This day in history – October 26

• 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