Historical Events on October 26

Events 1 - 200 of 201

• 740 An earthquake strikes Constantinople, causing damage to city walls and buildings
• 1366 Comet 55P/1366 U1 (Tempel-Tuttle) approaches 0.0229 AUs of Earth
• 1387 Amsterdam buccaneer Herman of Kuinre signs loyalty vow for peace

• 1407 Mobs attack Jewish community of Kraków
• 1492 Lead (graphite) pencils first used
• 1524 Spanish troops give Milan to France

• 1667 Arung Palakka's Bugis forces occupy Makassar, southern Sulawesi

• 1749 Georgia Colony reverses itself & rules slavery is legal
• 1774 First Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia
• 1774 Minutemen organized in US colonies

• 1795 The Directoire, a five-man revolutionary government of France, is created
• 1822 King Willem I requires inhabitants of Brussels to use Dutch language

• 1825 Erie Canal between Hudson River & Lake Erie opens
• 1830 Belgian rebels occupy Antwerp

• 1858 Hamilton Smith patents rotary washing machine in Pittsburgh
• 1859 Steam clipper Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, Wales;, in a storm that took down over 100 vessels; approximately 450 passengers and crew killed on voyage returning to Liverpool from Australia

• 1863 Football Association forms in England, standardizing soccer, splitting with rugby
• 1863 International conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields - beginning of the Red Cross

• 1868 White terrorists kill several blacks in St Bernard Parish La
• 1869 1st American steeplechase horserace at Westchester, NY

• 1876 South Carolina Governor Chamberlain sends a company of federal troops to quell racial disturbances in Cainhoy

• 1896 Abyssinia & Italy sign peace treaty
• 1901 First recorded use of "getaway car" occurs after holding up a shop in Paris
• 1903 Yerba Buena is first Key System ferry to cross San Francisco Bay
• 1905 First Soviet (workers' council) formed, St Petersburg, Russia
• 1905 Union of Sweden & Norway ends

• 1912 Serbian troops over run Skopje (Uskup)
• 1912 Woolwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames river in England opens

• 1917 Petrograd Soviet accepts establishment of Military
• 1917 World War I: Brazil declares it is in a state of war with the Central Powers

• 1918 Soldiers revolt at Harskamp, Veluwe
• 1919 B C Hilliam's musical "Buddies" premieres in NYC

• 1921 Solomon Porter Hood named US minister to Liberia

• 1923 Dutch Government of Ruijs de Beerenbrouck resigns
• 1923 Dutch second Chamber rejects Fleet laws (50-49 vote)
• 1926 Arthur Goodrich's play "Caponsacchi" premieres in NYC
• 1926 Belgium stabilizes current value of franc (5 franc becomes 1 "Belga")

• 1933 French government of Albert Sarraut forms

• 1939 Polish Jews forced into obligatory work service
• 1940 The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.

• 1942 Battle of Santa Cruz: Japanese naval offensive against US forces near Solomon Islands
• 1942 Fourth day of battle at El Alamein: Australian breakthrough
• 1942 Second day of Battle of Henderson Field, Guadalcanal
• 1943 World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 "Pfeil".
• 1947 Maharajah of Jammu & Kashmir accedes to India
• 1947 The British military occupation ends in Iraq

• 1950 630 Dutch volunteers depart for Korea

• 1950 South Korean troops reach Chosan at Chinese boundary
• 1951 Emile Zatopek runs world record 30,000m, 25,000m & 15 miles

• 1953 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Emu Field, Australia
• 1954 Chevrolet unveils V-8 engine
• 1954 City of Trieste returned to Italy
• 1955 British troops occupy Saudi Arabian oil field at Boeraimi
• 1955 First edition of "Village Voice" (NYC) published

• 1956 UN's International Atomic Energy Agency statute approved
• 1956 Vietnam promulgates its constitution

• 1958 PanAm flies first transatlantic jet from New York to Paris
• 1958 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1960 MLB: American League approves existing Washington Senators move to become Minnesota Twins, and two new expansion franchises - Los Angeles Angels & Washington (D.C.) Senators; 1961 season schedule grows from 154 to 162 games
• 1961 First test flight of Saturn launch vehicle

• 1962 The Beatles record "Ask Me Why"
• 1962 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Johnston Island
• 1963 US performs underground nuclear test at Fallon, Nevada
• 1964 Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed.
• 1965 Queen Elizabeth decorates The Beatles with medals making them members Order of the British Empire (MBE) at Buckingham Palace
• 1965 Sylvia Likens tortured by teen girl gang
• 1966 First Pacific communications satellite launched, Intelsat 2
• 1966 US aircraft carrier Oriskany catches fire at Gulf on Tonken, 43 die

• 1968 Charlie Hickcox wins his 3rd gold medal of the Mexico City Olympics when he leads the US men's 4 x 100m medley relay team with teammates Don McKenzie, Doug Russell & Ken Walsh to world record 3:54.9
• 1968 First European satellite launched, Esro 1, at Cape Kennedy

• 1968 Italian diver Klaus Dibiasi wins first of 3 consecutive men's 10m platform gold medals when he comfortably beats Álvaro Gaxiola of Mexico at the Mexico City Olympics
• 1968 Japanese gymnast Akinori Nakayama wins 3 individual gold medals on the one day (horizontal bar, rings & parallel bars) at the Mexico City Olympics; with team victory, 4 gold for the Games
• 1968 Japanese gymnasts sweep the medals in the men's floor exercise competition at the Mexico City Olympics; Sawao Kato wins his 3rd gold of the Games ahead of teammates Akinori Nakayama and Takeshi Katō
• 1968 KMIR TV channel 36 in Palm Springs, CA (NBC) begins broadcasting
• 1968 Soviet Union launches spacecraft Soyuz 3
• 1968 Striker Antal Dunai scores twice as Hungary outclasses Bulgaria 4-1 to take the men's football gold medal at the Mexico City Olympics
• 1968 The Soviet Union wraps up the volleyball double at the Mexico City Olympics; both men's & women's teams take gold at the end of their respective round-robin competitions
• 1969 WHMA (now WJSU) TV channel 40 in Anniston, AL (CBS) 1st broadcast
• 1970 "Doonesbury" comic strip debuts in 28 newspapers
• 1970 Tanzania begins building railway Lusaka-Drone ash Salaam
• 1971 An Assembly, attended only by Nationalist politicians, and acting as an alternative to Stormont, meet in Dungiven Castle
• 1971 UN votes to replace Taiwan with China

• 1973 Israeli forces reach Suez, trapping Egyptian army
• 1973 President Nixon releases first White House tapes on Watergate scandal
• 1973 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
• 1973 Wings release single "Helen Wheels"
• 1974 Cleveland Coliseum opens for NBA's Cavaliers & MISL's Crunch

• 1975 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
• 1975 Cuba beats Mexico for its 4th Pan Am Games Gold Medal in baseball
• 1976 Transkei gains independence, not recognized outside of South Africa
• 1976 Trinidad & Tobago becomes a republic
• 1977 5th & final test of space shuttle Enterprise
• 1977 Dr Clifford R Wharton Jr named chancellor of State University of New York
• 1977 Last natural case of smallpox discovered in Merca district, Somalia. Considered the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination
• 1977 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1978 Independent Counsel Act is signed into law.
• 1978 Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat named joint winners of 1978 Nobel Peace Prize
• 1979 Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by KCIA head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyu-ha becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May.
• 1980 St Louis Cardinals sack Baltimore Colt QBs an NFL record tying 12 times

• 1983 Hugh Whitemore's "Pack of Lies" premieres in London
• 1983 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan

• 1984 Stephanie Fae Beauclair ("Baby Fae") gets baboon heart transplant, lives 21 days
• 1985 CBS' premiere of fact based TV film "Children of the Night", based on sociology student Lois Lee's expose on female crime and inconsistent enforcement of prostitution laws in Los Angeles

• 1985 Hurricane Juan kills 97 in US

• 1987 Dow Jones down 156.83 points
• 1987 Head of Salvadoran Human Rights Comm assassinated by death squads

• 1988 US-Soviet effort to free 2 grey whales from frozen Arctic, Barrow, AK
• 1992 London Ambulance Service thrown into chaos after implementation problems with a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system
• 1992 The Charlottetown Accord fails to win majority support in a Canada wide referendum.
• 1993 NFL announces new expansion team, Carolina Panthers in Charlotte
• 1993 NJ Devils lose 2-0 to Montreal, after winning 1st 7 games of 1993
• 1994 Jordan & Israel sign peace accord
• 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki in his hotel in Malta.

• 1999 Britain's House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.
• 2000 Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Côte d'Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï. Bret Hart retires.
• 2001 The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.
• 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege ends: Approximately 50 Chechen rebels and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the rebels during a musical performance three days before
• 2003 The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in Californian history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km²), destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego
• 2012 41 people are killed and 50 injured by a suicide bombing of a mosque in Maymana, Afghanistan
• 2012 64 people are killed in West Burma after continued sectarian clashes
• 2012 China blocks the New York Times from searches and social media in response to an investigation into Premier Wen Jiabao
• 2012 Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in the Bahamas killing 2 people and causing over $300 million in damage

• 2015 7.5 magnitude earthquake hits northern Pakistan and Afghanistan killing over 300
• 2015 Rashid Khan makes his Twenty20 International (T20I) debut for Afghanistan against Zimbabwe
• 2015 World Health Organization classifies processed meat as carcinogenic
• 2016 Jesus' supposed tomb is opened for the first time in 500 years by archaeologists for restoration in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem [1]

• 2017 Explosion and fire at a fireworks factory in Tangerang, Indonesia kills 47 and injuries dozens

• 2017 Oldest-known tsunami victim revealed by sediment discovered in 6,000 year-old skull by scientists near Aitape, Papua New Guinea
• 2017 US President Donald Trump declares the opioid crisis a public health emergency

• 2018 Rhine River in drought with lowest levels since 1920s forces German government to release oil reserves after barge shipments disrupted
• 2018 Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc arrested for sending 14 pipe bombs to prominent US Democrats
• 2019 Raid by US Special Forces kills ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria

• 2020 Melbourne officials announce end to their three-month lockdown as city records no new cases of COVID-19 for 1st time since June
• 2020 NASA announces there is more water on the Moon than previously thought, in sunlit as well as shadowed regions [1]
• 2020 Pakistan's first metro line, the Orange Line, opens in Lahore
• 2020 Police officers in Philadelphia shoot and kill black man Walter Wallace Jr. armed with a knife, prompting protests and the city to impose a curfew
• 2020 Silverado wildfire breaks out in Orange County, California forcing 60,000 people to evacuate
• 2020 US Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court sealing a conservative 6-3 majority
• 2021 UN report says current climate pledges put world on course for "catastrophic" average 2.7-degree Celsius temperature rise this century ahead of Glasgow climate summit [1]

• 2022 European Union's tallest building completed - the Varso Tower, a supertall skyscraper in Warsaw, Poland, at 310 metres high [1]

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