1973 – US President Richard Nixon signs the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, authorizing petroleum price, production, allocation and marketing controls
0176 – Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius grants his son Commodus the rank of Imperator
1095 – Pope Urban II preaches the west to wrestle control of the Holy land from the Seljuk Turks at the Council of Clermont, triggering the First Crusade
1295 – English King Edward I calls what later became known as “The Model Parliament” extending the authorities of its representatives
1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to La Navidad colony, finding it destroyed by the 1st native American uprising against Spanish rule. Taíno cacique Caonabo led his people to attack the settlement after the brutal treatment they received from the garrison who disobeyed Columbus’s orders.
1574 – Selimiye Mosque, a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture, designed by imperial architect Mimar Sinan, officially opens in Edirne, Turkey
1779 – The College of Pennsylvania became the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first legally recognized university in America.
1807 – Portuguese Royal Family and its court of nearly 15,000 people leave Lisbon for their colony of Brazil to escape invading Napoleonic troops
1809 – Berners Street hoax: Theodore Hook bets he can make any address the most talked-about in London, proceeds to win by bringing London to a standstill
1868 – Battle at Washita River, Oklahoma. General George A. Custer attacks group of Native American Indians, their chief Black Kettle dies in the attack
1895 – Alfred Nobel signs his last will, Alfred Nobel signed his last will which called for his estate and fortune that he made as the inventor of dynamite to be used for creating awards for those who contributed to the benefit of mankind. The will created 5 awards – in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace, and was signed in the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris.
1901 – Prince Ito of Japan comes to St Petersburg hoping to get the Russians to grant Japan concessions in Korea, but later drops this goal and decides to make an alliance with Britain
1901 – The Army War College was established in Washington, DC.
1910 – New York’s Pennsylvania Station opened.
1934 – The U.S. bank robber George “Baby Face” Nelson was killed by FBI agents near Barrington, IL.
1944 – 4,000 shells detonate in RAF arms depot at Fauld, near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire; village of Hanbury destroyed, at least 70 people killed
1945 – Trial against Dutch Fascist NSB leader Anton Mussert begins (later convicted and executed by firing squad)
1954 – Alger Hiss is released from prison after serving 44 months for perjury
1957 – US Army withdraws from Little Rock, Arkansas after Central High School integration
1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress.
1965 – 15-25,000 demonstrate against war in Vietnam in Washington, D.C.
1970 – Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was attacked at the Manila airport by a Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.
1973 – US President Richard Nixon signs the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, authorizing petroleum price, production, allocation and marketing controls https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-oil-export-controls-kemp/column-history-of-controls-on-u-s-oil-exports-kemp-idUSL6N0SI37X20141023
1973 – The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew.
1975 – The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.
1978 – San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by Dan White, a former supervisor.
1983 – 183 people were killed when a Colombian Avianca Airlines Boeing 747 crashed near Barajas airport in Madrid.
1985 – The British House of Commons approved the Anglo-Irish accord giving Dublin a consulting role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland.
1987 – French hostages Jean-Louis Normandin and Roger Auque were set free by their pro-Iranian captors in West Beirut, Lebanon.
1989 – 107 people were killed when a bomb destroyed a Colombian jetliner minutes after the plane had taken off from Bogota’s international airport. Police blamed the incident on drug traffickers.
1991 – The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that led the way for the establishment of a UN peacekeeping operation in Yugoslavia.
1992 – In Venezuela, rebel forces tried but failed to overthrow President Carlos Andres Perez for the second time in ten months.
1997 – Twenty-five are killed in the second Souhane massacre in Algeria.
2001 – Hubble detects the first planetary atmosphere outside the Solar System, The space telescope detected sodium on HD 209458 b, an exoplanet also known as Osiris. Belonging to a class of planets called hot Jupiter, because they are similar in size to Jupiter. Unlike Jupiter, however, these planets orbit very close to their stars and consequently have very high temperatures on their surfaces.
2005 – World’s first successful partial face transplant, Drs Bernard Devauchelle, Benoit Lengelé, and Jean-Michel Dubernard used donor tissue to reconstruct the face of Isabelle Dinoire in Amiens, France. Isabelle Dinoire’s face had been mauled by a dog.
2006 – The Canadian House of Commons endorses Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s motion to declare Québécois a nation within a unified Canada.
2012 – 29 people are killed and 126 are wounded by 8 car bombings across Iraq
2012 – The Eurozone announces that it will make loans of 43.7 billion euros to Greece
2015 – Robert Lewis Dear (57) shots 3 dead and wounds 9 at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado
2017 – 8 Donkeys freed from jail after 4 days in Orai, Uttar Pradesh, India for eating plants
2018 – Convicted US murderer Samuel Little confirmed connected to 90 more murders of women after confessing details
2019 – Ghana celebrates the “year of return” marking 300 years since 1st African slave sold in America, by granting 125 people citizenship in special ceremony
2019 – US President Donald Trump signs two bills backing Hong Kong protesters, which check the territories autonomy and ban the sale of munitions to Hong Kong police, angering China
2020 – Iran’s most senior nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh assassinated outside Tehran, escalating tensions in the region
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
