1961 – In the Saraha Desert of Algeria, a natural gas well ignited when a pipe ruptured. The flames rose between 450 feet and 800 feet. The fire burned until April 28, 1962 when a team led by Red Adair used explosives to deprived the fire of oxygen. (Devil’s Cigarette Lighter)
355 – Roman Emperor Constantius II proclaims his cousin Julian as Caesar
1153 – Treaty of Wallingford (Oxfordshire) signed between King Stephen and the Empress Maude (aka Matilda)
1282 – Battle of Menai Straits (Moel-y-don): forces of Edward I defeated as they try to cross a pontoon bridge during their reconquor of Wales
1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes first known European to set foot in Texas
1572 – Supernova is observed in constellation known as Cassiopeia
1789 – Father John Carroll was appointed as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States of America.
1813 – Chilpancingo congress declares Mexico independent of Spain
1850 – Yerba Buena & Angel Islands (San Francisco Bay) reserved for military use
1860 – Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the sixteenth president of the United States.
1861 – Jefferson Davis was elected as the president of the Confederacy in the U.S.
1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe, on its cruise that sank or captured 37 vessels
1894 – William C. Hooker received a patent for the mousetrap.
1903 – Philippe Bunau-Varilla, as Panama’s ambassador to the United States, signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty. The document granted rights to the United States to build and indefinitely administer the Panama Canal Zone and its defenses.
1913 – Mohandas K. Gandhi was arrested as he led a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1914 – The British land troops (mostly from the Indian Army) at the head of the Persian Gulf in Mesopotamia, and will begin to move westward in an attempt to draw Turkish troops from other fronts
1917 – New York State adopts a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote in state elections
1917 – [OS Oct 24] Bolshevik revolution begins with bombardment of the Winter Palace in Petrograd during the Russian October Revolution
1935 – Edwin H. Armstrong announced his development of FM broadcasting.
1939 – World War II: ‘Sonderaktion Krakau’ – a Nazi operation against academics, with 184 professors arrested in Krakow and deported
1941 – Einsatz Gruppe kills 15,000 Jews of Rovno Ukraine
1942 – Nazis kill 12,000 Jews in the Minsk ghetto
1945 – House Committee on Un-American Activities begins investigation of 7 radio commentators
1947 – Meet the Press makes its TV debut, The longest running TV news show was first hosted by journalist and creator Martha Rountree and aired on NBC.
1949 – Greek civil war ends after 3 years with defeat of communist factions
1956 – Netherlands and Spain withdraw from Olympics in protest against Soviet actions in the Hungarian Revolution
1956 – Suez Crisis: British Royal Marines storm Port Said in Egypt amid growing domestic and international opposition to the Anglo-French-Israeli military operation
1961 – In the Saraha Desert of Algeria, a natural gas well ignited when a pipe ruptured. The flames rose between 450 feet and 800 feet. The fire burned until April 28, 1962 when a team led by Red Adair used explosives to deprived the fire of oxygen. (Devil’s Cigarette Lighter)
1962 – The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution that condemned South Africa’s racist apartheid policies. The resolution also called for all member states to terminate military and economic relations with South Africa.
1962 – Saudi Arabia proclaims abolition of slavery
1962 – Statue of Joseph Stalin in Prague is removed as part of de-Stalinzation efforts
1965 – The Freedom Flights program began which would allow 250,000 Cubans to come to the United States by 1971.
1973 – NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft began photographing Jupiter.
1975 – King Hassan II of Morocco launches the Green March, a mass migration of 300,000 unarmed Moroccans, that march into the nation of Western Sahara.
1977 – 39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through the campus of Toccoa Falls Bible College in Georgia.
1978 – Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi places the country under military rule; General Gholām Reza Azhāri forms government
1983 – U.S. Army choppers dropped hundreds of leaflets over northern and central Grenada. The leaflets urged residents to cooperate in locating any Grenadian army or Cuban resisters to the U.S-led invasion.
1984 – For the first time in 193 years, the New York Stock Exchange remained open during a presidential election day.
1985 – Leftist guerrillas belonging to Columbia’s April 19 Movement seized control of the Palace of Justice in Bogota.
1986 – President Reagan signs landmark immigration reform bill
1986 – Former Navy radioman John A. Walker Jr., was sentenced in Baltimore to life imprisonment. Walker had admitted to being the head of a family spy ring.
1986 – U.S. intelligence sources confirmed a story run by the Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa that reported the U.S. had been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages.
1989 – In the hopes of freeing U.S. hostages held in Iran, the U.S. announced that it would unfreeze $567 million in Iranian assets that had been held since 1979.
1991 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin outlaws the Communist Party
1991 – Kuwait celebrated the dousing of the last of the oil fires ignited by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
1995 – Israel buries Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir who opposed peace with Palestinians
1998 – The Islamic militant group Hamas exploded a car bomb killing the two attackers and injuring 21 civilians.
1999 – Australian voters rejected a referendum to drop Britain’s queen as their head of state.
2001 – In London, the “Lest We Forget” exhibit opened at the National Memorial Arboretum. Fred Seiker was the creator of the 24 watercolors. Seiker was a prisoner of war that had been forced to build the Burma Railroad, the “railway of death,” for the Japanese during World War II.
2001 – In Madrid, Spain, a car bomb injured about 60 people. The bomb was blamed on Basque separatists.
2001 – Ten people were executed in Beijing, China. The state newspaper of China said that all of the people executed were robbers and killers aged 20-23.
2001 – Crude oil for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) falls to a two-year low after OPEC members warn that a downward price spiral could occur if major non-OPEC oil exporters do not reduce oil production
2009 – President Barack Obama signs congressional resolution conferring honorary U.S. citizenship to Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski
2012 – 5 people are shot at a poultry processing plant in Fresno, California
2013 – 15 people are killed after a suicide bombing in Baghdad, Iraq
2013 – 8 people are killed and 50 are injured by a suicide bombing in Damascus, Syria
2018 – Colorado votes to abolish slavery as a form of punishment in state constitution
2018 – In US Midterm elections Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives after eight years, the Senate is held by Republicans
2018 – More than 200 mass graves containing thousands of victims of ISIS discovered in former ISIS held areas according to UN report
2019 – 17 people die in attack on a checkpoint by Islamic State militants on Tajikistan’s border with Uzbekistan
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
