October 5th

1713 ~ Birthday of Denis Diderot, philosopher.

1813 ~ Death of Tecumseh, American Indian leader.

1882 ~ Birthday of Robert Goddard, rocket scientist.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corporation.

1908 ~ Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

1936 ~ Birthday of Václav Havel, playwright, president of the Czech Republic.

1944 ~ Canadian Air Force pilots shot down the first German Jet fighter over France.

1962 ~ The Beatles released their first hit, "Love Me Do," in Britain.

1972 ~ Montreal, Quebec: British Trade Commissioner James Cross was kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

2000 ~ Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic.

October 6th
 

1600 ~ Jacopo Peri's “Euridice”, the earliest surviving opera, premiered in Florence.

1846 ~ Birthday of George Westinghouse, Engineer & Inventor.

1887 ~ Birthday of Le Corbusier, Swiss architect.

1892 ~ Death of Alfred Tennyson, British poet laureate.

1908 ~ Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1914 ~ Birthday of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer, leader of the “Kon-Tiki” expedition.

1927 ~ Opening of “The Jazz Singer”, first talking movie.

1948 ~ Birthday of Gerry Adams, Irish politician.

1981 ~ Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated.

1995 ~ The first extrasolar planet was discovered orbiting 51 Pegasi, in the constellation of Pegasus.

October 7th
 

1571 ~ Ottoman Empire defeated at the battle of Lepanto.

1849 ~ Death of Edgar Allan Poe, American writer.

1885 ~ Birthday of Niels Bohr, Physicist

1886 ~ Spain abolishes slavery in Cuba.

1900 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Himmler, Nazi official and leader of the SS.

1908 ~ Crete revolts against the Ottoman Empire and aligns with Greece.

1931 ~ Birthday of Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and anti-apartheid activist.

1955 ~ Birthday of Yo-Yo Ma, Cellist.

1985 ~ “Achille Lauro” hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.

2003 ~ California governor Gray Davis is recalled from office and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

October 8th
 

451 ~ At Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia in Asia Minor, the first session of the Council of Chalcedon began.

1871 ~ The Great Chicago Fire destroyed about 17,450 buildings, killed about 250 people and left another 90,000 homeless.

1895 ~ Birthday of Juan Perón, former president of Argentina.

1918 ~ World War I - In the Argonne Forest in France, United States Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.

1920 ~ Birthday of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction writer

1949 ~ Birthday of Sigourney Weaver, Actress.

1967 ~ Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia.

1967 ~ Death of Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1982 ~ Poland bans Solidarity.

1992 ~ Death of Willy Brandt, German politician.

October 9th
 

1446 ~ The Hangul alphabet is created in Korea.

1585 ~ Birthday of Heinrich Schütz, Composer.

1776 ~ Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.

1835 ~ Birthday of Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer.

1859 ~ Birthday of Alfred Dreyfus, French military officer.

1940 ~ Birthday of John Lennon, Musician & Songwriter.

1942 ~ Statute of Westminster Adoption Act formalizes Australian autonomy.

1970 ~ The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.

1974 ~ Death of Oskar Schindler, businessman.

1989 ~ In Leipzig, East Germany protesters demand the legalization of opposition groups and democratic reforms.

October 10th
 

680 ~ Death of Husayn bin Ali, grandson of Muhammad.

732 ~ Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, leader of the Franks Charles Martel and his men, defeated a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe.

1813 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer.

1845 ~ In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opened with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

1875 ~ Death of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Novelist & Poet.

1917 ~ Birthday of Thelonious Monk, jazz pianist.

1966 ~ Simon and Garfunkel released the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

1970 ~ In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte became the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1985 ~ United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercepted an Egyptian plane carrying the “Achille Lauro” cruise ship hijackers and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they were arrested.

1985 ~ Death of Yul Brynner, Actor and Orson Welles, Director & Actor.

Today's date: Oct. 10, 2004

On this date in 1835 Gail Borden, of condensed milk fame, began publishing the weekly newspaper "Telegraph and Texas Register" at San Felipe de Austin. It was the only newspaper in existence in Texas at the time of independence.

October 11th
 

1779 ~ Death of Casimir Pulaski, Polish fighter for American independence.

1809 ~ Death of Meriwether Lewis, explorer.

1844 ~ Birthday of Henry Heinz, food manufacturer.

1896 ~ Death of Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer.

1899 ~ Boer War: In South Africa, a war between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State began.

1919 ~ Birthday of Art Blakey, jazz drummer.

1931 ~ Manhattan Project: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was presented with a letter signed by Albert Einstein urging the United States to rapidly develop an atomic bomb program.

1961 ~ Death of Chico Marx, comedian. One of the Marx Brothers.

1975 ~ “Saturday Night Live” premiered. George Carlin is the guest host.

1986 ~ Cold War: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.

October 12th
 

1307 ~ All Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair, to be later tortured into "admitting" heresy.

1792 ~ In Washington, DC, the cornerstone of the United States Executive Mansion (known as the White House since 1818) laid.

1812 ~ War of 1812: Battle of Queenston Heights - United States forces are repulsed from invading Canada by British and native troops led by Sir Isaac Brock.

1925 ~ Birthday of Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK.

1945 ~ Death of Milton S. Hershey, founder of Hershey Chocolate Company.

1946 ~ France adopted the constitution of the Fourth Republic.

1959 ~ Birthday of Marie Osmond, Singer & Actress.

1974 ~ Death of Ed Sullivan, television personality.

1977 ~ Four Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Somalia and demanded release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction.

1982 ~ Birthday of Ian Thorpe, swimmer.

October 13th
 

1492 ~ Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean. The explorer believes he has reached East Asia.

1609 ~ "Three Blind Mice" published by London teenage songwriter Thomas Ravenscroft.

1817 ~ Birthday of Bahá'u'lláh, prophet founder of the Bahá'í Faith

1822 ~ Brazil becomes formally independent of Portugal.

1870 ~ Death of Robert E. Lee, United States Civil War general (Confederate).

1872 ~ Birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer.

1935 ~ Birthday of Luciano Pavarotti, opera singer.

1968 ~ Summer Olympics open in Mexico City, Mexico.

1997 ~ Death of John Denver, singer.

2000 ~ In Aden, Yemen, the “USS Cole” is badly damaged by two suicide bombers , killing 17 crewmembers and wounding at least 39.

October 14th
 

1066 ~ Battle of Hastings - The Norman invasion forces of William the Conqueror defeated the English army and kill King Harold II of England.

1882 ~ Birthday of Eamon de Valera, Irish politician and patriot.

1894 ~ Birthday of E. E. Cummings, American poet.

1926 ~ ”Winnie-the-Pooh”, by A.A. Milne, was published.

1940 ~ Birthday of Cliff Richard, British rock singer.

1944 ~ World War II: Given the choice between a public treason trial and a certain death by firing squad or suicide with honor, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel chose the latter.

1947 ~ Chuck Yeager flew a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.

1962 ~ Cuban Missile Crisis began: A U-2 flight over Cuba took photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed.

1964 ~ American civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1994 ~ PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (Palestine), Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (Israel) and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Israel) shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

October 15th
 

70 BC ~ Birthday of Virgil, Roman poet.

1582 ~ Pope Gregory XIII implemented the Gregorian Calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain October 4 of this year was followed directly by October 15, skipping over 10 days. Other countries follow at various later dates.

1764 ~ While visiting Rome, Edward Gibbon observed a group of barefoot friars singing vespers in the ruined Temple of Jupiter, a sight which inspired him to begin work on a history that will be published as “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”

1844 ~ Birthday of Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher.

1881 ~ Birthday of P. G. Wodehouse, British comic novelist.

1908 ~ Birthday of John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist.

1917 ~ World War I: At Vincennes outside of Paris, Dutch dancer Mata Hari was executed by firing squad for spying for Germany.

1951 ~ Television sitcom “I Love Lucy” premiered starring comedian Lucille Ball and her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.

1964 ~ Death of Cole Porter, Composer.

1970 ~ 35 construction workers died when a section of the new West Gate Bridge in Melbourne collapsed.

October 16th
 

1793 ~ Marie Antoinette was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.

1854 ~ Birthday of Oscar Wilde, Irish writer.

1859 ~ John Brown lead raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.

1886 ~ Birthday of David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel.

1925 ~ Birthday of Angela Lansbury, actress

1934 ~ Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong began their Long March.

1970 ~ Anwar Sadat elected President of Egypt.

1981 ~ Death of Moshe Dayan, Israeli general.

1978 ~ Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II.

2004 ~ Ramadan begins at the sighting of the moon.

October 17th
 

1469 ~ Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. Their marriage lead to the unification of Aragon and Castile in a single country, Spain.

1781 ~ General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia.

1888 ~ Thomas Edison filed a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).

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

1915 ~ Birthday of Arthur Miller, Playwright.

1937 ~ Huey, Dewey and Louie, Donald Duck's three almost identical nephews, first appeared in a newspaper comic strip.

1956 ~ Birthday of Mae Jemison, Astronaut.

1970 ~ Montreal, Quebec: Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labor Pierre Laporte murdered by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1972 ~ Birthday of Eminem, rap music performer.

1979 ~ Mother Teresa awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

October 18th
 

1900 ~ Death of John Taverner, Composer.

1851 ~ "Moby-Dick", a novel by Herman Melville, was first published as "The Whale".

1871 ~ Death of Charles Babbage, mathematician and inventor of computing machines.

1908 ~ Death of Charles Gounod, composer.

1919 ~ Birthday of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada.

1922 ~ The British Broadcasting Company was founded by a consortium to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.

1926 ~ Birthday of Chuck Berry, Musician.

1931 ~ Death of Thomas Edison, inventor.

1939 ~ Birthday of Lee Harvey Oswald, Assassin.

1977 ~ German Autumn: a set of events revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of the Lufthansa airplane by the Red Army Faction (RAF) came to an end when Schleyer was executed and various RAF members committed suicide. The German government stated that it would never again negotiate with terrorists.