[KenOC]

On this day 25 October 1415: The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

1812: War of 1812: The American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.

1854: The Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

1917: Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.

1938: The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as "a degenerated musical system… turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell". His warning is widely ignored.

1962: Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council proving that Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.

1971: The United Nations seats the People's Republic of China and expels the Republic of China.

Born today:
1825: Johann Strauss II, Austrian composer (d. 1899).
1838: Georges Bizet, French composer (d. 1875).
1864: Alexander Gretchaninov, Russian-American composer (d. 1956).
1881: Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (d. 1973).
1886: Leo G. Carroll, English-American actor (d. 1972).
1888: Richard E. Byrd, American admiral (d. 1957).
1926: Galina Vishnevskaya, Russian soprano (d. 2012).

 

[Vaneyes]

October 25:

1760 - Lunatic George III becomes King of Great Britain.

1861 - Telegraph message sent from St Louis to SF.

1870 - Postcards first used in USA.

1937 - Casey Stengel signs to manage Boston Bees.

1955 - Tappan sells 1st microwave oven.

1960 - 1st electronic wrist watch placed on sale, NYC.

1981 - George Steinbrenner scuffles with 2 fans in a hotel elevator.

2001 - Windows XP first became available.

2014 - Vaneyes is still using Windows XP.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 26 October 1775: King George III of Great Britain (only a part-time lunatic) goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorizes a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1825: The Erie Canal opens, providing passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.

1881: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.

1917: World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The young unknown Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel captures Mount Matajur with only 100 Germans against a force of over 7000 Italians.

1940 - The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.

1944: World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory.

1977: Ali Maow Maalin, the last natural case of smallpox, develops rash in Merca district, Somalia. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.

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

Born today:
1685: Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer (d. 1757).
1947: Hillary Rodham Clinton, American lawyer and politician, 49th First Lady of the United States.

 

[Vaneyes]

October 26

1970 - "Doonesbury," comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 U.S. newspapers.

 

[KenOC]

On this day 27 October 1810: The United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.

1827: Bellini's third opera, Il pirata, is premiered at Teatro alla Scala di Milano

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

1904: The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.

1914: The British lose their first battleship of World War I: The British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious (23,400 tons), is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin. The loss is kept an official secret in Britain until November 14 1918. The sinking is witnessed and photographed by passengers on RMS Olympic, sister ship of RMS Titanic.

1962: Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban missile crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

1967: Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and others of the 'Baltimore Four' protest the Vietnam War by pouring blood on Selective Service records.

1988: Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure.

Born today:
1703: Johann Gottlieb Graun, German violinist and composer (d. 1771).
1782: Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1840).
1858: Theodore Roosevelt, American colonel and politician, 26th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919).
1914: Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and playwright (d. 1953).
1923: Roy Lichtenstein, American painter and sculptor (d. 1997).
1940: John Gotti, American mobster (d. 2002).

 

[Vaneyes]

October 27

1925 - Fred Waller received a patent for water skis.

1994 - The U.S. prison population exceeded one million.

2014 - The U.S. prison population exceeded two million.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 28 October 1420: Beijing is officially designated the capital of the Ming dynasty on the same year that the Forbidden City, the seat of government, is completed.

1492: Christopher Columbus discovers Cuba on his first voyage to the New World.

1636: A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what will become the United States, today known as Harvard University.

1886: In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.

1893: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, receives its première performance in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death.

1915: Richard Strauss conducts the first performance of his tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie in Berlin.

1919: The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.

1942: The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Born on this day:
1846: Auguste Escoffier, French chef and author (d. 1935).
1896: Howard Hanson, American composer, conductor, and educator (d. 1981).
1955: Bill Gates, American businessman, co-founded Microsoft.

 

[Vaneyes]

October 28

1790 - New York gives up claims to Vermont for $30,000

1924 - White Sox beat NY Giants 8-4 in Dublin, less than 20 fans attend.

1929 - Dow Jones plummets 38.33 pts (13%) to 260.64

 

[Taggart]

Also born today Jonas Salk 1914. He discovered and developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 29 October 539 BC: Cyrus the Great, founder of Persian Empire, enters the capital of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their land.

1618: English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.

1675: Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.

1787: Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.

1792: Mount Hood, Oregon, is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River. Here's a repost of a 1931 photo by my dad.

1901: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1923: Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

1929: The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday", ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

1953: BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.

1964: A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves (among them is "Murph the surf") from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

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

Born today:
1897: Joseph Goebbels, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945).
1906: Fredric Brown, American author (d. 1972)*.
1921: Bill Mauldin, American cartoonist (d. 2003).
1926: Jon Vickers, Canadian tenor.
1947: Richard Dreyfuss, American actor, singer, and producer.

* My current avatar is inspired by a Frederick Brown story from 1954.

 

[Taggart]

 

[Vaneyes]

October 29

1390 - First trial for witchcraft in Paris.
1945 - First ball point pen goes on sale, 57 years after it is patented.
1988 - China announces a herbal male contraceptive.
1993 - Dow Jones index reaches record 3687.86.

 

[KenOC]

Thanks Taggart! Frederick Brown's magazine cover: This is supposedly a Kelly Freas self-portrait.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 30 October 1534: English Parliament passes Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the English church -- a role formerly held by the Pope.

1831: In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.

1922: Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.

1938: Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.

1941: World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.

1942: Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board U-559, retrieving material which will lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code.

1961: Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise. This picture is from 99 miles. The crown of the cloud is at 35 miles.

1974: As a member of the California Angels, Major League Baseball player Nolan Ryan throws the fastest recorded pitch at 100.9 MPH.

1974: The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire. Against all odds, Muhammed Ali wins.

Born today:
1735: John Adams, American politician, 2nd President of the United States (d. 1826).
1885: Ezra Pound, American poet and critic (d. 1972).
1893: Charles Atlas, Italian-American bodybuilder (d. 1972).
1894: Peter Warlock, English composer and critic (d. 1930).
1896: Harry Randall Truman, American owner and caretaker of Mount St. Helens Lodge (d. 1980 in the eruption).
1939: Grace Slick, American singer-songwriter (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and The Great Society).

It's Mischief Night in the United States.

 

[Vaneyes]

October 30

1866 - Jesse James gang robs bank in Lexington, Missouri ($2000).

1919 - Baseball league presidents call for abolishment of spitball.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 31 October 1517: Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

1913: Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile highway across United States.

1917: World War I: Battle of Beersheba: The "last successful cavalry charge in history".

1941: After 14 years of work, Mount Rushmore is completed.

1984: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards. Riots break out in New Delhi and other cities and nearly 10,000 Sikhs are killed.

2000: Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been crewed continuously since then.

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

Born today:
1632: Johannes Vermeer, Dutch painter (d. 1675).
1795: John Keats, English-Italian poet (d. 1821).
1920: Dick Francis, Welsh-Caymanian jockey and author (d. 2010).
1950: John Candy, Canadian actor (d. 1994).
1961: Peter Jackson, New Zealand actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.
1963: Rob Schneider, American actor.

It's Halloween in the United States.

 

[Vaneyes]

October 31

1541 - Michelangelo finishes painting The Last Judgement (Sistine Chapel).

1923 - 160 consecutive days of 100 degrees F begin (Marble Bar, Australia).

1969 - George Harrison's "Something" is released in UK.

1992 - Don Keller makes his 18,000th sky dive.

1993 - 25 people killed during Ghana-Ivory Coast soccer match.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 1 November 1512: The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time.

1520: The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first discovered and navigated by European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage.

1604: William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

1611: William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

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

1814: Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars.

1894: Nicholas II becomes the new (and last) Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies.

1896: A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.

1918: Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in US history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 102 deaths.

1941: American photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography.

1950: Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman at Blair House.

1952: Operation Ivy: The United States successfully detonates the first staged hydrogen device, codenamed "Mike" [M for megaton], in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The explosion has a yield of ten megatons.

1960: While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.

1963: The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens.

1982: Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of its factory in Marysville, Ohio. The Honda Accord is the first car produced there.

Born today:
1871: Stephen Crane, American journalist, author, and poet (d. 1900).
1902: Eugen Jochum, German conductor (d. 1987).
1923: Victoria de los Ángeles, Spanish soprano (d. 2005).
1923: Gordon R. Dickson, Canadian-American author (d. 2001).
1935: Edward Said, Palestinian-American theorist, author, and academic (d. 2003).

It's National Bison Day in the United States.

 

[Vaneyes]

November 1

1936 - Rodeo Cowboy's Association founded.

1938 - Seabiscuit beats War Admiral in a match race at Pimlico.

1965 - 1st concert at Fillmore Auditorium, SF.

1969 - The Beatles' "Abbey Road" album goes #1 in US.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 2 November 1895: The first gasoline-powered race in the United States; first prize is $2,000.

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

1920: In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the United States presidential election.

1936: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaims the Rome-Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis powers.

1936: The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.

1947: In California, designer Howard Hughes pilots the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose or H-4 The Hercules, the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.

1959: Quiz show scandals: Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

2000: The first resident crew of the ISS docks with their Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft.

Born today:
1692: Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, Dutch composer and diplomat (d. 1766).
1734: Daniel Boone, American hunter and explorer (d. 1820).
1739: Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Austrian violinist and composer (d. 1799).
1755: Marie Antoinette, Austrian wife of Louis XVI of France (d. 1793).
1795: James K. Polk, American lawyer and politician, 11th President of the United States (d. 1849).
1815: George Boole, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1864).
1865: Warren G. Harding, American journalist and politician, 29th President of the United States (d. 1923).
1913: Burt Lancaster, American actor (d. 1994).
1944: Keith Emerson, English keyboard player and songwriter.
1946: Giuseppe Sinopoli, Italian conductor and composer (d. 2001).