WikiPedia:Selected anniversaries/October

• 331 BC - Battle of Arbela: Despite being greatly outnumbered, Alexander the Great of Macedon defeated Darius III of Persia, and subsequently crowned "King of Asia" in a ceremony in Arbela (modern-day Arbil, Iraq).
• 1891 - Stanford University, founded by railroad magnate and California Governor Leland Stanford along with his wife, Jane Stanford, officially opened with 559 students and free tuition.
• 1936 - Generalissimo Francisco Franco became the head of the Spanish State, ruling as a dictator till his death in 1975.
• 1958 - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, began operations, replacing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, (NACA).
• 1977 - Brazilian football star Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, played his last professional football game .

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• 1187 - Third Crusade: Saladin and the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem.
• 1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed along the St. Lawrence River and reached an Iroquois fort on the island now known as Montréal.
• 1835 - Mexican dragoons dispatched to disarm settlers at Gonzales, Texas encountered stiff resistance from a Texian militia in the Battle of Gonzales, thus beginning the Texas Revolution.
• 1950 - Peanuts, a syndicated comic strip by Charles M. Schulz featuring Charlie Brown and his pet beagle Snoopy, was first published in major newspapers.
• 1968 - The Tlatelolco massacre: A peaceful student demonstration in Tlatelolco, Mexico City ended at sunset, when army and police forces began firing into the crowd.

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• 2333 BC - Dangun, a mythical figure, established the Kingdom of Go-Joseon (present-day Korea).
• 1283 - David ap Gruffydd the Prince of Wales, the last native ruler of Wales to resist English domination, was executed by drawing and quartering.
• 1935 - Italy invaded Ethiopia, igniting the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
• 1990 - German reunification: The five re-established German states (Bundesländer) of East Germany formally joined West Germany.
• 1993 - Battle of Mogadishu: Soldiers from Malaysian, Pakistani and U.S. armed forces attempted to capture Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, as chronicled in a book and then a film entitled "Black Hawk Down".

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• 1830 - Belgian Revolution: A provisional government in Brussels declared the creation of the independent and neutral state of Belgium, in revolt against the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• 1910 - Manuel II, the last King of Portugal, fled to Great Britain when a revolution erupted in Lisbon and his palace was shelled. A republic was proclaimed the next day.
• 1957 - Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched at 19:12 UTC by a R-7 rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
• 1993 - Russian Constitutional Crisis: Tanks bombarded the White House in Moscow, a government building that housed the Russian parliament, where demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rallied outside .

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• 1864 - Calcutta, India was almost completely destroyed by a cyclone which killed 60,000 people.
• 1877 - After battling U.S. armed forces for more than three months, retreating over 1,000 miles across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and enduring a five-day siege, Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce band finally surrendered.
• 1908 - Prince Ferdinand became Tsar when the autonomous principality of Bulgaria proclaimed independence from the Ottoman Empire.
• 1969 - The first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus was broadcast on BBC1.
• 1970 - Terrorists of the Front de Libération du Québec kidnapped a British diplomat, sparking the October Crisis in Montréal, Canada.

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• 1927 - The first successful talking movie "The Jazz Singer", starring Al Jolson, was released.
• 1976 - Premier Hua Guofeng ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four and their associates, putting an end to the Cultural Revolution in China.
• 1981 - Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated.
• 1995 - An article in the journal Nature reported the discovery of a planet orbiting 51 Pegasi as the first known extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star.
• 1998 - University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was attacked for being gay (he later died from his wounds).

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• 3761 BCE - The epoch of the modern Hebrew calendar.
• 1571 - Battle of Lepanto: The Ottoman Empire was decisively defeated by the Christian West for the first time, as a multinational fleet led by Don John of Austria crushed the Turkish navy near the Gulf of Corinth.
• 1985 - The Mediterranean ocean liner Achille Lauro was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
• 2001 - The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began at 16:30 UTC with an aerial bombing campaign targeting Taliban and Al-Qaida forces.

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• 451 - Council of Chalcedon: Bishops gathered at Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia in Asia Minor, to open the fourth ecumenical council in Christianity.
• 1600 - San Marino, the world's oldest republic still in existence, adopted its written constitution.
• 1871 - Dry conditions caused two catastrophic historic fires in the U.S. Midwest: the Great Chicago Fire and Wisconsin's Peshtigo Fire.
• 1895 - Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, was assassinated.
• 1962 - Spiegel scandal: Der Spiegel published the article "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("Conditionally prepared for defense") about a NATO manoeuver called "Fallex 62", which uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's army) facing the communist threat from the east at the time. The magazine was soon accused of treason.

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• 1701 - The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
• 1888 - The Washington Monument, then the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public.
• 1919 - Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds "defeated" the Chicago White Sox to "win" the World Series major league baseball championship by 5 games to 3.
• 1963 - A landslide displaced large amounts of water from the Vajont Dam in Italy, causing waves and floods that quickly swept away several villages, killing almost 2,000 people.
• 1967 - One day after his capture, Argentine-born physician, Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia.

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• 732 - Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a large army of Moors near Poitiers in the Battle of Tours.
• 1911 - The Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising, marking the beginning of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China.
• 1939 - The Munich Agreement ceded the Sudetenland to Germany.
• 1973 - Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with federal income tax evasion.
• 1982 - The Catholic church canonized Saint Maximilian Kolbe as a martyr for volunteering to die in place of another man in a Nazi concentration camp.
• 1987 - After two military coups in Fiji led by Sitiveni Rabuka, the military government revoked the constitution and declared Fiji a republic.

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• 1899 - A second Boer War erupted in South Africa between the United Kingdom and the Boers.
• 1962 - Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convened the first Roman Catholic ecumenical council in 92 years.
• 1954 - Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam.
• 1968 - NASA launched Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission.
• 1975 - Saturday Night Live was broadcast for the first time.

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• 1810 - The first Oktoberfest was held in Munich.
• 1859 - Self-described "Emperor of the United States" Joshua A. Norton 'ordered' the United States Congress to dissolve.
• 1984 - Brighton hotel bombing: Margaret Thatcher survived a bomb explosion detonated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
• 1999 - A military coup in Pakistan led by General Pervez Musharraf ousted the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
• 2002 - A car bombing in Bali killed 202 people.

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• 54 - Claudius I was fatally poisoned by his wife Agrippina the younger, making her 17-year old son Nero the next Roman Emperor.
• 1307 - Thousands of members of the Knights Templar were simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair and subsequently tortured into "admitting" heresy.
• 1843 - The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, the oldest continually-operating Jewish service organization in the world, was founded in New York City.
• 1943 - World War II: With a new government led by General Pietro Badoglio, parts of Italy switched sides to the Allies and declared war on Germany and Japan as well as Northern Italy.
• 1994 - Mosaic Netscape 0.9, soon called Netscape Navigator was released, an important product in the history of web browsers.

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• 1066 - Battle of Hastings: The Norman invasion forces of William the Conqueror defeated the English army and killed King Harold II of England.
• 1926 - The children's book by A. A. Milne featuring fictional bear Winnie the Pooh was published for the first time.
• 1947 - Chuck Yeager flew a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, becoming the first person to do so in level flight.
• 1953 - Qibya massacre: Israeli military commander Ariel Sharon and his Unit 101 special forces were ordered to "inflict heavy damage on the inhabitants" in a village on the West Bank.
• 1979 - As many as 100,000 people in Washington, DC marched in the first gay rights march in the United States.
• 1981 - Hosni Mubarak was elected President of Egypt, one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

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• 1582 - Pope Gregory XIII implemented the Gregorian calendar.
• 1894 - The Dreyfus affair: Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer in the French military, was wrongly arrested for treason.
• 1917 - Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari was executed by a firing squad for spying for Germany.
• 1987 - The Great Storm of 1987 hit France and England.
• 2003 - China launched Shenzhou 5, their first manned space mission.

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• 456 - Magister militum Ricimer defeated the Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became master of the western Roman Empire. He spent the rest of his life as the Patrician, ruling through a number of puppet emperors.
• 1813 - The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic Wars.
• 1940 - Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland, was established by the German Generalgouverneur Hans Frank.
• 1972 - Emmerdale Farm was first broadcast in the daytime on ITV.
• 1978 - Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first ever from a Slavic country.
• 2002 - Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria in Egypt, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, was officially inaugurated.

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• 1346 - Battle of Neville's Cross: King David II of Scotland was captured by Edward III of England and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
• 1604 - Kepler's Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observed that an exceptionally bright star had suddenly appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus. This 'new star' turned out to be the last supernova observed in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
• 1989 - Loma Prieta earthquake: The largest earthquake to occur on the San Andreas Fault in California since 1906, struck the San Francisco Bay Area at 5:04 pm local time and measured 7.1 on the Richter scale.
• 2003 - The pinnacle was fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 106-floor skyscraper in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 50 meters (165 feet) and become the World's tallest building.

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• 1009 - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church now within the walled Old City of Jerusalem, was destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.
• 1851 - Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, was first published as The Whale.
• 1922 - The British Broadcasting Company was founded by a consortium to establish a network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service in the United Kingdom.
• 1954 - Texas Instruments introduced the first transistor radio.
• 1977 - Various Red Army Faction members committed suicide in prison, ending the German Autumn crisis.

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• 202 BC - At the Battle of Zama, Carthaginian general Hannibal was defeated by Roman proconsul Scipio Africanus, ending the Second Punic War.
• 1781 - After losing the Battle of Yorktown, British forces led by Lord Charles Cornwallis officially surrendered, ending the American Revolutionary War.
• 1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was first isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
• 1985 - The first Blockbuster Video store opened in Dallas, Texas.
• 1987 - Black Monday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22%, the largest one-day decline in history.

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• 1827 - An allied British, French, and Russian naval force destroyed a combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino, a decisive moment in the Greek War of Independence.
• 1883 - Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, ending Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.
• 1968 - Former U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping business magnate Aristotle Onassis.
• 1973 - Sydney Opera House was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II.
• 1991 - The Oakland Hills firestorm killed 25 and destroyed 3469 homes and apartments in Oakland, California.

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• 1805 - Napoleonic Wars: Admiral Lord Nelson led the British fleet to defeat a combined French and Spanish navy in the Battle of Trafalgar.
• 1824 - Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement.
• 1854 - Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.
• 1944 - HMAS Australia was hit in the first kamikaze attack.
• 1945 - Argentine military officer and politician Juan Domingo Perón married popular actress Evita.

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• 1383 - The 1383-1385 Crisis in Portugal: A period of civil war and anarchy began when King Fernando died without a male heir to the Portuguese throne.
• 1844 - Millerites and members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church were greatly disappointed that Jesus did not return as predicted by preacher William Miller.
• 1924 - Toastmasters International was founded.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced on television that Soviet nuclear weapons had been discovered in Cuba, and that he had ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.
• 1999 - Vichy France official Maurice Papon was jailed for crimes against humanity committed during World War II.

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• 4004 BC - The universe was created, according to the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar.
• 1911 - First use of aircraft in war: an Italian pilot flew from Libya to survey Turkish lines during the Italo-Turkish War.
• 1958 - Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced a new set of comic strip characters, The Smurfs.
• 1983 - Suicide bombers destroyed two barracks of the international peacekeeping force in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French Paratroopers.
• 2002 - Moscow theater siege: Chechen rebels seized a crowded theater in Moscow, taking approximately 700 theatergoers and performers hostage.

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• 1360 - The Treaty of Brétigny was ratified at Calais, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War.
• 1648 - The Peace of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years' War and "officially" recognizing the United Provinces and Swiss Confederation.
• 1929 - The Great Depression: The New York Stock Exchange crashed on "Black Thursday", setting off a chain of bankruptcies and triggering a worldwide economic depression.
• 1930 - A bloodless coup d'état in Brazil ousted President Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa. Getúlio Dornelles Vargas was then installed as the "provisional president" by the military.
• 1945 - The United Nations was founded in San Francisco, California.

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• 1415 - Battle of Agincourt: Henry V of England and his lightly armored infantry and archers defeated the heavily armored French cavalry.
• 1854 - Charge of the Light Brigade: Lord Cardigan led his cavalry to disaster in the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.
• 1944 - The Battle of Leyte Gulf sealed the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War of World War II.
• 1971 - People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China as China's representative in the United Nations.
• 1983 - Operation Urgent Fury: United States and Caribbean allies invaded Grenada, six days after Bernard Coard seized power in a violent coup d'état.
• 2001 - Windows XP, the latest desktop version of the Windows operating system from Microsoft, was released.

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• 1863 - The Football Association, the oldest governing body in football, was formed in London in England.
• 1881 - The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in Tombstone, Arizona.
• 1955 - Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem declared himself President of South Vietnam, replacing Nguyen Emperor Bao Dai as the head of state.
• 1979 - President Park Chunghee of South Korea was assassinated by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and a long-time friend, Kim Jaekyu.
• 2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush signed the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001", more commonly known as the USA PATRIOT Act, into law.

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