October 12

October 12

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October 12

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Events

539 BC - The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
1216 - King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge
1279 - Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon
1398 - the Treaty of Salynas is signed between Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Teutonic Knights, who received Samogitia.
1492 - Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached East Asia
1582 - Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1654 - The Delft Explosion devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100.
1692 - The Salem Witch Trials were ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
1773 - America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia
1792 - First celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York
1793 - The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina
1810 - First Oktoberfest: The Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
1822 - Peter I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Brazilian Empire.
1823 - Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, sells the first raincoat.
1892 - The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in unison by students in US public schools.
1898 - Establishment of the first town council in Mateur.
1899 - Boer republic of South Africa declares war with England.
1901 - President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
1915 - World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium
1917 - The First Battle of Passchendaele, now Passendale
1918 - A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Minnesota.
1928 - An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston
1933 - The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice
1941 - This and the next day, German Nazis kill 11,000 Jews in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. Einsatzkommando 6 massacres most of the remaining Jews of the city, marching them to a ravine where they were killed.
1942 - World War II: Japanese ships retreat after their defeat in the Battle of Cape Esperance with the Japanese commander, Aritomo Got? dying from wounds suffered in the battle and two Japanese destroyers sunk by Allied air attack.
1953 - "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York
1959 - At the national congress of APRA in Peru a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party. They will later form APRA Rebelde.
1960 - Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonialist policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
1960 - Inejiro Asanuma is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The camera was rolling at that time.
1962 - Infamous Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead and at least U.S. $230 million in damages
1964 - The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits
1967 - Vietnam War: US Secretary of State Dean Rusk states during a news conference that proposals by the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition
1968 - Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain
1970 - Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas
1972 - En route to the Gulf of Tonkin, a racial brawl involving more than 100 sailors breaks out aboard the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk
1976 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Zedong as chairman of Communist Party of China.
1979 - The lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in the Western Pacific during Typhoon Tip.
1983 - Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from Lockheed and is sentenced to 4 years in jail.
1984 - Brighton hotel bombing: Margaret Thatcher survives an IRA bomb, which shredded her bathroom barely two minutes after she had left it.
1986 - Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit the People's Republic of China
1988 - Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down executional style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia.
1991 - Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.
1994 - NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere either October 13 or October 14).
1997 - Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria; 43 killed at a fake roadblock.
1999 - Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup.
1999 - The Day of Six Billion: The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born.
2000 - The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39
2002 - Terrorists detonate bombs in Paddy's Pub and the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
2005 - The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying F�i J�nl�ng and Ni� H?ish�ng for five days in orbit.