Today in History

1529		Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade.
1582		The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.
1783		Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.
1813		During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.
1863		For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sinks during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.
1878		Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.
1880		Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.
1892		An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.
1894		Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.
1914		Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls “labor’s charter of freedom.” The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
1917		Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari is executed by firing squad at Vincennes, outside Paris, on charges of spying for the German Empire during World War I.
1924		A German ZR-3 flies 5000 miles, the furthest Zeppelin flight to date.
1941		Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.
1945		Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
1950		President Harry Truman meets with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
1964		Nikita Khrushchev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.
1966		Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale establish the Black Panther Party, an African-American revolutionary socialist political group, in the US.
1969		Rallies for The Moratorium to End the War  in Vietnam draw over 2 million demonstrators across the US, a quarter million of them in the nation’s capital.
1987		The Great Storm of 1987 strikes the UK and Europe during the night of Oct 15-16, killing over 20 people and causing widespread damage.
1989		Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky makes his 1,851st goal, breaking the all-time scoring record in the National Hockey League.
1990		Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in making his country more open and reducing Cold War tensions.
1997		Andy Green of the UK becomes the first person to break the sound barrier in the Earth’s atmosphere, driving the ThrustSSC supersonic car to a record 763 mph (1,228 km/h).
2003		China launches its first manned space mission, Shenzhou I.
2007		New Zealand police arrest 17 people believed to be part of a paramilitary training camp.
2008		The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop in the Dow’s history.
2011		Protests break out in countries around the globe, under the slogan “United for Global Democracy.”