- AD 97 – Emperor Nerva is forced by the Praetorian Guard to adopt general Marcus Ulpius Trajanus as his heir and successor.
- 306 – Maxentius is proclaimed Roman emperor.
- 312 – Constantine I defeats Maxentius, becoming the sole Roman emperor in the West.
- 969 – The Byzantine Empire recovers Antioch from Arab rule.
- 1344 – The lower town of Smyrna is captured by Crusaders in response to Aydınid piracy.
- 1420 – Beijing is officially designated the capital of the Ming dynasty when the Forbidden City is completed.
- 1449 – Christian I is crowned king of Denmark.
- 1453 – Ladislaus the Posthumous is crowned king of Bohemia in Prague.
- 1492 – Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba on his first voyage to the New World.
- 1516 – Second Ottoman–Mamluk War: Mamluks fail to stop the Ottoman advance towards Egypt at the Battle of Yaunis Khan.
- 1531 – Abyssinian–Adal war: The Adal Sultanate seizes southern Ethiopia.
- 1538 – The Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino is founded in what is now the Dominican Republic.
- 1628 – French Wars of Religion: The Siege of La Rochelle ends with the surrender of the Huguenots after fourteen months.
- 1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony votes to establish a theological college, which would later become Harvard University.
- 1664 – The Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot, later to be known as the Royal Marines, is established.
- 1707 – The 1707 Hōei earthquake causes more than 5,000 deaths in Japan.
- 1726 – The novel Gulliver’s Travels is published.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British troops attack and capture Chatterton Hill from the Continental Army.
- 1834 – The Pinjarra massacre occurs in the Swan River Colony. An estimated 30 Noongar people are killed by British colonists.
- 1835 – The United Tribes of New Zealand are established with the signature of the Declaration of Independence.
- 1864 – American Civil War: A Union attack on the Confederate capital is repulsed.
- 1886 – US president Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.
- 1891 – The Mino–Owari earthquake is the largest inland earthquake in Japan’s history.
- 1893 – Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique receives its première performance only nine days before the composer’s death.
- 1904 – Fingerprints method was tried by St Louis police in their investigation for the first time.
- 1918 – World War I: A new Polish government in western Galicia is established, triggering the Polish–Ukrainian War.
- 1918 – World War I: Czech politicians peacefully take over the city of Prague, thus establishing the First Czechoslovak Republic.[1]
- 1919 – The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson’s veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.
- 1922 – Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.
- 1928 – The “Indonesia Raya“, now the national anthem, is first played during the Second Indonesian Youth Congress.
- 1940 – World War II: Greece rejects Italy’s ultimatum. Italy invades Greece through Albania a few hours later.
- 1942 – The Alaska Highway first connects Alaska to the North American railway network at Dawson Creek in Canada.
- 1948 – Paul Hermann Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.
- 1949 – An Air France Lockheed Constellation crashes in the Azores, killing all 48 people on board.
- 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: A de facto ceasefire comes into effect between armed revolutionaries and Soviet troops, who begin to withdraw from Budapest. Communist officials and facilities come under attack by revolutionaries.
- 1958 – John XXIII is elected Pope.
- 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
- 1965 – Pope Paul VI promulgates Nostra aetate, by which the Church officially recognizes the legitimacy of non-Christian faiths.
- 1971 – Prospero becomes the only British satellite to be launched by a British rocket.
- 1982 – The Spanish general election begins fourteen years of rule by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.
- 1990 – Georgia holds its only free election under Soviet rule.
- 1995 – The Baku Metro fire sees 289 people killed and 270 injured.
- 2005 – I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is indicted due to his involvement in the Plame affair.
- 2006 – A funeral service takes place at the Bykivnia graves for those Ukrainians who were killed by the Soviet secret police.
- 2007 – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first directly elected female President of Argentina.
- 2009 – The 28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing kills 117 and wounds 213.
- 2009 – NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X mission, the only rocket launch for its short-lived Constellation program.
- 2013 – Five people are killed and 38 are injured after a car crashes into barriers at the Tiananmen Square in China.
- 2014 – A rocket carrying NASA’s Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia.
-Source: wikipedia
