768 – Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks.
1238 – James I of Aragon conquers Valencia and founds the Kingdom of Valencia.
1264 – The Kingdom of Castile conquers the city of Jerez, which had been under Muslim occupation since 711.
1410 – The first known mention of the Prague astronomical clock.
1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1594 – The army of the Portuguese Empire is annihilated by the Kingdom of Kandy on Sri Lanka, bringing an end to the Campaign of Danture.
1604 – Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.
1635 – Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
1708 – Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya.
1740 – Dutch colonists and various slave groups begin massacring ethnic Chinese in Batavia, eventually killing 10,000 and leading to a two-year-long war throughout Java.
1760 – Seven Years’ War: Russian forces occupy Berlin.
1790 – An earthquake shakes northern Algeria with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme) causing severe damage and a tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea. Three-thousand people were killed.
1799 – Sinking of HMS Lutine with the loss of 240 men and a cargo worth £1,200,000.
1804 – Hobart, capital of Tasmania, is founded.
1806 – Prussia begins the War of the Fourth Coalition against France.
1812 – War of 1812: In a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces capture two British ships: HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.
1820 – Guayaquil declares independence from Spain.
1824 – Slavery is abolished in Costa Rica.
1831 – Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of independent Greece is assassinated.
1845 – John Henry Newman is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
1847 – Slavery is abolished in Saint Barthélemy and all remaining slaves are freed.
1854 – Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol begins.
1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Santa Rosa Island: Union troops repel a Confederate attempt to capture Fort Pickens.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Tom’s Brook: Union cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley defeat Confederate forces at Toms Brook, Virginia.
1873 – A meeting at the U.S. Naval Academy establishes the U.S. Naval Institute.
1900 – The Cook Islands become a territory of the United Kingdom.
1907 – Las Cruces, New Mexico is incorporated.
1911 – An accidental bomb explosion in Hankou, Wuhan, China leads to the ultimate fall of the Qing Empire
1913 – The steamship SS Volturno catches fire in the mid-Atlantic.
1914 – World War I: Siege of Antwerp: Antwerp, Belgium falls to German troops.
1919 – Black Sox Scandal: The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series.
1934 – Regicide at Marseille: The assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou, Foreign Minister of France.
1936 – Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles.
1940 – World War II: Battle of Britain: During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.
1941 – A coup in Panama declares Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango the new president.
1942 – The last day of the October Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps forces withdraw back across the Matanikau River after destroying most of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 4th Infantry Regiment.
1962 – Uganda becomes an independent Commonwealth realm.
1966 – Vietnam War: Binh Tai Massacre
1967 – A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
1969 – In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began on September 24.
1970 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.
1980 – Pope John Paul II shakes hands with the Dalai Lama during a private audience in Vatican City.
1981 – Abolition of capital punishment in France.
1983 – Rangoon bombing: Attempted assassination of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during an official visit to Rangoon, Burma. Chun survives but the blast kills 17 of his entourage, including four cabinet ministers, and injures 17 others. Four Burmese officials also die in the blast.
2003 – Mission: Space opens to the public in the Epcot park at Walt Disney World. The opening ceremony included several astronauts from all eras of space exploration.
2009 – First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program.
2012 – Members of the Pakistani Taliban make a failed attempt to assassinate an outspoken schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai.
