Events Pre-1600 456 – Ricimer defeats Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.John of Antioch, fragment 202; translated by C.D. Gordon, Age of Attila, p. 116 690 – Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire. 912 – Abd ar-Rahman III becomes the eighth Emir of Córdoba. 955 – King Otto I defeats a Slavic revolt in what is now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. 1311 – The Council of Vienne convenes for the first time. 1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman. 1590 – Prince Gesualdo of Venosa murders his wife and her lover.
1601–1900 1736 – Mathematician William Whiston's predicted comet fails to strike the Earth. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: The British-led Royalton raid is the last Native American raid on New England. 1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780 finishes after its sixth day, killing between 20,000 and 24,000 residents of the Lesser Antilles. 1793 – French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette is executed. 1793 – War of the First Coalition: French victory at the Battle of Wattignies forces Austria to raise the siege of Maubeuge. 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: Napoleon surrounds the Austrian army at Ulm. 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon in the four-day Battle of Leipzig. 1817 – Italian explorer and archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni, uncovered the Tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. 1817 – Simón Bolívar sentences Manuel Piar to death for challenging the racial-caste in Venezuela. 1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London burns to the ground. 1836 – Great Trek: Afrikaner voortrekkers repulse a Matabele attack, but lose their livestock. 1841 – Queen's University is founded in the Province of Canada. 1843 – William Rowan Hamilton invents quaternions, a three-dimensional system of complex numbers. 1846 – William T. G. Morton administers ether anesthesia during a surgical operation. 1859 – Origins of the American Civil War: Abolitionist John Brown and his supporters launch a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). 1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered". 1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women. 1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. 1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business. 1891 – A diplomatic incident between the United States and Chile occurred after U.S. sailors were attacked in Valparaíso, nearly leading to war.
1901–present 1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place. 1909 – William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold the first summit between a U.S. and a Mexican president. They narrowly escape assassination. 1916 – Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States. 1919 – Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers' Party. 1923 – Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, today known as The Walt Disney Company. 1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March to escape Nationalist encirclement. 1939 – World War II: No. 603 Squadron RAF intercepts the first Luftwaffe raid on Britain. 1940 – Holocaust in Poland: The Warsaw Ghetto is established. 1943 – Holocaust in Italy: Raid on the Roman Ghetto. 1946 – Nuremberg trials: Ten defendants found guilty by the International Military Tribunal are executed by hanging. 1947 – The Philippines takes over the administration of the Turtle Islands and the Mangsee Islands from the United Kingdom. 1949 – The Greek Communist Party announces a "temporary cease-fire", thus ending the Greek Civil War. 1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi. 1953 – Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro delivers his "History Will Absolve Me" speech, and is sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment by the Fulgencio Batista government for leading an attack on the Moncada Barracks. 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis begins: U.S. President John F. Kennedy is informed of photos taken on October 14 by a U-2 showing nuclear missiles (the crisis will last for 13 days starting from this point). 1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon. 1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the Soviet Communist Party, while Alexei Kosygin becomes the head of government. 1968 – Tommie Smith and John Carlos are ejected from the US Olympic team for participating in the Olympics Black Power salute. 1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country. 1968 – Yasunari Kawabata becomes the first Japanese person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. 1970 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act during the October Crisis. 1973 – Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1975 – Indonesian troops kill the Balibo Five, a group of Australian journalists, in Portuguese Timor. 1975 – Three-year-old Rahima Banu, from Bangladesh, is the last known case of naturally occurring smallpox. 1975 – The Australian Coalition sparks a constitutional crisis when they vote to defer funding for the government's annual budget. 1978 – Cardinal Karol Wojtyła is elected to the papacy as Pope John Paul II, he becomes the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523. 1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1991 – George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20. 1995 – The Million Man March takes place in Washington, D.C. About 837,000 attend. 1995 – The Skye Bridge in Scotland is opened. 1996 – Eighty-four football fans die and 180 are injured in a massive crush at a match in Guatemala City. 1998 – Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a murder extradition warrant. 1999 – The magnitude 7.1 Hector Mine earthquake strikes Southern California 2002 – The Bibliotheca Alexandrina opens in Egypt, commemorating the ancient library of Alexandria. 2013 – Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes on approach to Pakse International Airport in Laos, killing 49 people. 2017 – Storm Ophelia strikes the U.K. and Ireland causing major damage and power loss.
Births Pre-1600 1351 – Gian Galeazzo Visconti, first Duke of Milan (died 1402) 1396 – William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, English admiral (died 1450) 1430 – James II of Scotland (died 1460) 1483 – Gasparo Contarini, Italian cardinal and diplomat (died 1542) 1535 – Niwa Nagahide, Japanese samurai (died 1585) 1588 – Luke Wadding, Irish Franciscan friar and historian (died 1657)
1601–1900 1605 – Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, French writer and composer (died 1677) 1620 – Pierre Paul Puget, French painter and sculptor (died 1694) 1678 – Anna Waser, Swiss painter (died 1714) 1679 – Jan Dismas Zelenka, Czech viol player and composer (died 1745) 1710 – András Hadik, Austrian-Hungarian field marshal (died 1790) 1714 – Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist and academic (died 1795) 1726 – Daniel Chodowiecki, Polish-German painter and educator (died 1801) 1729 – Pierre van Maldere, Belgian violinist and composer (died 1768) 1752 – Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, German theologian and academic (died 1827) 1754 – Morgan Lewis, American general, lawyer, and politician, 3rd Governor of New York (died 1844) 1758 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (died 1843) 1762 – Paul Hamilton, American soldier and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of the Navy (died 1816) 1789 – William Burton, American physician and politician, 39th Governor of Delaware (died 1866) 1795 – William Buell Sprague, American minister, historian, and author (died 1876) 1802 – Isaac Murphy, American educator and politician, 8th Governor of Arkansas (died 1882) 1803 – Robert Stephenson, English railway and civil engineer (died 1859) 1804 – Benjamin Russell, American painter and educator (died 1885) 1806 – William P. Fessenden, American lawyer and politician, 26th United States Secretary of the Treasury (died 1869) 1815 – Francis Lubbock, American colonel and politician, 9th Governor of Texas (died 1905) 1818 – William Forster, Indian-Australian politician, 4th Premier of New South Wales (died 1882) 1819 – Austin F. Pike, American lawyer and politician (died 1886) 1827 – Arnold Böcklin, Swiss painter (died 1901) 1831 – Lucy Stanton, American activist (died 1910) 1832 – Vicente Riva Palacio, Mexican liberal intellectual, novelist (died 1896) 1840 – Kuroda Kiyotaka, Japanese general and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Japan (died 1900) 1841 – Itō Hirobumi, Japanese lawyer and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Japan (died 1909) 1847 – Maria Pia of Savoy, Queen Consort of Luis I of Portugal (died 1911) 1852 – Carl von In der Maur, Governor of Liechtenstein (died 1913) 1854 – Karl Kautsky, Czech-German journalist, philosopher, and theologian (died 1938) 1854 – Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, and poet (died 1900) 1855 – Samad bey Mehmandarov, Azerbaijani general and politician, 3rd Azerbaijani Minister of Defense (died 1931) 1861 – J. B. Bury, Irish historian and scholar (died 1927) 1861 – Richard Sears, American tennis player (died 1943) 1863 – Austen Chamberlain, English businessman and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1937) 1867 – Mario Ruspoli, 2nd Prince of Poggio Suasa (died 1963) 1869 – Claude H. Van Tyne, American historian and author (died 1930) 1872 – Walter Buckmaster, English polo player and businessman, co-founded Buckmaster & Moore (died 1942) 1873 – Juho Kekkonen, Finnish forestry manager and tenant farmer (died 1928)Urho Kekkosen isä Juho – Kotiseurakuntani (in Finnish) 1876 – Jimmy Sinclair, South African cricketer and rugby player (died 1913) 1881 – William Orthwein, American swimmer and water polo player (died 1955) 1884 – Rembrandt Bugatti, Italian sculptor (died 1916) 1886 – David Ben-Gurion, Polish-Israeli soldier and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Israel (died 1973) 1888 – Eugene O'Neill, American playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1953) 1888 – Paul Popenoe, American founder of relationship counseling (died 1979) 1890 – Michael Collins, Irish general and politician, 2nd Irish Minister for Finance (died 1922) 1890 – Maria Goretti, Italian martyr and saint (died 1902) 1890 – Paul Strand, American photographer and director (died 1975) 1897 – Louis de Cazenave, French soldier (died 2008) 1898 – William O. Douglas, American lawyer and jurist (died 1980) 1900 – Edward Ardizzone, Vietnamese-English author and illustrator (died 1979) 1900 – Primo Conti, Italian painter and poet (died 1988) 1900 – Goose Goslin, American baseball player and manager (died 1971)
1901–present 1903 – Cecile de Brunhoff, French author and pianist (died 2003) 1903 – Big Joe Williams, American Delta blues singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 1982) 1904 – Björn Berglund, Swedish actor (died 1968) 1905 – Ernst Kuzorra, German footballer and manager (died 1990) 1906 – León Klimovsky, Argentinian actor, director, and screenwriter (died 1996) 1907 – Richard Titmuss, English sociologist and academic (died 1973) 1908 – Olivia Coolidge, English-American author and educator (died 2006) 1908 – Enver Hoxha, Albanian general and politician, Prime Minister of Albania (died 1985) 1911 – Otto von Bülow, German commander (died 2006) 1912 – Clifford Hansen, American rancher and politician, 26th Governor of Wyoming (died 2009) 1918 – Louis Althusser, Algerian-French philosopher and academic (died 1990) 1918 – Abraham Nemeth, American mathematician and academic (died 2013) 1918 – Tony Rolt, English race car driver and engineer (died 2008) 1919 – Kathleen Winsor, American journalist and author (died 2003) 1920 – Paddy Finucane, Irish fighter pilot and flying ace (died 1942) 1921 – Matt Batts, American baseball player and coach (died 2013) 1921 – Sita Ram Goel, Indian historian, publisher and writer (died 2003)