This Day in History

[GordMay]

I never heard of “Vince”

Hurricane ‘Vince’ was an Atlantic storm, that lasted from Oct. 8 - 11, 2005.

Vince was rare because it organized in the far eastern area of the ocean. It developed into a hurricane farther east than any other storm, on record.

According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Vince was also the first tropical storm to make landfall on the Iberian Peninsula.

The hurricane developed, as a subtropical storm, 930 km southeast of Lajes, in the Azores, on Oct. 8. At the time the water temperature was too cool, so the NHC didn't name the system.

On Oct. 9, the system organized into a tropical storm. It was near Madeira, Portugal, when it finally received its name.

Officials weren't sure whether Vince was tropical or subtropical, but later analysis showed that it was a tropical storm, before it was named.

The storm continued to organize and strengthen, reaching its peak, with 120 km/h winds. Regardless of internal conflicts, and the hurricane's rare nature, the NHC forecasters concluded that "if it looks like a hurricane, it probably is, despite its environment, and unusual location."

When Vince formed, it was the first time, that a 21st sub/tropical storm had ever developed, within an Atlantic hurricane season. It broke the record, set in 1933, when 20 storms formed, within the Atlantic season.

It was only until the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, when another V name was required for a tropical storm.

[GordMay]

October 12

1285: 180 Jews refuse baptism, in Munich Germany, and are set on fire.

1492: After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island [?Watling Island or San Salvador?], which he names San Salvador, believing he has reached East Asia.

1518: Pontifical ambassador interrogates Martin Luther.

1609: The song "Three Blind Mice", in a book edited by, and possibly written by Thomas Ravenscroft, is published in London, believed to be the earliest printed secular song.

1702: Admiral Sir George Rooke defeats the French fleet, off Vigo.

1809: Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, dies, under mysterious circumstances, in Tennessee.

1810: The first 'Oktoberfest' was celebrated, in Munich, in the form of a horse race, held in honour of the marriage of the crown prince of Bavaria (who later became King Louis I) to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

1822: Second eruption of Galunggung, in Java, destroys summit of mountain.

1823: Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, begins selling raincoats [Macs].

1859: Self-proclaimed Emperor of the USA, Emperor Norton issues edict, abolishing the US Congress.

1870: General Robert Edward Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, dies at his home, in Lexington, Virginia. He was 63 years old.

1872: Apache leader Cochise signs a peace treaty with General Howard, in Arizona Territory.

1886: Hurricane & sea surge kills 250, at Indianola, Texas.

1900: The first modern submarine is commissioned, by the U.S. Navy, as the USS “Holland”, named for its designer. John Philip Holland.

1915: Ford Motor Company, under Henry Ford, manufactures its 1 millionth automobile, at the River Rouge plant, in Detroit.

1918: The massive ‘Cloquet-Moose Lake forest fire’ rages through Minnesota, southwest of Duluth, killing hundreds of people, and leaving thousands homeless. The fire burned at least 1,500 square miles. In all, 38 towns and villages were destroyed by the fire. Four hundred and fifty three deaths were reported, and another 85 people were seriously burned, and injures or displaces 52,000 people. Four thousand houses, 6,000 barns, and 40 schools all went up in flames. Hundreds of thousands of farm animals also perished in the fire.

1957: Canadian Prime Minister Lester Bowles Pearson wins Nobel Peace Prize.

1960: Nikita Khrushchev allegedly brandishes his shoe at the United Nations.
➥ https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/26/o...-the-shoe.html

1964: The Soviet Union launches “Voskhod 1" into Earth orbit, with cosmonauts Vladamir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, and Boris Yegorov aboard. “Voskhod 1" was the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew, and the two-day mission was also the first flight. performed without space suits.

1971: The US House of Representatives passes the Equal Rights Amendment 354-23.
➥ https://thesyndromemag.com/a-brief-a...SAAEgLDb_D_BwE

1979: Typhoon ‘Tip’ becomes the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, with peak sustained winds of 305km/h (190mph), and a wind diameter of 2,220km (1,380mi). The lowest recorded, non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in Guam, in the Western Pacific, during Typhoon ‘Tip’.

1992: Arecibo radio telescope begins Microwave Observing Project, searching for occupied planets.
1992: 5.8 earthquake at Cairo [at least 510 die].

1994: NASA loses contact with the “Magellan probe” spacecraft, in the thick atmosphere of Venus.

1999: The ‘Day of Six Billion’: the proclaimed 6 billionth living human, in the world, is born.
1999: American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, who was considered one of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game, died at age 63.

2000: A inflatable dinghy, loaded with explosives, blows a 40-by-40-foot hole in the port side of the USS “Cole”, a U.S. Navy destroyer, that was refueling at Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed, and 38 wounded, in the attack, which was carried out by two suicide terrorists, alleged to be members of Osama bin Laden’s ‘al Qaeda’ terrorist network.

2001: The centennial Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to the United Nations, and the organization's secretary-general, Kofi Annan.

2002: Three bombings shatter the peace, in the town of Kuta, on the Indonesian island of Bali. The blasts, the work of militant Islamist terrorists [Jemaah Islamiah/al Qaeda?], left 202 people dead, and more than 200 others injured. Many of those killed and injured, in the blast, were young visitors, vacationing on the island, most from Australia. Thirty-eight Indonesians, mainly Balinese, were killed.

2007: Al Gore, and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, share Nobel Peace Prize.

2017: Pneumonic Plague [the most virulent form of plague; incubation period can be as short as 24 hours] outbreak, in Madagascar, kills 57, with 684 cases so far reported by WHO.
➥ https://reliefweb.int/report/madagas...2-october-2017

2019: Typhoon ‘Hagibis’ makes landfall, on the Izu Peninsula, near Tokyo, Japan, bringing record rainfall, and killing at least 56 people.

2020: China announces it will test entire city of Qingdao, 9 million people, for COVID-19, within five days, after a dozen cases discovered.

[GordMay]

The ‘Big Blow’ ~ Columbus Day 1962

The Columbus Day Storm of 1962, or the Big Blow, was a Pacific Northwest windstorm that hit Canada and the United States, on Friday, Oct. 12, 1962.

The storm is the strongest (in terms of wind velocity) extratropical cyclone in the U.S., in the 20th century.

The Big Blow started as a tropical disturbance, on Sept. 28, near the island of Eniwetok Atoll. Early on Oct. 3, the system turned into a tropical storm,in the central Pacific Ocean.

On Oct, 4, the typhoon reached its peak, with 185 km/h winds. The stormed weaken on Oct. 6, and continued to do so through Oct. 10.

The system redeveloped, near Northern California, bringing record rainfall to the San Francisco Bay Area. The rain delayed the 1962 World Series games, between the San Francisco Giants, and the New York Yankees.

The storm continued, and made landfall on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The cyclone dissipated by Oct. 17.

The Big Blow caused around 46 deaths, the most fatalities attributed to a weather event, in the Pacific Northwest. Most people died from flash floods and mudslides.

In B.C., the storm brought winds as high as 140 km/h. The Big Blow caused $80 million in damages. Over 3,000 trees were destroyed, in Stanley Park. Five people died in B.C., as a result of the storm.

[GordMay]

October 13

0054: Nero succeeds his great uncle Claudius, who was murdered by his wife, as the new emperor of Rome.

1660: Absolute monarchy instituted, by decree, in Denmark, by King Frederik III.

1773: The Whirlpool Galaxy discovered, by astronomer Charles Messier.

1775: The Continental Congress authorizes construction, and administration, of the first American naval force; the precursor to the United States Navy. Esek Hopkins was appointed the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy. Congress also named four captains to the new service: Dudley Saltonstall, Abraham Whipple, Nicholas Biddle and John Burroughs Hopkins. Their respective vessels, the 24-gun frigates “Alfred” and “Columbus”, the 14-gun brigs “Andrew Doria” and “Cabot”, as well as three schooners, the “Hornet”, the “Wasp” and the “Fly”, became the first ships of the Navy’s fleet.

1792: The cornerstone is laid, for a presidential residence [executive mansion], in the newly designated capital city, of Washington, D.C. Work began, on the neoclassical White House building, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, by a construction team, comprised of enslaved and freed African Americans, and European immigrants. Irish American architect James Hoban oversaw the design, and President George Washington chose the site.

1812: British and Indian forces, under Sir Isaac Brock, defeat invading Americans, under General Stephen Van Rensselaer, at the Battle of Queenstown Heights, on the Niagara frontier, in Ontario, Canada. The British victory, in which more than 1,000 U.S. troops were killed, wounded, or captured, effectively ended any further U.S. invasion of Canada. Sir Isaac Brock, Britain’s most talented general in the war, was killed during the battle.

1884: Greenwich, in London, established as the universal time meridian of longitude.

1904: Sigmund Freud's ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ is published.

1914: Garrett Morgan patents his safety hood device, which would later be refined into the gas mask.

1917: 70,000 people gather to see 'Miracle of the Sun', solar visions, reportedly by the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal, after prophecies by local children.

1972: A flight, chartered by a Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes Mountains of Argentina, and the wreckage was not located for more than two months; the incident garnered international attention, especially after it was revealed that the survivors had resorted to cannibalism. Only 16 survivors (out of 45 people aboard) are rescued, on Dec. 23.

1976: Dr. F.A. Murphy, at Center for Disease Control, obtains the first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle.

1983: Ameritech Mobile Communications (now Cingular) launched the first US cellular network in Chicago, Illinois.

1988: The ‘Shroud of Turin’, revered by many Christians as Christ's burial cloth, is shown, by carbon-dating tests, to be a fake, from the Middle Ages.

1999: The United States Senate rejects ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

2010: The last, of 33 miners, trapped nearly half a mile underground, for more than two months, at a caved-in mine [Copiapó], in the in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile, are rescued. The miners survived longer than anyone else trapped underground in recorded history. The miners’ ordeal began on August 5, 2010, when the San Jose gold and copper mine, where they were working, some 500 miles north of the Chilean capital city of Santiago, collapsed.

2016: American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize, for Literature.

[GordMay]

October 14

1066: King Harold II of England is defeated, by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror, at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed [shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend], and his forces were destroyed. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
See also: “1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates”, which is a tongue-in-cheek reworking of the history of England. Written by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman and illustrated by John Reynolds, it first appeared, serially, in Punch magazine, and was published, in book form, by Methuen & Co. Ltd. in 1930.
➥ https://archive.org/details/1066allthat00wal

1644: English Quaker leader, and advocate of religious freedom, William Penn, who oversaw the founding of the American Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was born.

1879: Thomas Alva Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights" (U.S. Patent 0,214,636). The first successful test was on October 22, 1879, and lasted 13.5 hours.

1884: Transparent paper-strip photographic film is patented, by George Eastman.

1890: Dwight D. Eisenhower is born, 1890, in Denison, Texas.

1912: Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is shot and wounded, in assassination attempt, in Milwaukee. He was saved, by the papers in his breast pocket, and, though wounded, insisted on finishing his speech.

1913: A tremendous explosion ripped through the Sengenhydd coal mine, near Cardiff, in one of the worst mining disasters in Great Britain, and over 400 minors are killed.

1943: Some 300 Jewish slave labourers, at Sobibor extermination camp, in Nazi-occupied Poland, staged a revolt, killing several SS supervisors and Ukrainian guards; many inmates died, and the camp was subsequently dismantled.

1944: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel [the ‘Desert Fox’], suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, is visited at home by two of Hitler's staff, and given the choice of public trial, or suicide by poison [cyanide]. He chooses suicide, and it is announced that he died of wounds.

1947: U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, over Rogers Dry Lake, in Southern California. The Bell ‘X-1' was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet, by a B-29 aircraft, and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet, and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948.

1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis begins, when USAF ‘U-2' reconnaissance pilot photographs Cubans installing Soviet-made missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict.

1964: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wins Nobel Peace Prize. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award, ‘till then.
1964: Nikita Khrushchev ousted as both premier of the Soviet Union, and chief of the Communist Party after 10 years in power [replaced by his former protégé, Leonid Brezhnev].

1968: The first live telecast, from a manned U.S. spacecraft, using a black and white camera, is transmitted, from Apollo 7 back to Earth.

1983: Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, overthrown, and later executed, by a military coup.

1991: Scientists from the International Atmospheric Authority, in Australia, have said that the Earth's protective Ozone layer has shrunk 4%, in the the last ten years, compared with 2%, in the preceding 10 years.

1994: Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, for establishing the Oslo Accords, and preparing for Palestinian Self Government.

2011: Apple Inc. releases the latest Apple smartphone model, the iPhone 4S.

[GordMay]

In 2018, many areas in Europe experienced heavy flooding.

On October 4, 2018, flash floods started to inundate Calabria, a southwest region of Italy.
On Oct. 9, the flooding took over Mallorca, an island of Spain.
Widespread floods continued to overwhelm Europe.

On Oct. 14, areas of France received many months of rain, in a few hours overnight.

The next morning, water overtook southern areas of the country. According to weather services in Vigicrues, the Aude river faced the worst flooding it had experienced in more than 100 years.

In Trèbes, the floodwater was reported to be as high as seven metres.
In Villegailhenc, the waters tore down a bridge and carried it away in its current.

France deployed seven helicopters, and approximately 700 emergency service workers. Some residents complained that the government provided insufficient communication, surrounding the floods.

Some residents climbed onto their roofs, as their homes completed flooded. The waters were too dangerous for boats, so people needed to be airlifted to safety.
Many people didn't make it to safety.
In France, the floods killed 16 people.

In late October, and early November, Italy received a second round of floods.
In Venice, floodwaters reached as high as 156 cm, and 70 per cent of the city was underwater.
In Italy, 36 people died as a result of the extreme weather event.

In total, the floods of 2018 killed 69 people, across Europe.

[GordMay]

October 15

0070 BCE: The Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil, best known for his national epic, the ‘Aeneid’, was born, near Mantua.

1522: Emperor Karel I names Hernán Cortés governor of Mexico.

1674: Torsåker witch trials begin, largest witch trials in Sweden, 71 beheaded and burned.

1783: Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight, in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days, the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.

1813: During the land defeat of the British, on the Thames River, in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St Helena, to begin his exile.

1827: Charles Darwin admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge.

1842: Karl Marx becomes editor-in-chief of ‘Rheinische Zeitung’.

1844: Classical scholar, and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most influential of all modern thinkers, was born in Prussia.

1863: The “H.L. Hunley”, the world’s first successful combat submarine, sinks during a test run, killing its inventor, and seven crew members.
Another willing crew was assembled, and the “Hunley” went back into the water. On February 17, 1864, the ship headed out of Charleston Harbor, and approached the U.S.S. “Housatonic”. The “Hunley” struck a torpedo into the Yankee ship, and then backed away, before the explosion. The “Housatonic” sank in shallow water, and the “Hunley” became the first submarine to sink a ship in battle.
However, its first successful mission was also its last. The “Hunley” sank, before it returned to Charleston, taking yet another crew down with it.
The vessel was raised in 2000, and is now on exhibit in Charleston.

1878: Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.

1894: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.

1908: John Kenneth Galbraith, economist, writer and diplomat, born.

1914: Congress passes the ‘Clayton Anti-Trust Act’, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls "labor's charter of freedom." The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices, which would effect a monopoly.

1917: Dancer, courtesan, and alleged spy, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, better known as ‘Mata Hari’ is executed for espionage, by a French firing squad, at Vincennes, outside of Paris. Her military trial was riddled with bias, and circumstantial evidence, and it is probable that French authorities trumped her up as “the greatest woman spy of the century” as a distraction for the huge losses, the French army was suffering, on the western front.

1934: Chinese communists began the Long March, the 6,000-mile (10,000-km) trek, that resulted in the relocation of the communist revolutionary base, from southeast China, to northwest China, and the emergence of Mao Zedong, as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

1945: Pierre Laval, the puppet leader of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, is executed, by firing squad, for treason against France.

1946: Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, chief forester of the Reich, chief liquidator of sequestered estates, supreme head of the National Weather Bureau, and Hitler’s designated successor, dies by his own hand.
He had been charged with various crimes against humanity, tried at Nuremberg, found guilty, andwas sentenced to be hanged. But, before he could be executed, he died by suicide, by swallowing a cyanide tablet, he had hidden from his guards.

1951: First synthesis of an oral contraceptive (norethindrone) made by Luis E. Miramontes, under direction of Carl Djerassi and George Rosenkranz, at Mexican drug company, Syntex.

1954: Hurricane ‘Hazel’ makes landfallin the US, in North Carolina, as a category 4 hurricane, 195 die in US, and Canada [81 in GTA, as Humber River floods].

1959: A final conference, on the ‘Antarctic Treaty’ convened in Washington, D.C., and, after six weeks of negotiations, the treaty was signed by 12 countries, preserving the continent for free scientific study.

1970: A section of the West Gate Bridge, over the Yarra River, in Melbourne, Australia, collapses, during construction, killing 35 construction workers. Later, during an investigation into the accident, the structural design, and an unusual method of erection was blamed for the accident.

1987: The ‘Great Storm of 1987' strikes the UK, and Europe during, the night of Oct 15-16, killing over 20 people, and causing widespread damage.

1990: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wins the Nobel Peace Prize, for his work in ending Cold War tensions.

1993: South Africans, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, were named the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”

2003: China became the third country to launch a crewed spaceflight; ‘Shenzhou 5', which was piloted by Yang Liwei, and orbited Earth 14 times, during the 21-hour flight.

2007: The first Airbus ‘A380' Superjumbo, currently the largest passenger airliner in the world, is delivered to Singapore Airlines.

2008: Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop, in the Dow's history.

2018: American investor and philanthropist, Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft, died at age 65.
2018: American retailer, Sears, files for bankruptcy

[GordMay]

October 16

1492: Christopher Columbus' fleet anchors, at "Fernandina" (Long Island, Bahamas).

1701: Yale University is founded, as The Collegiate School of Kilingworth, Connecticut, by Congregationalists, who consider Harvard too liberal.

1758: Noah Webster, U.S. teacher, lexicographer and publisher, who wrote the ‘American Dictionary of the English Language’, was born.

1793: Nine months after the execution of her husband, the former King Louis XVI of France, Marie Antoinette follows him to the guillotine.

1813: Battle of Leipzig, largest battle in Europe prior to WWI, Napoleon's forces defeated, by Prussia, Austria, and Russia.

1834: Much of the ancient structures, of the Palace of Westminster (parliament), in London, is burnt down.

1843: Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.

1846: Dentist William Thomas Green Morton first demonstrated the use of ether, as a general anesthetic, during an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren, before a gathering of physicians, at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston.

1859: Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group [21 men?], on a raid against a federal armory, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people, and destroy the institution of slavery.

1916: Margaret Sanger opens 1st birth control clinic ,in the US, at 46 Amboy St, Brooklyn.

1923: Walt Disney, and his brother Roy, found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, in Hollywood, California.

1936: Jean Batten reaches Auckland, New Zealand after flying solo from Kent, England, in a record 11 days, and 45 minutes.

1942: Cyclone, in Bay of Bengal, kills some 40,000, south of Calcutta, India.

1946: Ten of the 12 defendants, sentenced to death at the Nürnberg trials, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, and Alfred Jodl, were executed.

1964: The People’s Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability [United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, & France], after a successful nuclear test.

1967: Joean Baez, and 123 other anti-draft protesters, are arrested in Oakland, California

1968: Sprinters Tommie Smith [Gold] and John Carlos [Bronze] raise their fists, in the Black Power salute, on the 200m medal podium, at the Mexico City Olympics.

1970: PM Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act, as a response to the October Crisis, the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act, in Canadian history.

1973: Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho controversially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for negotiating a ceasefire, in Vietnam, that later failed

1978: Karol Józef Wojtyła, of Poland [58 years old], was elected pope; he assumed the name John Paul II, and was the first non-Italian pontiff, since 1523 [455 years ago].

1984: Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican Archbishop, wins Nobel Peace Prize.
1984: A baboon heart is transplanted into 15-day-old Baby Fae, the first transplant of it’s kind, at Loma Linda University Medical Center, California. Baby Fae lives until November 15.

1985: Intel introduces 32-bit ‘80386' microcomputer chip.

1987: Great Storm of 1987: 175-kph hurricane force winds hit London, and much of the South of England, killing 23 people, and causing widespread blackouts.
1987: 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued, after being trapped for 58 hours, in an abandoned water well [22' deep], in Midland, Texas.

1995: An enormous crowd [830,000+], consisting mostly of African American men, demonstrates on the National Mall, an event known as the Million Man March ['A Day of Atonement'].

2002: Inaugural opening of Bibliotheca Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, a modern library and cultural center, commemorating the famed Library of Alexandria, that was lost in antiquity

2003: Princess Kritika, of Nepal, was born.

2017: Findings published, of neutron star collision, that occurred two months prior on August 17, the first cosmic event seen [by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory - ‘LIGO’] in gravitational waves and light. Confirms heavy elements such as gold the result of such collisions. The enormous collaborative effort, detailed this date, in dozens of papers, appearing simultaneously in: Physical Review Letters, Nature, Science, Astrophysical Journal Letters, and other journals, has not only allowed astrophysicists to piece together a coherent account of the event, but also to answer longstanding questions in astrophysics.
➥ https://phys.org/news/2017-10-neutro...-lifetime.html
➥ https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...41-8213/aa91c9

2018: Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman denies knowledge of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to President Trump.

[GordMay]

Hurricane 'Hazel' [October 5 - 17, 1954] was the deadliest hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also Toronto's worst natural disaster, and Canada's most destructive hurricane.

Hurricane Hazel developed on Oct. 5, 1954, approximately 350 km east of Grenada.

On Oct. 12, Hazel made landfall on Haiti, as a Category 3 hurricane. The hurricane hit the Caribbean country again the next day. The same day, Hazel hit Inagua, in the Bahamas, with winds as high as 160 km/h.
On Oct. 15, the hurricane made landfall near the North Carolina/South Carolina border. Hazel moved across the areas with 215 km/h winds, as a Category 4 storm.

On Oct. 16, Hurricane Hazel reached Toronto, Ont. The next day, the remnants of the storm moved over James Bay. The next day, the remainder of Hazel was absorbed by a larger storm over Canada.

In the Caribbean, Hazel impacted Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Cuba, and other areas, but Haiti was the most impacted. Hazel brought flash floods and extreme winds to Haiti, destroying several villages.

Approximately 1,000 people died in the flash floods. The floodwaters reached as high as 2,400 m.

In North Carolina, 90 people died, 15,000 homes were destroyed, and 39,000 were damaged. Thousands of people were also left homeless. Overall, in the United States, Hazel caused $281 million worth of damages.

The Greater Toronto Area received uncharacteristically high rainfall before Hazel hit. Hazel brought the area 90 mm of precipitation, in three hours.

In Toronto, 81 people died. Thirty of the victims were on Raymore Drive, when the Humber River tore homes from their foundations. "I felt so helpless, but there was nothing I could do, nothing anybody could do. The water was so deep, up to our chins, and all the firemen were weighed down by clothing and boats and equipment," said volunteer fireman Bryan Mitchell, who was helping out with Raymore Drive.

By the time Hazel dissipated, it caused between 591-1,191 deaths, and caused $382 million in damages.

[GordMay]

October 17

0079: Mt. Vesuvius erupts, burying the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae, and killing thousands. New research, in 2018, suggests the eruption occurred on, or after this date, not the previously used 24 August.
➥ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45874858
➥ https://www.archaeology.org/issues/4...ew-excavations

1244: The Sixth Crusade ends, when an Egyptian-Khwarismian force almost annihilates the Frankish army, at Gaza.

1777: British general John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 British and Hessian troops, to American General Horatio Gates, at Saratoga, New York. Soon after word of the Patriot victory, at Saratoga, reached France, King Louis XVI agreed to recognize the independence of the United States, and French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, made arrangements with U.S. Ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, to begin providing formal French aid to the Patriot cause. This assistance was crucial to the eventual American victory, in the Revolutionary War.

1814: Vats of beer, at the Meux and Company Brewery, burst, flooding city streets with 610,000 liters of beer. The, almost 15 feet tall, wave of porter, killed 8 [9?] people, some of whom were gathered for a funeral.

1829: Delaware River & Chesapeake Bay Canal formally opens.

1835: Texans approve a resolution, to create the Texas Rangers, a corps of armed and mounted lawmen, designed to “range and guard the frontier between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers.”

1849: Composer and pianist Frederic Chopin, dies in Paris, of tuberculosis, at the age of 39.

1854: British and French troops began the Siege of Sevastopol, during the Crimean War.

1855: Bessemer steelmaking process patented.

1868: Canadian war heroine, Laura Secord, died.

1877: Brigadier General Alfred Terry meets with Sitting Bull, in Canada, to discuss the Indians' return to the United States.

1888: Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph [the first movie],

1907: Guglielmo Marconi's company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service, between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Clifden, Ireland.

1919: Radio Corporation of America (RCA) is created, as a subsidiary of General Electric.

1931: Gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison, for tax evasion, and fined $80,000, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals, of the 1920s and 1930s.

1933: Due to rising anti-Semitism, and anti-intellectualism, in Hitler's Germany, Albert Einstein immigrates to the United States. He makes his new home in Princeton, N.J.

1956: The nuclear power station Calder Hall, is opened in Britain. Calder Hall is the first nuclear station to feed an appreciable amount of power, into a civilian network.

1973: The Arab-dominated, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces a decision to cut oil exports to the United States and other nations that provided military aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. According to OPEC, exports were to be reduced by 5 percent, every month, until Israel evacuated the territories occupied in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. In December, a full oil embargo was imposed against the United States, and several other countries, prompting a serious energy crisis, in the United States, and other nations dependent on foreign oil. The embargo was lifted in March 1974.

1979: Mother Teresa, founder of a Roman Catholic order of women, dedicated to the poor, and particularly to the destitute of India, was named the recipient of that year's Nobel Prize, for Peace.
1979: Finnish race car driver, Kimi Räikkönen, born.

1986: In a short-lived victory, for the Nicaraguan policy of the Reagan administration, the President signs into law, an act of Congress, approving $100 million of military and “humanitarian” aid for the Contras. Unfortunately for Ronald Reagan, and his advisors, the Iran-Contra scandal is just about to break wide open, seriously compromising their goal of overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government, in Nicaragua.

1989: A 6.9 [Richter scale] earthquake hits Santa Cruz County, near the San Francisco Bay Area [Loma Prieta], killing 67 people, and causing more than $10 billion in damages. It was the first major earthquake, on the San Andreas fault, since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

2003: Pinnacle fitted on the roof of ‘Taipei 101', a 101-floor skyscraper, in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas ‘Twin Towers’, in Kuala Lumpur, by 50 meters (165 feet), to become World's tallest high-rise.

2018: Recreational marijuana [cannabis] became legal, in Canada; the second country, after Uruguay.

[GordMay]

October 18

1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, is destroyed, by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.

1356: Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event, north of the Alps, destroys Basel, in Switzerland.

1776: In a bar, decorated with bird tails, in Elmsford, New York, a customer requests a glassful of “those cock tails”, from bartender Betsy Flanagan.

1851: Herman Melville's classic novel, ‘Moby Dick’ was first published [as ‘The Whale’], in London.

1854: The ‘Ostend Manifesto’ was declared, by which three U.S. diplomats, communicating to Secretary of State William L. Marcy, advocated U.S. seizure of Cuba, from Spain.

1867: The U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska, after purchasing the territory from Russia, for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre.

1898: Puerto Rico was turned over to the United States, following the Spanish-American War.

1919: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, future prime minister of Canada, born.

1921: Charles Strite granted US patent #1,394,450, for his invention, the automatic pop-up toaster.

1922: The British Broadcasting Company, Ltd., was established, to be replaced by the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC], in 1927.

1926: Frankfurter Zeitung publishes Lenin's political testament.
➥ https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...amnt/index.htm
1926: Chuck Berry was born.

1931: Thomas Alva Edison dies, at the age of 84, in West Orange, New Jersey.

1939: Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, was born, in New Orleans.

1952: The first ‘Mad Magazine’ issued.

1954: Texas Instruments Inc. announces the first commercially sold [$49.95] transistor radio [‘Regency TR-1'].

1956: Martina Navratilova, Czechoslovakian-born tennis player, born.

1962: James Watson (US), Francis Crick (UK), and Maurice Wilkins (UK) win the Nobel Prize for Medicine, for their work in determining the structure of DNA
1962: US launches ‘Ranger 5', for lunar impact; but misses Moon by 450.5 miles.
➥ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/ranger-5

1967: An unmanned soviet capsule [‘Venus 4'] achieved a soft landing, on the planet Venus, and radioed back, that the planet is to hot for human life, with temperatures at 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

1972: US Clean Water Act becomes law.

1976: The funeral of Carlo Gambino, the 'boss of the bosses' in the Mafia, takes place, in New York.

2006: The Dow Jones industrial average passed 12,000, for the first time, before closing at 11,992.68.

[GordMay]

Hurricane Wilma [Oct. 17 to 26, 2005 is still the most intense Atlantic storm:

Hurricane ‘Wilma’ was a powerful Category 5 storm, that impacted areas of the Caribbean, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. It was a part of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. The season included Wilma, Rita, and Katrina, three of the most intense hurricanes, in the Atlantic Ocean.

On Oct. 13, 2005, the storm started to develop, from a low-pressure system, near Jamaica.
On Oct. 15, the system organized, and strengthened into Tropical Depression Twenty-Four.

On Oct. 17, the National Hurricane Center named the storm ‘Wilma’.

On Oct. 18, Wilma strengthened into a hurricane, and experienced an explosive deepening in the Caribbean Sea. Within 30 hours, Wilma's barometric pressure went from 982 mbar, to 882 mbar, making it the most intense hurricane in Atlantic history (based on pressure).

At its peak, Wilma's winds reached as high as 295 km/h. On Oct. 21, the hurricane struck the island of Cozumel, Quintana Roo, with 240 km/h winds. The same day, Wilma hit the Mexican mainland.

Wilma weakened over land, but re-intensified, as it travelled over the Gulf of Mexico. On Oct. 24, the hurricane hit Florida with 195 km/h.

On Oct. 26, Wilma weakened into an extratropical storm, near Nova Scotia. The next day, the system was absorbed by another storm over Atlantic Canada.

Aside from being the strongest storm in the Atlantic Ocean, Wilma set other records. While over Mexico, the hurricane brought 1,633.98 mm of rainfall, making it the highest 24-hour total rainfall, in the western hemisphere.

Wilma was also the first W-named storm, in the Atlantic basin, since naming began in 1950.

Overall, Florida and the U.S. received the worst impact from Wilma. In the States, the hurricane killed 30 people, and caused $21 billion in damages.
In total, Wilma killed 52 people and cost $22.4 billion.

[GordMay]

October 19

0202 BCE: Hannibal Barca, and the Carthaginian army, are defeated, in the battle of Zama, by Roman legions, under Scipio Africanus, ending 2nd Punic War.

0439: The Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, take Carthage, in North Africa.

1492: Christopher Columbus sights "Isabela", now Fortune Island/Long Cay, Bahamas.

1765: Stamp Act Congress meets, in New York City, writes the Declaration of Rights and Grievances.

1781: Hopelessly trapped at Yorktown, Virginia, British General Lord Cornwallis surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen, to to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution.

1789: John Jay, a Founding Father of the United States, was sworn in, as the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1796: An essay appears, in the Gazette of the United States, in which a writer, mysteriously named “Phocion” [Alexander Hamilton], attacks presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, accusing him of carrying on an affair, with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved workers. In 2000, a research report, issued by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, used DNA test results, original documents, oral histories, and statistical analysis of the historical record, to conclude that Thomas Jefferson was probably the father of Sally Hemings’s son Eston, and likely her other children.

1812: One month after Napoleon Bonaparte’s massive invading force entered a burning and deserted Moscow, the starving, and depleted French army is forced to begin a hasty retreat, out of Russia.

1870: British steamship SS “Cambria” wrecked, off the north-west of Ireland, with the loss of 178 lives.

1926: Russian Politburo throws out Leon Trotsky, and his followers.

1943: 'Streptomycin', the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated, by graduate student Albert Schatz, while working under Selman Abraham Waksman, at Rutgers University. Schatz later sued Waksman, to gain a portion of the profits, and notoriety, which came from the discovery. Waksman eventually received the Nobel Prize for the achievement. However, there was controversy, as the award went to Waksman only.

1951: US President Harry Truman formally ends state of war with Germany.

1952: Alain Bombard departs from the Canary Islands, on his solitary journey across the Atlantic ocean, with almost no provisions, and only a sextant for navigation, to test his theory that a shipwrecked person could survive.

1954: Egypt and Britain conclude a pact, on the Suez Canal, ending 72 years of British military occupation. Britain agrees to withdraw its 80,000-man force, within 20 months, and Egypt agrees to maintain freedom of canal navigation.
1954: Following a number of crashes of the ‘Comet’ aircraft [first commercial jet], it's certificate of airworthiness is withdrawn, while an inquiry into why the crashes occurred. The inquiry found the problems were most likely due to metal fatigue.

1957: Montreal Canadien Maurice "Rocket" Richard, becomes the 1st NHLer to score 500 goals.

1960: US imposes embargo, on exports to Cuba.

1973: President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court demand, to turn over the Watergate tapes.

1983: The Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, is executed, during a military coup d'état, led by Bernard Coard. Following the coup d'état, a four-day total curfew was put in place, in which, anyone seen outside their home, would be subject to summary execution.

1987: The largest-ever one-day percentage decline [‘Black Monday’], in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, comes, not in 1929, but on October 19, 1987. As a number of unrelated events conspired to tank global markets, the Dow dropped 508 points, or 22.6 percent [4½ times the previous daily record], in a panic that foreshadowed larger systemic issues. As it would again in 2008, the federal government took a number of measures, to “correct” the market.

2001: “SIEV-X”, an Indonesian fishing boat en-route from Bandar Lampung [Sumatra] to Christmas Island, carrying over 400 asylum seekers, sinks killing 353.

2003: Mother Teresa is beatified, by Pope John Paul II, for her work among "the poorest of the poor" in India.

2005: Former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein's, trail for crimes against humanity, begins in Baghdad.

2011: Google unveils Android version 4.0 code, named ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’, running on the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus mobile phone.

2014: A working human intestine is generated, in a laboratory, from stem cells, in the United States.

2015: US scientists, from University of California, find evidence life on earth may have begun 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million earlier than previously thought

2017: Outbreak of the 'Marburg' virus declared, by Uganda's Ministry of Health.

[GordMay]

October 20

0480: Greeks defeat the Persians, in a naval battle, at Salamis.

1774: The First Continental Congress [USA] creates the ‘Continental Association’, which calls for a complete ban on all trade between America and Great Britain, of all goods, wares or merchandise.

1803: U.S. Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.

1818: The United States and Britain establish the 49th Parallel, as the boundary between Canada and the United States.

1903: The Joint Commission, set up on January 24, by Great Britain and the United States, to arbitrate the disputed Alaskan boundary, rules in favor of the United States. The deciding vote is Britain's, which embitters Canada. The United States gains ports on the panhandle coast of Alaska.

1927: A new electrical machine, with a mechanical mind, has been perfected at Massachusetts Institute of Technology / MIT, by Professor Vannevar Bush, which can solve problems too complex for human engineers. The Product, a differential analyser, allows the mathematician/engineer to feed in the equation, and parts of the problem, which cannot be solved by formal mathematics. The machine can take from 8 minutes to several hours to provide the answer, which man alone can not solve today.

1947: The notorious ‘Red Scare’ kicks into high gear in Washington, as a Congressional committee [Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the House Un-American Activities Committee - HUAC] begins investigating Communist influence in one of the world’s richest and most glamorous communities: Hollywood. The house then pressured the Hollywood establishment to create a blacklist, of those not cleared by the committee, to ensure they did not obtain work.

1944: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Leyte, in the Philippines, fulfilling his promise, to return, to the area he was forced to flee, in 1942.

1968: Former first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis.

1973: During the ongoing Watergate investigation, U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired, resulting in the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, both of whom refused to carry out his request; the events became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” of Justice Department officials. Solicitor General Robert Bork dismisses Cox.
1973: After 15 years of construction, the Sydney Opera House is dedicated, by Queen Elizabeth II. The $80 million structure, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, and funded by the profits of the Opera House Lotteries, was built on Bennelong Point, in Sydney, Australia.

1984: English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, Paul Dirac dies.

2011: Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi is killed, in his hometown of Sirte, by rebel forces, following a revolt that received international [Nato] military assistance.

[GordMay]

October 21

0335: Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great rules that Jews are not allowed to purchase and circumcise Christian slaves.

1512: Martin Luther joins the theological faculty, of the University of Wittenberg.

1520: Explorer Ferdinand Magellan, and three Spanish ships, entered the strait later named for him, sailing between the mainland tip of South America, and the island of Tierra del Fuego, reaching Cape Virgenes, and becoming the first Europeans to sail into the Pacific Ocean.

1639: Sea battle at Dunes, Lt Admiral Maarten Tromp defeats Spanish armada, under De Oquendo.

1772: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet [‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Kubla Khan’], is born.

1790: The Tricolor is chosen as the official flag of France.

1797: One of the first frigates built for the U.S. Navy, the “Constitution” [“Old Ironsides”] was launched, in Boston.

1803: English scientist, John Dalton reads his paper, on the absorption of gases by water, to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society - 1st outline of his atomic theory.

1805: In one of the most decisive naval battles in history, a British fleet, of 27 ships, under Vice-Admiral [Viscount] Lord Nelson, defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet, of 33 ships [18 French + 15 Spanish], under Admiral Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve, at the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Spain. Nelson is fatally wounded in the battle, but lives long enough to see victory.

1824; Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement [Yorkshire, England].

1833: Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite and other more powerful explosives, and who also founded the Nobel Prizes, was born in Stockholm.

1836: After helping defeat Mexico in the Texas Revolution, Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of Texas.

1879: After 14 months of testing, Thomas Edison first demonstrates his electric lamp, hoping to one day compete with gaslight.

1934: Infamous criminal Charles [‘Pretty Boy’] Floyd was fatally shot, in a field near East Liverpool, Ohio, by FBI agents.

1960: 1st British nuclear sub, HMS “Dreadnought” launched.

1962: 1962, President John F. Kennedy alerted Americans to the Cuban missile crisis, declaring a naval blockade, to prevent further missile shipments, to the island country, 90 miles (145 km) off the coast of the U.S.

1964: French philosopher and writer, Jean-Paul Sartre was announced the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; however, he became the first person to decline the award.

1966: A landslide, of coal waste, crashes into the small Welsh mining village of Aberfan, killing 116 children and 28 adults. The accident left just five survivors, and wiped out half the town’s youth. The Aberfan disaster became one of the UK’s worst coal mining accidents.

1983: The United States sends a ten-ship task force to Grenada.

1988: Philippine former first couple, Ferdinand & Imelda Marcos, indicted on racketeering charges.

2008: ‘Chandrayaan-1', India's first lunar space probe, was launched, and it later found water in the Moon's atmosphere.

2010: ‘WikiLeaks’, a website founded by Julian Assange, that functioned as a clearinghouse for classified, or otherwise privileged information, released thousands of U.S. documents, relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.