- 285 (or 286) – Execution of Saints Crispin and Crispinian during the reign of Diocletian, now the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers.
- 473 – Emperor Leo I acclaims his grandson Leo II as Caesar of the East Roman Empire.
- 1147 – Seljuk Turks defeat German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
- 1147 – Reconquista: After a siege of four months, crusader knights reconquer Lisbon.
- 1415 – Hundred Years’ War: Henry V of England, with his lightly armoured infantry and archers, defeats the heavily armoured French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt.
- 1616 – Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.
- 1747 – War of the Austrian Succession: A British fleet under Admiral Edward Hawke defeats the French at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre.
- 1760 – King George III succeeds to the British throne on the death of his grandfather George II.[1]
- 1812 – War of 1812: The American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.
- 1822 – Greek War of Independence: The First Siege of Missolonghi begins.
- 1854 – The Battle of Balaclava takes place during the Crimean War. It is soon memorialized in verse as The Charge of the Light Brigade.
- 1861 – The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.
- 1900 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
- 1917 – Old Style date of the October Revolution in Russia.
- 1920 – After 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies.
- 1924 – The Zinoviev letter, which Zinoviev himself denied writing, is published in the Daily Mail; the Labour party would later blame this letter for the Conservatives’ landslide election win four days later.
- 1927 – The Italian luxury liner SS Principessa Mafalda sinks off the coast of Brazil, killing 314.
- 1940 – Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.
- 1944 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
- 1944 – World War II: The USS Tang under Richard O’Kane (the top American submarine ace of the war) is sunk by the ship’s own malfunctioning torpedo.
- 1944 – World War II: The final attempt of the Imperial Japanese Navy to win the war climaxes at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
- 1945 – Fifty years of Japanese administration of Taiwan formally ends when the Republic of China assumes control.
- 1949 – The Battle of Guningtou in the Taiwan Strait begins.
- 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
- 1971 – The People’s Republic of China replaces the Republic of China at the United Nations.
- 1973 – Egypt and Israel accept United Nations Security Council Resolution 339.
- 1980 – Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude.
- 1983 – The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d’état.
- 1995 – A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
- 1997 – After a civil war, Denis Sassou Nguesso proclaims himself President of the Republic of the Congo.
- 2009 – The October 2009 Baghdad bombings kill 155 and wound at least 721.
-Source: wikipedia
