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456 Magister militum Ricimer defeated the Roman Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became master of the western Roman Empire.

1591 Death of Pope Gregory XIV.

1649 New World: The colony of Maine granted religious freedom to all citizens, on condition that those of contrary religious persuasions behave acceptably.

"The house is said to be haunted by the ghost of a Roundhead, a soldier fighting on the side of Cromwell during the English Civil war. He appears sitting near to the fire in one of the bedrooms."   Source

1775 Portland, Maine was burned by the British.

1781 George Washington captured Yorktown, Virginia, USA.

1793 Marie Antoinette, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and wife of Louis XVI and hence Queen Consort of France, was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.

1793 Battle of Wattignies.

1796 Death of Victor Amadeus III of Savoy.

1813 The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig, on their way to an invasion of France to restore the House of Bourbon to the French throne.

1834 Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster in London was burnt down.

1859 John Brown led a raid on Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, USA.

1867 Australia: James Nash, from Wiltshire, England, discovered gold at Gympie, Queensland, at the site now occupied by the Gympie Town Hall. Nash uncovered 75 ounces of gold in six days, staked his claim, and the Gympie Gold Rush was on. At the time Queensland was suffering from a severe economic depression and the discovery probably saved the colony from bankruptcy. The lode yielded the two largest nuggets found in Queensland: 975 oz (The Curtis) and 804 oz in Sailors Gully. Over the years the Gympie field produced more than 4 million ounces of gold, and was depleted by about 1920.

"By October 31 that year, an area of 25 square miles around Nashville was declared the Upper Mary River Goldfields. Official figures for 1868 show 84,792 ounces of gold was taken out.

"Nash is said to have earned 10,000 pounds in 12 months on the field in addition to the thousand-pound government reward for finding gold."   Source

"Within six months there were 15,000 men on the field. Some of the areas were, Nash's Gully, Whites Gully, Sailor's Gully, Deep Creek. I [sic] was a common occurrence to obtain an ounce of gold in the dish and large nuggets were unearthed. The most famous nugget, a great mass of pure gold, found by a Mr. George Curtis in February 1868, weighing 975 ounces, valued at 3,675 pounds."   Source

Queensland Gold Time Chart    More

1869 The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, was discovered, in New York state by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C 'Stub' Newell in Cardiff.

It became the subject of huge interest and debate, with some saying it was an ancient statue and others saying it was a petrified human giant from days of old. Eventually it turned out that the Giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull who spent $2,600 having the Giant carved and buried but who sold the creation for $37,500 to a syndicate of five men headed by David Hannum. It was moved to Syracuse, New York for exhibition.

It drew such crowds that showman PT Barnum (1810 - 1891) offered $60,000 for a three-month lease of it. When he was turned down he made a plaster replica and put it on display, claiming that his was the real giant and the Cardiff Giant was a fake. As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute." This was in reference to the suckers paying to see Barnum's giant. Over time, the quotation has been misattributed to PT Barnum himself.

Hannum sued Barnum and it was revealed that both giants were fake on February 2, 1870. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake.

The Cardiff Giant is still on display at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Barnum's duplicate is on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, a coin-operated game arcade/museum of oddities in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

The gypsum used to create the original Cardiff Giant was mined at Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Source: Wikipedia

“A large (ten and a half feet tall) stone figure of a human that was unearthed and supposed to be a fossilized man. Supposedly discovered by a farmer, William C. Newell, on his property in upstate New York on October 16, 1869 as he was digging a well. It had actually been created by George Hull. Hull was a New York tobacconist who in 1866 had hired a stone mason to carve the giant out of stone, and then had treated it to make it appear old. He then transported it to Cardiff, New York where it was buried on Newell’s farm. Once ‘discovered’, it was displayed and attracted huge amounts of attention. Finally, experts came to look at it. First came Dr. John F. Boynton who declared it a statue made by Jesuit missionaries to impress the indians. Then Othniel C. Marsh examined it and declared it a humbug of very recent origin. Still the public remained fascinated, and the giant was moved to New York City. P.T. Barnum offered to buy it, but his offer was declined. Barnum then fashioned a copy of the giant and displayed this. The copy drew more people than the fake due to Barnum’s promotional skills. Historians suggest people might have wanted to believe in it out of a combination of local pride and curiosity about natural science awakened by Darwinian theory. The giant is now on display in the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York.”   Source

Hoax exposed    PT Barnum Never Did Say "There's a sucker born every minute"    More

1869 England’s first residential college for women, Girton College, was founded in Cambridge.

1877 Death of Theodore Barrière, French dramatist.

1900 Death of Primo Conti, Futurist painter.

1901 US President Theodore Roosevelt invited African-American educator Booker T Washington (1856 - 1915) to the White House, unleashing a storm of opposition from racists.

1906 Captain of the Köpenick fooled the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.

From Wikipedia: Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt (1849 - 1922) was a German impostor who masqueraded as a Prussian military officer in 1906 and became famous as the Captain of Köpenick (Hauptmann von Köpenick).

Voigt purchased parts of used captain's uniforms from two different shops and tested their effect on soldiers. He had resigned from the shoe factory ten days previously. He took the uniform out of baggage storage, put it on and took a train to Köpenick, east of Berlin.

In Köpenick he went to the local army barracks, stopped four grenadiers and a sergeant on their way back to barracks and told them to come with him. Indoctrinated to obey officers without question, they followed. He dismissed the commanding sergeant to report to his superiors and later commandeered 6 more grenadiers from a shooting range. Then he took the soldiers to the Köpenick city hall and told them to cover all exits.

He had the town secretary Rosenkranz and mayor Georg Langerhans arrested for suspicions of crooked bookkeeping and confiscated 4000 marks and 70 pfennigs - with a receipt, of course. Then he commandeered two carriages and told the grenadiers to take the mayor and the treasurer Wiltberg to Berlin to General Moltke for interrogation. He told the remaining guards stand in their places for half an hour and then left for the train station. In the train he changed to civilian clothes and slipped out.

In the following days the German press speculated on what had really happened. At the same time the army ran its own investigation. The public seemed to be positively amused by the daring of the culprit.

Voigt was arrested on October 26 and on December 1 sentenced to four years in prison for forgery, impersonating an officer and wrongful imprisonment. However, much of the public opinion was on his side. German Kaiser Wilhelm II pardoned him on August 16, 1908. There are some claims that even the kaiser had been amused by the incident.

1906 “ … a down-on-his-luck German man named Wilhelm Voigt donned a second-hand military captain’s uniform he had bought in a store, walked out into the street, and effortlessly assumed control of a company of grenadiers marching past. He proceeded with them over to the town hall of Köpenick, a small suburb of Berlin, arrested the mayor and the treasurer on charges of embezzlement, and took possession of 4,000 marks from the town treasury. He then disappeared with the money. The police tracked him down nine days later. Although his brazen stunt made him something of a popular hero, he was still sentenced to four years in jail. But he proved to be such a likable character that the Kaiser himself pardoned Voigt after he had served less than two years. Voigt’s subsequent fame allowed him to pursue a career in show business, where he entertained audiences by re-enacting his stunt on the stage.”   Source

1906 British New Guinea became part of Australia.

1907 The first legislative assembly of the Philippines met.

1916 Margaret Sanger (1879 - 1966), American contraception advocate, with Ethel Byrne, opened her first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. Sanger spent 30 days in jail for this, convicted of creating a public nuisance and violating the Comstock Law, which prohibited distribution of contraceptives.

Margaret Sanger coined the term ‘birth control’ and made the cause a worldwide movement. Born in Corning, New York, she went on to found the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood.” 

“Labor leader and nurse Margaret Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in Brooklyn for which she was jailed for violating the Comstock Act, which prohibited distribution of contraceptives. She went on to found the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood.”   Source  

Quotations from Margaret Sanger    Gloria Steinem on Margaret Sanger

1934 Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong began their Long March, carrying Mao for much of the way.

1940 Benjamin O Davis, Sr was named the first African-American general in the United States Army.

1940 The Warsaw ghetto was established.

1945 Food and Agriculture Organisation was founded.

1946 Ten war criminals of the Second World War, condemned in the Nuremberg trials, were hanged.

1949 Nikos Zakhiariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announced a “temporary cease-fire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece”, effectively marking the end of the Greek Civil War.

1951 The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in Rawalpindi

1964 The People’s Republic of China detonated its first nuclear weapon, at Lop Nor.

1964 Mrs Rosa Quattrini, known as Mama Rosa, and a neighbour, saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, the first of many such visions for Mama Rosa.

1970 Anwar Sadat was elected President of Egypt.

1972 At Porto Stephano, Italy, a statue of the Virgin Mary began to bleed.

1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1975 The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), were killed by Indonesian troops during the Indonesian takeover of the island state.

1975 GOES 1 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) was launched.

1978 Karol Józef Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pope since 1542.

Papal succession lore

When a pope dies, the papal secretary is required to call out his name three times before he is officially declared dead. In the nineteenth century the secretary also had to tap the corpse on the head with a silver hammer. His 'Fisherman’s Ring', given to him at his coronation, is broken. His papal seal is also destroyed.

In 1272 the cardinals took nearly three years to elect a new pope. Exasperated, angry Catholics locked them up in a room till they came to a decision. The practice has continued ever since. After a pope is elected, the outside world is informed by puffs of white smoke issuing from a chimney above the sealed room, indicating the cardinals have burnt their ballot papers. Black smoke indicates they have been unable to agree on a successor to the deceased pope.

May, John, The Book of Curious Facts, Collins and Brown, London, UK, 1993, pp 50-1

1984 Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987 Paramedic and fireman Robert O’Donnell rescued baby Jessica McClure from a well in the backyard of her Midland, Oklahoma, USA home (she had fallen in on October 14). O’Donnell became a national celebrity but, unable to handle life after the attention died down, he shot himself dead on April 23, 1995.

1991 Unemployed sailor, George Hennard, 35, crashed his pick-up truck through the front of Luby’s Cafeteria, Killeen, Austin, Texas, USA, and systematically opened fire on the lunchtime crowd, killing 22. He finally turned the gun on himself.

1995 The Million Man March took place in Washington, DC, USA.

2001 Low-flying US warplanes bombed an International Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan.

2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, was officially inaugurated.

Tomorrow: International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

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