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.
• 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 (refer to Napoleonic Wars).
• 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.
• 1919 – Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party.
• 1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded.
• 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.
• 1953 – Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro delivers his “History Will Absolve Me” speech, and is sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the Fulgencio Batista government for leading an attack on the Moncada Barracks.
• 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis begins: US President John F. Kennedy is informed of photos taken on 14 October 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.
• 1973 – Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (refer to Vietnam War).
• 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).
• 1754 – Morgan Lewis, American general, lawyer, and politician, 3rd Governor of New York (d. 1844).
• 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).
• 1881 – William Orthwein, American swimmer and water polo player (d. 1955).
• 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).
• 1920 – Paddy Finucane, Irish fighter pilot and flying ace (d. 1942).
• 1985 – Verena Sailer, German sprinter.

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).
• 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).
• 1947 – Anna B. Eckstein, German peace activist (b. 1868).
• 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).
• 2013 – Robert B. Rheault, American colonel (b. 1925).
• 2014 – Ioannis Charalambopoulos, Greek colonel and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of Greece (b. 1919).
• 2015 – William James, Australian general and physician (b. 1930).