Historical EventsToday: 14 October

Events

• 1066 - Norman Conquest: Battle of Hastings - In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the forces of William the Conqueror defeat the Saxon army and kill King Harold II of England.


• 1322 - Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence.


• 1582 - Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.


• 1586 - Mary I of Scotland goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.


• 1656 - Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the ritual-free Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.


• 1758 - Austria defeats Prussia at the Battle of Hochkirk


• 1773 - The first recorded Ministry of Education, the Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Polish for Commission of National Education), is formed in Poland.


• 1773 - American Revolutionary War: The United Kingdom's East India Company tea ships' cargo are burned at Annapolis, Maryland.


• 1789 - George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day.


• 1805 - Battle of Elchingen, France defeats Austria


• 1806 - Battle of Jena-Auerstädt France defeats Prussia


• 1812 - Work on London's Regent's Canal starts.


• 1834 - In Philadelphia, Whigs and Democrats stage a gun, stone and brick battle for control of a Moyamensing Township election, resulting in one death, several injuries, and the burning down of a block of buildings.


• 1840 - Maronite leader Bashir II surrenders to the British forces and goes into exile in Malta.


• 1843 - The British arrest Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell for conspiracy.


• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Bristoe Station - Confederate General Robert E. Lee forces fail to drive the Union Army out of Virginia.


• 1867 - The 15th and last Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan.


• 1882 - University of the Punjab is founded in present day Pakistan.


• 1884 - George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film.


• 1888 - Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene.


• 1910 - English aviator Claude Grahame-White lands his Farman biplane on Executive Avenue (now Pennsylvania Avenue) near the White House.


• 1912 - While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former president Theodore Roosevelt is shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank. With a fresh flesh wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt still delivers his scheduled speech.


• 1913 - Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, the United Kingdom's worst coal mining accident, which claimed 439 lives.


• 1916 - Sophomore tackle and guard Paul Robeson is excluded from the Rutgers football team when Washington and Lee University refused to play against a black person.


• 1916 - The Perm State University was founded in Russia.


• 1920 - Part of Petsamo province is ceded by Soviet Union to Finland.


• 1925 - Anti-French uprising in Damascus (French inhabitants flee)


• 1926 - The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is first published.


• 1933 - Nazi Germany withdraws from The League of Nations.


• 1939 - German U-Boat U-47 sinks British battleship HMS Royal Oak.


• 1940 - Balham tube disaster during the Blitz.


• 1942 - A German U-boat sinks the ferry SS Caribou, killing 137.


• 1943 - Prisoners at the Sobibor death camp in Poland revolt, resulting in the death of 11 SS. About half of the camp's 600 prisoners escape; about 50 survive the war.


• 1943 - U.S. 8th Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortresses during an assault on Schweinfurt.


• 1944 - Allied troops land in Corfu.


• 1947 - Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.


• 1949 - Eleven leaders of the U.S. Communist Party are convicted, after a nine-month trial, of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.


• 1949 - Chinese Red Army occupies Canton (Guangzhou).


• 1957 - Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Canadian monarch to open the Parliament of Canada with the Speech from the Throne.


• 1958 - The U.S. conducts an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site.


• 1958 - The District of Columbia Bar Association votes to accept black Americans as members.


• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed.


• 1964 - Leonid Brezhnev becomes general secretary of the CPSU and leader of the Soviet Union, ousting Nikita Khrushchev.


• 1964 - American civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.


• 1966 - The city of Montreal inaugurates the Montreal Metro.


• 1967 - Vietnam War: Folk singer Joan Baez is arrested in a blockade of the military induction center in Oakland, California.


• 1968 - Vietnam War: 27 soldiers are arrested at the Presidio in San Francisco for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.


• 1968 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.


• 1968 - First live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft Apollo 7.


• 1968 - A 6.8 earthquake wrecked the Australian town of Meckering, and also ruptured all major roads and railways nearby.


• 1968 - Jim Hines of the USA becomes the first man ever to break the ten second barrier in the 100 metres Olympic final at Mexico City with a time of 9.95 sec. He would be the only man to do so until 1983.


• 1968 - The rebuilt Euston station in London is opened.


• 1969 - The United Kingdom introduces the 50p (fifty-pence) coin, replacing the ten-shilling note, in anticipation of the decimalisation of the currency in 1971.


• 1973 - Thailand's University Students protest for a democratic government; 77 are killed and 857 injured.


• 1979 - The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C. demands "an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people," draws 200,000 people.


• 1981 - Citing official misconduct in the investigation and trial, Amnesty International charges the U.S. government with holding Richard Marshall of the American Indian Movement as a political prisoner.


• 1981 - Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected President of Egypt one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.


• 1982 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.


• 1994 - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize.


• 1998 - Eric Robert Rudolph is charged with 6 bombings including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia.