Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October
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October 1: Independence Day in Cyprus and Nigeria (both 1960), Tuvalu (1978) and Palau (1994); Unification Day in Cameroon (1961); National Day in the People's Republic of China (1949)
- 1890 – At the urging of preservationist John Muir and writer Robert Underwood Johnson, the United States Congress established Yosemite National Park (Yosemite Valley pictured) in California.
- 1946 – Mensa, the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world, was formed in the United Kingdom.
- 1961 – The southern portion of British Cameroons merged with Cameroun to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.
- 1987 – Denmark became the first country to legalise civil unions between same-sex couples.
- 1991 – New Zealand's Resource Management Act came into effect, regulating access to natural and physical resources such as land, air and water, to ensure their sustainable use.
More anniversaries: September 30 – October 1 – October 2
October 2: Independence Day in Guinea (1958)
- 1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier (pictured) sailed along the St. Lawrence River and reached the Iroquois fortified village Hochelaga on the island now known as Montreal.
- 1835 – Mexican dragoons dispatched to disarm settlers at Gonzales, Texas, encountered stiff resistance from a Texian militia in the Battle of Gonzales, the first armed engagement of the Texas Revolution.
- 1950 – Peanuts, the syndicated comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, featuring Charlie Brown and his pet Snoopy, was first published in major newspapers.
- 1968 – A peaceful student demonstration in Tlatelolco (Mexico City) ended when army and police forces began firing into the crowd.
- 2009 – During the 121st Session of the International Olympic Committee, Rio de Janeiro was elected to be the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
More anniversaries: October 1 – October 2 – October 3
October 3: Labour Day in Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and South Australia (2011); National Foundation Day in South Korea
- 1918 – World War I: Following his armed forces' defeat to the Allied Powers, Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his son Boris III (pictured).
- 1951 – Korean War: The First Battle of Maryang San, primarily pitting Australian and British forces against communist China, began.
- 1981 – The hunger strike by Irish Republican Army prisoners at the Maze jail in Belfast ended after seven months and 10 deaths.
- 1990 – East and West Germany officially joined to form the first fully sovereign united German state since the end of World War II.
- 2003 – Roy Horn of the American entertainment duo of Siegfried & Roy was mauled by a tiger during a performance at The Mirage hotel and casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip.
More anniversaries: October 2 – October 3 – October 4
October 4: Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi (Catholicism); Independence Day in Lesotho (1966)
- 1824 – Mexico enacted its first constitution, defining the nation as a federal republic.
- 1957 – Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1 (replica pictured), the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR.
- 1967 – Hassanal Bolkiah became Sultan of Brunei upon the abdication of his father, Omar Ali Saifuddien III.
- 1997 – Armored car driver David Ghantt stole $17.3 million from his employer, one of the largest cash robberies in U.S. history.
- 2003 – A suicide bomber killed 21 people and injured more than 50 others inside the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, Israel.
More anniversaries: October 3 – October 4 – October 5
October 5: Republic Day in Portugal (1910)
- 610 – Heraclius was crowned Byzantine Emperor, after having personally beheaded the previous emperor Phocas.
- 1789 – French Revolution: Upset about the high price and scarcity of bread, thousands of Parisian women and their various allies (pictured) marched on the royal palace at Versailles.
- 1908 – Prince Ferdinand became the first Tsar of Bulgaria since the Ottoman invasion in the 14th century.
- 1962 – Dr. No, the first in the James Bond film series, was released.
- 1973 – Seven nations signed the European Patent Convention, providing an autonomous legal system according to which European patents are granted.
More anniversaries: October 4 – October 5 – October 6
- 69 BC – Third Mithridatic War: Forces of the Roman Republic captured the Armenian capital city Tigranakert.
- 1683 – German immigrants to the Pennsylvania Colony founded Germantown, the first permanent German settlement in North America.
- 1976 – Two bombs placed by CIA-linked anti-Castro Cuban exiles exploded aboard Cubana Flight 455, killing all 78 aboard.
- 1981 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (pictured) was assassinated while attending a parade in Cairo to mark the eighth anniversary of the Crossing of the Bar Lev Line at the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
- 1985 – Police constable Keith Blakelock was killed during rioting in the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, London.
More anniversaries: October 5 – October 6 – October 7
October 7: Feast Day of St. Osyth; Yom Kippur begins at sunset (Judaism, 2011)
- 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: A Venetian army under Bartolomeo d'Alviano (pictured) was decisively defeated by the Spanish army commanded by Ramón de Cardona and Fernando d'Avalos.
- 1571 – A Western Christian coalition inflicted a significant defeat upon the Ottoman Navy near the Gulf of Corinth in the Battle of Lepanto, the first major Ottoman loss to European powers.
- 1868 – Cornell University in Ithaca, New York opened, with an initial enrollment of 412 students the next day.
- 1933 – Five French airline companies merged to form Air France.
- 2003 – Californians voted to recall Governor Gray Davis from office and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger from a list of 135 candidates.
More anniversaries: October 6 – October 7 – October 8
October 8: Yom Kippur ends at nightfall (Judaism, 2011); Independence Day in Croatia (1991);
- 451 – The Council of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council in Christianity, opened. It repudiated the Eutychian doctrine of monophysitism, and set forth the Chalcedonian Creed.
- 1076 – Demetrius Zvonimir, the last native king who exerted any real power over the entire Croatian state, was crowned.
- 1897 – Composer Gustav Mahler (pictured) was appointed the director of the Vienna Court Opera.
- 1967 – Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader Che Guevara was captured near La Higuera, Bolivia.
- 2001 – At Linate Airport in Milan, Italy, Scandinavian Airlines Flight SK686 collided on take-off with a Cessna Citation II business jet, killing 118 people.
More anniversaries: October 7 – October 8 – October 9
October 9: Hangul Day in South Korea (1446); Leif Erikson Day in the United States
- 1446 – Scholars in the court of Sejong the Great promulgated the new Korean alphabet, now known as Hangul.
- 1514 – Mary Tudor (pictured), sister of Henry VIII of England, became queen consort of France.
- 1874 – The Universal Postal Union, then known as the General Postal Union, was established with the signing of the Treaty of Bern to unify disparate postal services and regulations so that international mail could be exchanged freely.
- 1888 – The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at the time the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public.
- 1983 – South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan survived an assassination attempt in Rangoon, Burma.
More anniversaries: October 8 – October 9 – October 10
October 10: Thanksgiving in Canada (2011); National Day in Fiji (1970); Health and Sports Day in Japan (2011); Double Ten Day in the Republic of China (Taiwan); Columbus Day in the United States (2011)
- 680 – Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad, was killed in the Battle of Karbala by the forces of Yazid I, whom Hussein had refused to recognise as caliph.
- 732 – Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a large Andalusian Muslim army led by Abd er Rahman at the Battle of Tours (pictured) near Tours and Poitiers.
- 1845 – The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, opened with 50 midshipmen students.
- 1868 – Carlos Manuel de Céspedes made the Grito de Yara, declaring Cuban independence from Spain, sparking the Ten Years' War.
- 1928 – General Chiang Kai-shek was named to be Chairman of the National Military Council, giving him leadership of the Republic of China.
- 1982 – Maximilian Kolbe, who had volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland, was canonized by the Catholic Church.
More anniversaries: October 9 – October 10 – October 11
October 11: National Coming Out Day
- 1531 – Huldrych Zwingli, a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, was killed in battle in the Second War of Kappel.
- 1634 – A storm tide on the coast of North Frisia caused a massive flood that killed at least 8,000 people and split the island of Strand into three smaller islands.
- 1852 – The University of Sydney (pictured), Australia's oldest university, was inaugurated in Sydney two years after the New South Wales Legislative Council established it with the passage of the University of Sydney Act.
- 1941 – Armed insurgents from the People's Liberation Army of Macedonia attacked Axis occupied zones in the city of Prilep, beginning the National Liberation War of Macedonia.
- 1942 – World War II: At the Battle of Cape Esperance on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, American ships intercepted and defeated a Japanese fleet on their way to destroy Henderson Field.
More anniversaries: October 10 – October 11 – October 12
October 12: Columbus celebrations in various countries in the Americas; Sukkot begins at sunset (Judaism, 2011); National Day in Equatorial Guinea (1968) and Spain (1492); Our Lady Aparecida's Day and Children's Day in Brazil
- 1492 – Believing he had reached the East Indies, Christopher Columbus (pictured) made landfall on an island in the Caribbean, sparking a series of events that led to the European colonization of the Americas.
- 1964 – The Soviet Voskhod 1 mission became the first multi-person space flight as well as the first without spacesuits.
- 1988 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Indian troops mounted a failed assault on Jaffna University, which served as the Tamil Tigers' military headquarters.
- 1999 – Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf led a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
- 2002 – A series of bombs planted by Islamist militant group Jemaah Islamiyah exploded in Bali, Indonesia, killing 202 people and injuring 209 others.
More anniversaries: October 11 – October 12 – October 13
- 1710 – Queen Anne's War: The French surrender ending the Siege of Port Royal gave the British permanent possession of Nova Scotia.
- 1773 – French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy, an interacting, grand-design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici.
- 1843 – B'nai B'rith, the oldest continually operating Jewish service organization in the world, was founded in New York City.
- 1917 – At least 30,000 people in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal, witnessed the "Miracle of the Sun".
- 2010 – A live television audience of over 1 billion viewers watched as 33 miners were rescued (pictured) following a cave-in at the San José Mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
More anniversaries: October 12 – October 13 – October 14
October 14: Teachers' Day in Poland
- 1888 – French inventor Louis Le Prince (pictured) filmed Roundhay Garden Scene, the earliest surviving motion picture, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
- 1912 – Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was shot in an assassination attempt, but delivered a speech before receiving treatment from John Benjamin Murphy.
- 1926 – The first book featuring English author A. A. Milne's fictional bear Winnie-the-Pooh was first published.
- 1956 – B. R. Ambedkar, a leader of India's "Untouchable" caste, publicly converted to Buddhism, becoming the leader of the Dalit Buddhist movement.
- 1964 – Leonid Brezhnev succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
More anniversaries: October 13 – October 14 – October 15
October 15: Teachers' Day in Brazil; Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day in Canada and the United States; National Tree Planting Day in Sri Lanka
- 1529 – The Siege of Vienna ended as the Austrians repelled the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
- 1917 – Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (pictured) was executed by a firing squad for spying for Germany.
- 1951 – Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducted the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first two oral contraceptives.
- 1966 – The Black Panther Party, a Marxist/Maoist African-American organization that promoted Black Power and self-defense in the United States, was founded in Oakland, California.
- 2003 – Chinese space program: Shenzhou 5, China's first manned space mission, was launched, carrying astronaut Yang Liwei.
More anniversaries: October 14 – October 15 – October 16
- 456 – Magister militum Ricimer defeated Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became master of the Western Roman Empire.
- 1793 – Marie Antoinette, queen consort of Louis XVI, was guillotined at the Place de la Révolution in Paris at the height of the French Revolution.
- 1834 – Most of the Palace of Westminster in London was destroyed in a fire.
- 1916 – Margaret Sanger (pictured) established the United States' first family planning clinic in Brooklyn, New York.
- 1934 – Long March: Surrounded by Kuomintang troops, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu, and Otto Braun led a breakout of 130,000 Red Army soldiers and civilians from Jiangxi.
- 1986 – Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner made his ascent of Lhotse, making him the first person to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders".
More anniversaries: October 15 – October 16 – October 17
October 17: Dessalines Day in Haiti (1806)
- 1931 – American gangster Al Capone (pictured) was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion.
- 1956 – Queen Elizabeth II opened the world's first commercial nuclear power plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, England.
- 1964 – Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies opened the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the middle of the capital Canberra.
- 1989 – The 6.9 Mw Loma Prieta earthquake struck California's San Francisco Bay Area, killing 63 people, injuring 3,757, and leaving at least 8,000 homeless.
- 2010 – Mary MacKillop was canonised to become the only Australian to date to be recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint.
More anniversaries: October 16 – October 17 – October 18
October 18: Feast day of Saint Luke
- 1386 – A special Pontifical High Mass in the Church of the Holy Spirit commemorated the opening of Heidelberg University.
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: In an act of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the war, the Royal Navy destroyed what is now Portland, Maine.
- 1967 – The Soviet space probe Venera 4 (pictured) performed direct analysis of the environment of Venus and became the first spacecraft to land on another planet, although it stopped working before that.
- 1968 – At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American Bob Beamon set a world record of 8.90 m in the long jump, a mark that stood for 23 years.
- 1991 – The Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
More anniversaries: October 17 – October 18 – October 19
October 19: Hoshana Rabbah (Judaism, 2011); Shemini Atzeret begins at sunset (Judaism, 2011); Mother Teresa Day in Albania
- 1789 – John Jay (pictured) was sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.
- 1914 – First World War: Allied forces engaged German troops in the First Battle of Ypres.
- 1950 – The Chinese Army captured the town of Qamdo as part of China's plan to take control of Tibet.
- 1987 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22.6% on Black Monday, at the time one of the largest one-day percentage declines in stock market history.
- 2004 – Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan was abducted in Baghdad by unidentified kidnappers, who murdered her about four weeks later.
More anniversaries: October 18 – October 19 – October 20
October 20: Birth of the Báb, a holy day in the Bahá'í Faith; Simchat Torah (Judaism, 2011)
- 1740 – Per the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, Maria Theresa (pictured) assumed the throne of the Habsburg Monarchy in Austria.
- 1818 – The United Kingdom and the United States signed the Treaty of 1818, which settled the Canada – United States border on the 49th parallel between the Pacific Ocean and Lake of the Woods.
- 1917 – The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparing for and carrying out the Russian Revolution, held its first meeting.
- 1939 – Pope Pius XII published his first major encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, seen as setting a tone for his papacy.
- 1941 – World War II: German soldiers began a massacre of thousands of civilians in Kragujevac in Nazi-occupied Serbia.
More anniversaries: October 19 – October 20 – October 21
October 21: Trafalgar Day in various Commonwealth countries
- 1096 – The Seljuk forces of Kilij Arslan destroyed the army of the People's Crusade as it marched toward Nicaea.
- 1520 – The islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon were discovered by Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes, who named them "Islands of the 11,000 Virgins".
- 1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Lord Nelson signalled "England expects that every man will do his duty" to the rest of his Royal Navy forces before they defeated Pierre-Charles Villeneuve and his combined French and Spanish navy at the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain's Cape Trafalgar.
- 1959 – The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (pictured), designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, opened in New York City.
- 1978 – After reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft, Frederick Valentich disappeared in unexplained circumstances while piloting a Cessna 182L light aircraft over the Bass Strait to King Island, Australia.
More anniversaries: October 20 – October 21 – October 22
- 1707 – In one of the greatest maritime disasters in the history of the British Isles, more than 1,400 sailors on four Royal Navy ships were lost in stormy weather off the Isles of Scilly.
- 1879 – Thomas Edison performed a successful test using a carbon filament thread in an incandescent light bulb (pictured), which would become the most successful version of the product.
- 1907 – A bank run forced New York's Knickerbocker Trust Company to suspend operations, which triggered the Panic of 1907.
- 1962 – Cold War: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced that Soviet nuclear weapons had been discovered in Cuba and that he had ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.
- 2008 – India launched Chandrayaan-1, the country's first unmanned lunar mission.
More anniversaries: October 21 – October 22 – October 23
October 23: National Day in Hungary (1956); Mole Day
- 1641 – Irish Catholic gentry in Ulster tried to seize control of Dublin Castle, the seat of English rule in Ireland to force concessions to Catholics.
- 1850 – The first National Women's Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, US, to further the cause of women's rights.
- 1956 – The Hungarian Revolution began as a peaceful student demonstration which attracted thousands as it marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building.
- 1983 – Lebanese Civil War: Suicide bombers destroyed two barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French paratroopers of the international peacekeeping force.
- 2001 – The iPod (pictured), the line of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple, was launched.
More anniversaries: October 22 – October 23 – October 24
October 24: United Nations Day (1945); Labour Day in New Zealand (2011); Independence Day in Zambia (1964)
- 1260 – Qutuz, Mamluk sultan of Egypt, was assassinated by a fellow Mamluk leader, Baibars, who then seized power for himself.
- 1851 – William Lassell discovered the Uranian moons Umbriel and Ariel.
- 1912 – First Balkan War: Serbian forces defeated the Ottoman army at the Battle of Kumanovo in Vardar Macedonia.
- 1944 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese battleship Musashi, one of the heaviest and most powerfully armed ever constructed, was sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
- 1949 – The cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters (pictured) building in New York City was laid.
More anniversaries: October 23 – October 24 – October 25
October 25: Constitution Day in Lithuania; Retrocession Day in the Republic of China (Taiwan); Armed Forces Day in Romania
- 1616 – The Dutch sailing ship Eendracht reached Shark Bay on the western coastline of Australia, as documented on the Hartog Plate etched by explorer Dirk Hartog.
- 1861 – The Toronto Stock Exchange, the stock exchange with the most mining and petrochemical companies listed in the world, was established.
- 1875 – The first performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, one of his most popular compositions, was given in Boston with Hans von Bülow (pictured) as soloist.
- 1920 – Irish playwright and politician Terence MacSwiney died after 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, bringing the Irish struggle for independence to international attention.
- 1983 – The United States and Caribbean allies invaded Grenada, six days after Bernard Coard seized power in a violent coup d'état.
More anniversaries: October 24 – October 25 – October 26
October 26: Diwali (Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism, 2011); National Day in Austria (1955); Angam Day in Nauru; feast day of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki
- 1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, one of the most famous gunfights in the history of the American Old West, took place in Tombstone, Arizona, between the faction of Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton's gang.
- 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy won a Pyrrhic victory in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
- 1947 – Maharaja Hari Singh, ruler of Kashmir and Jammu, executed the Instrument of Accession to accede the princely state to the newly created India.
- 1985 – The Australian government returned ownership of Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, to the local Pitjantjatjara people.
- 2000 – Laurent Gbagbo (pictured) became the first President of Côte d'Ivoire since Robert Guéï was thrown out of power during the 1999 Ivorian coup d'état.
More anniversaries: October 25 – October 26 – October 27
- 1838 – Governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, ordering all Mormons to leave the state or be killed.
- 1916 – Supporters of deposed Ethiopian Emperor-designate Iyasu V were defeated at the Battle of Segale, ending their attempt to restore him to the throne.
- 1944 – World War II: German forces captured Banská Bystrica, the center of anti-Nazi opposition in Slovakia, bringing the Slovak National Uprising to an end.
- 1958 – General Ayub Khan (pictured) deposed Iskander Mirza in a bloodless coup d'état to become the second President of Pakistan, less than three weeks after Mirza had appointed him the enforcer of martial law.
- 1981 – Cold War: Soviet Whiskey-class submarine U 137 ran aground near Sweden's Karlskrona naval base, sparking an international incident termed "Whiskey on the rocks".
More anniversaries: October 26 – October 27 – October 28
October 28: Feast day of Simon the Zealot (Western Christianity)
- 1664 – The Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, the forerunner to the Royal Marines, was established at the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company in London.
- 1835 – Māori chiefs signed the Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand and established the United Tribes of New Zealand.
- 1928 – Indonesian composer Wage Rudolf Supratman introduced "Indonesia Raya", now the country's national anthem.
- 1965 – In St. Louis, Missouri, the 630-foot (190 m) tall parabolic steel Gateway Arch (pictured) was completed.
- 1995 – The world's deadliest subway disaster took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, when an electrical malfunction caused a fire that killed 289 passengers and injured 265 more.
More anniversaries: October 27 – October 28 – October 29
October 29: Republic Day in Turkey (1923)
- 1929 – About 16 million shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange on "Black Tuesday", a record that stood for almost 40 years, making a total of $30 billion that had been lost over two days.
- 1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opened the last segment of the M25 motorway, an orbital road encircling London that is one of the world's longest.
- 1991 – Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra (pictured).
- 1998 – Four teenagers who were denied entry to a disco in Gothenburg, Sweden, set it on fire, killing 63 patrons and injuring over 200 others.
- 1999 – About 15,000 people died when a supercyclone hit the Indian state of Orissa near the city of Bhubaneswar.
More anniversaries: October 28 – October 29 – October 30
October 30: Mischief Night in some areas of the United States; Thevar Jayanthi in Tamil Nadu, India
- 1226 – Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forced Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.
- 1863 – Seventeen-year-old Danish Prince Vilhelm arrived in Athens to become George I (pictured), King of Greece.
- 1960 – Surgeon and scientist Michael Woodruff performed the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
- 1961 – The Soviet hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, was set off over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Ocean as a test.
- 1991 – The Madrid Conference, an attempt by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving Israel and the Arab countries, convened in Madrid.
- 1995 – In a referendum, 50.58 percent of voters supported the province of Quebec remaining a part of Canada, narrowly averting sovereignty.
More anniversaries: October 29 – October 30 – October 31
October 31: Halloween; Samhain begins; Reformation Day in Protestantism
- 1517 – According to traditional accounts, Martin Luther first posted his Ninety-Five Theses onto the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, present-day Germany, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
- 1864 – Nevada was admitted as the 36th U.S. state, in part to help ensure Abraham Lincoln's re-election as President of the United States eight days later.
- 1941 – More than 101 crew members of the USS Reuben James (pictured) perished when their vessel became the first United States Navy ship sunk by hostile action during World War II after it was torpedoed by the German submarine U-552.
- 1973 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escaped from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin after a hijacked helicopter landed in the prison's exercise yard.
- 1999 – All 217 people on board EgyptAir Flight 990 were killed when the aircraft suddenly plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
More anniversaries: October 30 – October 31 – November 1
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 17:17 on Sunday, February 12, 2012 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
