Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 20

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This is a list of selected October 20 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← October 19	October 21 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

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  Douglas MacArthur and staff arrive at Leyte
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  Maria Theresa of Austria
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  Monument to the R-13, the first armed submarine-launched ballistic missile
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  Naval Battle of Navarino by Garneray
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  Sydney Opera House

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
1827 – An allied British, French, and Russian naval force destroyed a combined Ottoman and Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino, a decisive moment in the Greek War of Independence.	refimprove sections
1883 – Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, ending Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.	War featured on March 23; Treaty is unreferenced stub
1939 – Pope Pius XII published his first major encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, seen as setting a tone for his papacy.	lead too short
1991 – An urban fire killed 25 people, injured 150 others, and destroyed over 3,000 homes in the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, California.	refimprove section

Eligible

• 1572 – Eighty Years' War: Soldiers of the Spanish Tercios waded across the river Scheldt at its mouth, walking overnight in water to chest height, to relieve the siege of Goes in the Spanish Netherlands.
• 1941 – World War II: German soldiers began a massacre of thousands of civilians in Kragujevac in Nazi-occupied Serbia.
• 1951 – African-American college football player Johnny Bright was the victim of an on-field assault that eventually provoked changes in NCAA football rules and mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.
• 1967 – Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin filmed an unidentified subject at Six Rivers National Forest in California who they claimed was a Bigfoot.
• 1973 – Elizabeth II, in her capacity as Queen of Australia, formally opened the Sydney Opera House on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour.
• 1977 – Three members of the American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd died when their chartered plane crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi.
• 2011 – Libyan Civil War: Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, was captured during the Battle of Sirte and killed less than an hour later.

Notes

• Estadio Mateo Flores (site of another human stampede) appears on October 16, so Luzhniki disaster should not appear in the same year

October 20: Birth of the Báb, a holy day in the Bahá'í Faith

Maria Theresa of Austria

• 1740 – Under 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 Rocky Mountains and Lake of the Woods.
• 1944 – World War II: Fulfilling a promise he made two years previously, General Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte to begin the recapture of the entire Philippine Archipelago.
• 1961 – The Soviet Union performed the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf class submarine.
• 1982 – During a UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, a large number of attendees tried to leave the Grand Sports Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium at the same time, resulting in a stampede that caused 66 deaths.

More anniversaries:

• October 19
• October 20
• October 21