This day in history – October 26
If you're a history buff, this is the perfect place to find out what happened on this day in history - October 26.
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• 740 An earthquake strikes Constantinople, causing damage to city walls and buildings.
• 1407 Mobs attack Jewish community of Kraków.
• 1492 Lead (graphite) pencils first used.
• 1524 Spanish troops give Milan to France.
• 1529 Sir Thomas More appointed Lord Chancellor of England.
• 1749 Georgia Colony reverses itself and rules slavery is legal.
• 1774 First Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia.
• 1776 Benjamin Franklin departs for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
• 1795 The Directoire, a five-man revolutionary government of France, is created.
• 1822 King Willem I requires inhabitants of Brussels to use Dutch language.
• 1830 Belgian rebels occupy Antwerp.
• 1850 Robert McClure sights the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time (from Banks Island towards Melville Island).
• 1858 Hamilton Smith patents rotary washing machine.
• 1859 The steam clipper Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, north Wales with 459 dead.
• 1861 Pony Express (Missouri to California) ends after 19 months.
• 1863 International conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields – beginning of the Red Cross.
• 1863 Football Association forms in England, standardising soccer, splitting with rugby.
• 1864 Union troops ambush & kill ‘Bloody’ Bill Anderson near Albany, Missouri.
• 1881 Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Clanton involved in gunfight at OK Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona.
• 1896 Abyssinia & Italy sign peace treaty.
• 1901 First recorded use of “getaway car” occurs after holding up a shop in Paris.
• 1905 Union of Sweden & Norway ends.
• 1909 It? Hirobumi, Resident-General of Korea, and former Japanese Prime Minister, shot and killed by Korean nationalist in Harbin, China.
• 1912 Serbian troops over run Skopje (Uskup).
• 1912 Woolwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames river in England opens.
• 1913 José Victoriano Huerta Márquez elected president of Mexico.
• 1916 Margaret Sanger arrested for obscenity (advocating birth control).
• 1917 World War I: Brazil declared in state of war with Central Powers.
• 1918 Cecil Chubb gives prehistoric monument Stonehenge to the British nation.
• 1918 Germany’s supreme commander General Eric Ludendorff resigns, protesting the terms to which the German Government has agreed in negotiating an armistice.
• 1919 US President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of Prohibition Enforcement Bill is overridden.
• 1921 Solomon Porter Hood named US minister to Liberia.
• 1922 Italian government resigns under pressure from fascists and Benito Mussolini.
• 1939 Polish Jews forced into obligatory work service.
• 1940 The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.
• 1942 Fourth day of battle at El Alamein: Australian breakthrough.
• 1942 Battle of Santa Cruz: Japanese naval offensive against US forces near Solomon Islands.
• 1943 World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 “Pfeil”.
• 1947 Maharajah of Jammu & Kashmir accedes to India.
• 1947 The British military occupation ends in Iraq.
• 1949 US President Harry Truman increases minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents.
• 1950 Mother Teresa founds Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.
• 1951 Rocky Marciano defeats Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden
• 1951 Winston Churchill re-elected British Prime Minister at the age of 86
• 1954 Chevrolet unveils V-8 engine
• 1954 Walt Disney’s first television programme, “Disneyland”, premieres on ABC
• 1955 British troops occupy Saudi Arabian oil field at Boeraimi.
• 1955 Ngô ?ình Di?m proclaims Vietnam a republic with himself as President.
• 1956 UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency statute approved.
• 1956 Vietnam promulgates its constitution.
• 1961 First test flight of Saturn launch vehicle
• 1962 Nikita Khrushchev sends note to JFK offering to withdraw his missiles from Cuba if US closed its bases in Turkey: offer is rejected
• 1964 Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed.
• 1965 Beatles receive MBEs at Buckingham Palace
• 1965 Sylvia Likens tortured by teen girl gang
• 1967 Shah of Iran crowns himself after 26 years on Peacock Throne
• 1970 “Doonesbury” comic strip debuts in 28 newspapers
• 1970 Tanzania begins building railway Lusaka-Drone ash Salaam
• 1971 UN votes to replace Taiwan with China
• 1971 An Assembly, attended only by Nationalist politicians, and acting as an alternative to Stormont, meet in Dungiven Castle
• 1972 Guided tours of Alcatraz (by Park Service) begin
• 1972 Henry Kissinger declares “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam
• 1973 Israeli forces reach Suez, trapping Egyptian army
• 1973 President Nixon releases first White House tapes on Watergate scandal
• 1976 Transkei gains independence, not recognized outside of South Africa
• 1976 Trinidad & Tobago becomes a republic
• 1977 Last natural case of smallpox discovered in Merca district, Somalia. Considered the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination
• 1978 Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat named joint winners of 1978 Nobel Peace Prize
• 1979 Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by KCIA head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyu-ha becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May.
• 1984 Stephanie Fae Beauclair (“Baby Fae”) gets baboon heart transplant, lives 21 days
• 1985 Hurricane Juan kills 97 in US
• 1987 Dow Jones down 156.83 points
• 1987 Head of Salvadoran Human Rights Comm assassinated by death squads
• 1994 Jordan and Israel sign peace accord
• 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki in his hotel in Malta.
• 1999 Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.
• 2000 Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Côte d’Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï. Bret Hart retires.
• 2001 The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.
• 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege ends: Approximately 50 Chechen rebels and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the rebels during a musical performance three days before.
• 2003 The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in Californian history, kills 15 people, consumes 250 000 acres (1 000 km²), destroys 2 200 homes around San Diego.
• 2012 64 people are killed in West Burma after continued sectarian clashes.
• 2012 41 people are killed and 50 injured by a suicide bombing of a mosque in Maymana, Afghanistan.
• 2012 Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in the Bahamas killing two people and causing over $300 million in damage.
• 2014 Dilma Rousseff is re-elected President of Brazil.
• 2015 World Health Organization classifies processed meat as carcinogenic.
• 2015 7.5 magnitude earthquake hits northern Pakistan and Afghanistan killing over 300.
Source: www.onthisday.com