707 – The Hōei earthquake ruptured all segments of the Nankai megathrust simultaneously – the only earthquake recorded to have done so.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: As George Washington's Continental Army retreated northward from New York City, the British Army captured the village of White Plains.
• 1928 – Indonesian composer Wage Rudolf Supratman introduced "Indonesia Raya", now the country's national anthem.
• 1971 – Prospero (flight spare pictured), the first British satellite launched on a British rocket, lifted off from Launch Area 5B in Woomera, South Australia.
• 1992 – Hans-Adam II threatened to dismiss the Landtag of Liechtenstein over disagreements on the date of a referendum for the country's accession to the EEA.
• 2013 – The first terrorist attack in Beijing's recent history took place when members of the Turkistan Islamic Party drove a vehicle into a crowd, killing five people and injuring thirty-eight others.

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October 29: Republic Day in Turkey (1923)

• 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Wauhatchie, one of the few night battles of the war, concluded with the Union Army opening a supply line to troops in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• 1960 – A C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S., resulting in 22 deaths.
• 1986 – British prime minister Margaret Thatcher officially opened the M25, one of Britain's busiest motorways.
• 1991 – Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra.
• 2013 – The first phase of the Marmaray project opened with an undersea rail tunnel (train pictured) across the Bosphorus strait.

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October 30: Mischief Night

• 1938 – CBS Radio broadcast the radio drama The War of the Worlds, causing panic among some listeners who believed that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.
• 1948 – A luzzu fishing boat overloaded with passengers capsized and sank in the Gozo Channel off Qala, Gozo, Malta, killing 23 of the 27 people on board (monument pictured).
• 1991 – The Madrid Conference, an attempt by the international community to revive the Israeli–Palestinian peace process through negotiations, convened.
• 1993 – The Troubles: Three members of the Ulster Defence Association opened fire in a crowded pub during a Halloween party, killing eight people and wounding nineteen others.
• 2002 – Warren Zevon made his last public appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, giving the advice to "enjoy every sandwich".

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October 31: Halloween

• 1917 – World War I: Allied forces defeated Turkish troops in Beersheba in Southern Palestine at the Battle of Beersheba, with the battle involving one of the last successful cavalry charges.
• 1941 – More than 101 crew members of the USS Reuben James perished when their vessel became the first U.S. Navy ship sunk by hostile action during World War II after it was torpedoed by the German submarine U-552.
• 1963 – A gas explosion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis killed 81 people and injured about 400 others.
• 2003 – After 22 years in power, Tun Mahathir Mohamad retired as Prime Minister of Malaysia.
• 2015 – Shortly after takeoff, Metrojet Flight 9268 (pictured) exploded and then crashed into the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.

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