What happened on October 12 ?
Events
539 BC - The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
1216 - King John lost his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge
1492 - Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean. The explorer believes he has reached East Asia
1609 - "Three Blind Mice" published by London teenage songwriter Thomas Ravenscroft
1654 - The Delft Explosion devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100.
1681 - A London woman is publicly flogged for the crime of "involving herself in politics"
1709 - After a democratic voting, La Villa de San Francisco de Cuéllar was founded, which with time turned into San Felipe del Real Chihuahua and now it is known as the city of Chihuahua.
1773 - America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia
1775 - The United States Navy is formed.
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.
1823 - Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, sells the first raincoat.
1850 - The first women's medical college opens, in Pennsylvania.
1859 - Self-described "Emperor of the United States" Joshua A. Norton issues a decree dissolving the U.S. Congress
1892 - The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in unison by students in US public schools.
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
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
1938 - Filming starts on The Wizard of Oz
1942 - The USS Duncan is sunk by Japanese naval gunfire at the Battle of Cape Esperance
1953 - "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York
1958 - Atlanta synagogue bombing
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
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 her station in 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 Tse-tung 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 ex 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
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
1998 - U.S. Congress passes Digital Millennium Copyright Act
1999 - Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup.
1999 - The Day of 6 Billion: The 6 billionth human in the world is born.
2000 - In Aden, Yemen, the USS Cole is badly damaged by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39
2001 - War on Terrorism: Prompted by a request by US President George W. Bush, an episode of America's Most Wanted aired featuring 22 most wanted terrorists
2002 - Bali bombing: In Bali, terrorists detonate bombs in two nightclubs in Kuta, killing 202 and wounding over 300
2003 - Belarus mental hospital fire: Thirty patients die in a mental hospital fire in Randilovshchina, Belarus
2005 - The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè H?ishèng for five days in orbit.
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