October 19th
 

1453 ~ The French recapture of Bordeaux brought the Hundred Years War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil.

1745 ~ Death of Jonathan Swift, Author.

1873 ~ Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Rutgers universities draft the first code of American football rules.

1912 ~ Italy takes possession of Tripoli, Libya from the Ottoman Empire.

1914 ~ First Battle of Ypres began.

1931 ~ Birthday of John Le Carré, Novelist.

1943 ~ Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was first isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.

1950 ~ Death of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Poet.

1985 ~ The first Blockbuster Video store opened in Dallas, Texas.

2003 ~ Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II.

October 20th
 

1632 ~ Birthday of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1740 ~ Maria Theresa took the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refused to honor the Pragmatic Sanction and the War of the Austrian Succession began.

1803 ~ United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1882 ~ Birthday of Bela Lugosi, Actor.

1891 ~ Birthday of Jomo Kenyatta, President of Kenya.

1931 ~ Birthday of Mickey Mantle, baseball star.

1944 ~ The Soviet army captured Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia.

1947 ~ The House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood.

1973 ~ The Sydney Opera House opened.

1984 ~ Death of Paul Dirac, Physicist.

October 21st
 

1772 ~ Birthday of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet.

1805 ~ Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar - British fleet led by Admiral Lord Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish off the coast of Spain.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and benefactor of the Nobel Prize.

1879 ~ Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tested the first practical electric light bulb (it lasted 13 1/2 hours before burning out).

1912 ~ Birthday of Sir Georg Solti, Conductor.

1917 ~ Birthday of Dizzy Gillespie, Jazz Musician.

1929 ~ Birthday of Ursula K. Le Guin, Science Fiction Author.

1944 ~ The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1966 ~ A coal tip fell on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren.

1994 ~ North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea and the United States signed an agreement that required North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.

October 22nd
 

1797 ~ 3,200 feet above Paris, Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump.

1811 ~ Birthday of Franz Liszt, Composer.

1836 ~ Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1844 ~ Birthday of Sarah Bernhardt, Actress.

1906 ~ Death of Paul Cezanne, Painter.

1920 ~ Birthday of Timothy Leary, writer, drug guru.

1943 ~ Birthday of Catherine Deneuve, Actress.

1943 ~ Kassel: The RAF delivered the second firestorm air raid on this city of 236,000 people, killing 10,000, leaving 150,000 homeless.

1962 ~ Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy announced that American spy planes had discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he had ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.

1966 ~ The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album.

October 23rd
 

4004 BC ~ The universe was created, according to the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar.

1723 ~ War of Jenkins' Ear started: British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declares war on Spain.

1892 ~ Birthday of Gummo Marx, actor, comedian, Marx Brothers.

1915 ~ Woman's suffrage: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women marched up Fifth Avenue to demand the right to vote.

1935 ~ Birthday of Chi Chi Rodriguez, golf champion.

1940 ~ Birthday of Pelé, Football Player Extraordinaire.

1942 ~ World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein started - At El Alamein in Egypt, British forces begin a major offensive against Axis forces.

1942 ~ Birthday of Michael Crichton, writer.

1958 ~ Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced a new set of comic strip characters “The Smurfs”.

1998 ~ Death of Dr. Barnett Slepian, physician.

October 24th
 

1632 ~ Birthday of Anton van Leeuwenhoek, microbiologist.

1799 ~ Death of Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Composer.

1929 ~ "Black Thursday" crash of the New York Stock Exchange.

1935 ~ Italy invaded Ethiopia.

1945 ~ Founding of the United Nations.

1948 ~ Death of Franz Lehár, Composer.

1956 ~ Soviet Union invaded Hungary.

1980 ~ Government of Poland legalized Solidarity trade union.

1991 ~ Death of Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek series.

2003 ~ Concorde made its last commercial flight, bringing the first era of civil supersonic transport to a close.

October 25th
 

1400 ~ Death of Geoffrey Chaucer, Poet.

1825 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss II, Composer.

1838 ~ Birthday of Georges Bizet, Composer.

1854 ~ Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

1881 ~ Birthday of Pablo Picasso, Painter & Sculptor.

1900 ~ United Kingdom annexed the Transvaal.

1924 ~ First appearance of "Little Orphan Annie”

1936 ~ Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created the Rome-Berlin Axis.

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

1993 ~ Death of Vincent Price, Actor.

Charge of the Light Brigade
 

For those who may be interested, here are a couple of links about this amazing event.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3944699.stm

You can listen and follow along to Lord Tennyson as he reads his poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/tennyson.shtml

October 26th
 

1685 ~ Birthday of Domenico Scarlatti, Composer.

1759 ~ Birthday of Georges Jacques Danton, leader of the French Revolution.

1881 ~ The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place at Tombstone, Arizona.

1905 ~ Norway became independent from Sweden.

1918 ~ Erich von Ludendorff is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.

1947 ~ The Maharaja of Kashmir agreed to allow his kingdom to join India.

1972 ~ Death of Igor Sikorsky, helicopter pioneer.

1994 ~ Announcement of Andrew Wiles correct proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

1999 ~ Britain's House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.

2001 ~ The United States passed the controversial USA Patriot Act into law.

October 27th
 

1466 ~ Birthday of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dutch writer and philosopher, and one of the more civilized people in recorded history.

1728 ~ Birthday of James Cook, British naval captain and explorer.

1782 ~ Birthday of Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer

1811 ~ Birthday of Isaac Singer, inventor of the sewing machine

1914 ~ Birthday of Dylan Thomas, British poet and writer. If you’ve never heard Richard Burton read “Under Milk Wood”, or “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, you have a treat in store for you!

1946 ~ First commercially-sponsored television program airs (Geographically Speaking, sponsored by Bristol-Myers).

1968 ~ Death of Lise Meitner, German physicist.

1990 ~ Death of Xavier Cugat, musician.

1991 ~ Turkmenistan achieved independence from the Soviet Union.

2002 ~ Trades unionist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is elected as President of Brazil.

October 28th
 

1492 ~ Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba.

1704 ~ Death of John Locke, Philosopher.

1879 ~ Birthday of E.M. Forster, Novelist.

1886 ~ In New York Harbor, US President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty.

1903 ~ Birthday of Evelyn Waugh, Novelist.

1914 ~ Birthday of Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the first effective polio vaccine.

1918 ~ Czechoslovakia gained its independence from Austria-Hungary.

1940 ~ World War II: Italy invaded Greece.

1955 ~ Birthday of Bill Gates, co-founder and Chairman of Microsoft.

1965 ~ In St. Louis, Missouri, the 630-foot-tall steel Gateway Arch was completed.

October 29th
 

1675 ~ Leibniz made the first use of the long s, ∫, for integral.

1787 ~ Mozart's opera Don Giovanni received its first performance in Prague.

1863 ~ Sixteen countries meeting in Geneva agreed to form the International Red Cross.

1879 ~ Birthday of Leon Trotsky - Russian revolutionary.

1897 ~ Birthday of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

1911 ~ Death of Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher and journalist.

1923 ~ The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. (founded 1281)

1942 ~ Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures held a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.

1956 ~ Suez Crisis begins: Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.

1957 ~ Death of Louis B. Mayer, film producer. The second “M” in “MGM”.

October 30th
 

1470 ~ Henry VI of England returned to the throne after Earl of Warwick defeats Yorkists in battle.

1831 ~ Escaped slave Nat Turner was captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.

1885 ~ Birthday of Ezra Pound, Poet.

1938 ~ Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's “The War of the Worlds”, causing a panic.

1939 ~ Birthday of Grace Slick, singer with Jefferson Airplane.

1961 ~ The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb "Tsar Bomba" over Novaya Zemlya; with a yield greater than 50 megatons, it is still the largest nuclear device ever detonated.

1968 ~ The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, released.

1975 ~ Prince Juan Carlos becomes King of Spain after dictator Francisco Franco concedes that he is too ill to govern.

1995 ~ Quebec separatists narrowly lost a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote was 50.6% to 49.4%).

1997 ~ British au pair Louise Woodward found guilty of the baby-shaking death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.

October 31st
 

1517 ~ Protestant Reformation got under way: Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. For those who would like a unique insight to this happening, click here .

1795 ~ Birthday of John Keats, Poet.

1892 ~ Arthur Conan Doyle published “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”.

1926 ~ Death of Harry Houdini, Magician.

1940 ~ World War II: Battle of Britain ended.

1950 ~ Birthday of John Candy, Comedian & Actor.

1954 ~ Algerian War of Independence: The Algerian National Liberation Front begins a revolt against French rule.

1956 ~ Suez Crisis: The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal.

1984 ~ Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh security guards (riots soon broke out in New Delhi and nearly 2,000 innocent Sikhs were killed).

1987 ~ Death of Joseph Campbell, Author and expert on mythology.

November 1st
 

1512 ~ The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, was exhibited to the public for the first time.

1604 ~ At Whitehall Palace in London, the William Shakespeare tragedy “Othello” was presented for the first time.

1611 ~ At Whitehall Palace in London, William Shakespeare's romantic comedy “The Tempest” was presented for the first time.

1755 ~ Lisbon earthquake: In Portugal, Lisbon was destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty and ninety thousand people.

1892 ~ Birthday of Alexander Alekhine, World Chess Champion.

1923 ~ Birthday of Gordon R. Dickson, Science Fiction author.

1952 ~ The United States successfully detonated the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike", at Eniwetok island in the Bikini atoll.

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

1972 ~ Death of Ezra Pound, Poet.


Holidays
All Saints Day. Holiday in Spain, Italy and Croatia.
World Vegan Day