Events

• 456 – Ricimer defeats Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.
• 690 – Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire.
• 955 – King Otto I defeats a Slavic revolt in what is now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
• 1311 – The Council of Vienne convenes for the first time.
• 1780 – American Revolutionary War: The British-led Royalton raid is the last Native American raid on New England.
• 1793 – French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette is executed.
• 1793 – War of the First Coalition: French victory at the Battle of Wattignies forces Austria to raise the siege of Maubeuge.
• 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: Napoleon surrounds the Austrian army at Ulm.
• 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon in the three-day Battle of Leipzig.
• 1836 – Great Trek: Afrikaner voortrekkers repulse a Matabele attack, but lose their livestock.
• 1846 – William T. G. Morton administers ether anaesthesia during a surgical operation.
• 1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
• 1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.
• 1909 – William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold the first summit between a US and a Mexican president.
  • They narrowly escape assassination.
• 1919 – Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party.
• 1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March to escape Nationalist encirclement.
• 1939 – World War II: No. 603 Squadron RAF intercepts the first Luftwaffe raid on Britain.
• 1940 – Holocaust in Poland: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
• 1943 – Holocaust in Italy: Raid of the Ghetto of Rome.
• 1946 – Nuremberg trials: Ten defendants found guilty by the International Military Tribunal are executed by hanging.
• 1947 – The Philippines takes over the administration of the Turtle Islands and the Mangsee Islands from the United Kingdom.
• 1949 – The Greek Communist Party announces a “temporary cease-fire”, thus ending the Greek Civil War.
• 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis begins: US President John F. Kennedy is informed of photos taken on October 14 by a U-2 showing nuclear missiles (the crisis will last for 13 days starting from this point).
• 1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
• 1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the Soviet Communist Party, while Alexei Kosygin becomes the head of government.
• 1970 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act during the October Crisis.
• 1975 – Indonesian troops kill the Balibo Five, a group of Australian journalists, in Portuguese Timor.
• 1998 – Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a murder extradition warrant.
• Air Force Day (Bulgaria).

People (Births)

• 1396 – William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, English admiral (d. 1450).
• 1535 – Niwa Nagahide, Japanese samurai (d. 1585).
• 1710 – András Hadik, Austrian-Hungarian field marshal (d. 1790).
• 1762 – Paul Hamilton, American soldier and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of the Navy (d. 1816).
• 1815 – Francis Lubbock, American colonel and politician, 9th Governor of Texas (d. 1905).
• 1840 – Kuroda Kiyotaka, Japanese general and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1900).
• 1855 – Samad bey Mehmandarov, Azerbaijani general and politician, 3rd Azerbaijani Minister of Defence (d. 1931).
• 1886 – David Ben-Gurion, Polish-Israeli soldier and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Israel (d. 1973).
• 1890 – Michael Collins, Irish general and politician, 2nd Irish Minister for Finance (d. 1922).
• 1897 – Louis de Cazenave, French soldier (d. 2008).
• 1908 – Enver Hoxha, Albanian general and politician, Prime Minister of Albania (d. 1985).
• 1911 – Otto von Bülow, German commander (d. 2006).

People (Deaths)

• 1679 – Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Irish-English soldier and politician (b. 1621).
• 1680 – Raimondo Montecuccoli, Italian-Austrian field marshal (b. 1609).
• 1791 – Grigory Potemkin, Russian general and politician (b. 1739).
• 1904 – Haritina Korotkevich, Russian heroine (b. 1882).
  • She was a soldier who served in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War.
  • Volunteer to serve disguised as a man under the pseudonym Khariton Korotkevich.
• 1946 – Nuremberg trial executions of the Main Trial:
  • Hans Frank, German lawyer, politician and war criminal (b. 1900).
  • Wilhelm Frick, German lawyer and politician, German Minister of the Interior (b. 1877).
  • Alfred Jodl, German general (b. 1890).
  • Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Austrian SS officer (b. 1903).
  • Wilhelm Keitel, German field marshal (b. 1882).
  • Alfred Rosenberg, Estonian architect and politician (b. 1893).
  • Fritz Sauckel, German sailor and politician (b. 1894).
  • Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Austrian lawyer and politician, 16th Federal Chancellor of Austria (b. 1892).
  • Julius Streicher, German journalist and politician (b. 1887).
  • Joachim von Ribbentrop, German lieutenant and politician, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany (b. 1893).
• 1959 – George Marshall, American general and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Defence, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1880).
• 1981 – Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and politician, 5th Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel (b. 1915).
• 2000 – Mel Carnahan, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 51st Governor of Missouri (b. 1934).
• 2014 – Ioannis Charalambopoulos, Greek colonel and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of Greece (b. 1919).
• 2015 – William James, Australian general and physician (b. 1930).