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“I have always read that the world, both land and water, was spherical, as the authority and researches of Ptolemy and all the others who have written on this subject demonstrate and prove, as do the eclipses of the moon and other experiments that are made from east to west, and the elevation of the North Star from north to south.”
~ Christopher Columbus
Wikiquote (Christopher Columbus (October 31, 1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the Spanish colonization of the New World.)
October 12th, 539 BC
Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
Wikipedia Image: Babel Tower, Babylon. by Imagem.Mundo. "The Tower of Babylon".
October 12th, 1113
1113 - The first documented mention under the Latin name Varadinum ("vár" means fortress in Hungarian) and the celebration day of the city Oradea while its bishopric was founded during the 11th century by King Ladislaus I of Hungary.
Wikipedia Image: Saint Stephen (He greatly expanded Hungarian control over the Carpathian Basin during his lifetime, broadly established Christianity in the region, and is generally regarded as the founder of the Kingdom of Hungary); Statue of Saint Stephen, Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest, Hungary. David Noton/Getty Images.
Béla I of Hungary (National Historical Memorial Park in Ópusztaszer); Medieval Castle, the Palace of Visegrad in Hungary.
● Budapest parliament building ● Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape Hungary (UNESCO Heritage Site) ● Landscape at Lake Balaton, Hungary.
October 12th, 1216
King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke perhaps near Sutton Bridge.
Wikipedia Painting: King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash
October 12th, 1279
Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon.
Wikipedia Photo: The Ocean of the Law.
October 12th, 1492
1492 - Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached India.
1792 - First celebration of Columbus Day in the United States held in New York City.
1892 - Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many United States public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.
Wikipedia Paintings: Christopher Columbus' fleet of three ships sets sail from Spain in 1492. credit Kean Collection / Hulton Archive / Getty Images; Christopher Columbus pointing to land in the New World; Romantic Painting of Christopher Columbus arriving to the Americas Primer desembarco de Cristóbal Colón en América, by Dióscoro Puebla 1862.
October 12th, 1692
Salem witch trials: are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
Wikipedia Painting: "Examination of a Witch" in Salem; Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692
October 12th, 1773
America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia.
Wikipedia Painting: Social alienation was one of the main themes in Francisco Goya's masterpieces, such as The Madhouse
October 12th, 1810
First Oktoberfest: Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
Wikipedia Painting Oktoberfest, credit Zurika munich-art.
October 12th, 1823
Charles Macintosh, a Scottish chemist sells the first raincoat.
Wikipedia Image: Charles Macintosh, Covenger & Kester, Mackintosh outerwear.
October 12th, 1901
United States President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
Wikipedia Painting: Theodore Roosevelt / Spring at The White House, credit Jamie WG.
October 12th, 1915
World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell.
Wikipedia Image: Edith Cavell was a vicar's daughter, an English matron of a teaching hospital and an influential pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium. Edith Cavell com as suas enfermeiras.
October 12th, 1917
World War I: Battle of Passchendaele; takes place resulting in the largest single day loss of life in New Zealand history.
Wikipedia Photo: Canadian soldiers survey a destroyed German bunker. Photo by Frank Hurley.
October 12th, 1918
Massive forest fire kills 453 people in Minnesota.
Wikipedia Photo: Fire destroying Pagami Creek, Minnesota, September 14, 2011.
October 12th, 1928
Iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.
Wikipedia Photo: Single Child Iron Lung Respirator 1930.
October 12th, 1944
World War II:
1942 - Battle of Cape Esperance; on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, Japanese fleet retreat after defeat by United States Navy.
1944 - The Liberation of Athens from the German invaders.
1945 - Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
October 12th, 1960
Cold War:
1960 - Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe.
Wikipedia Photo: Lockheed C-130 Hercules; RAF Menwith Hill, a large site in the United Kingdom, part of ECHELON and the UKUSA Agreement; New Zealand nuclear test, British nuclear tests near the Malden and Christmas Islands in the mid-Pacific in 1957 and 1958; Nevada nuclear tests, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Bureau of Federal Facilities;
Shoe-banging incident, The famous fake image of Khrushchev waving a shoe (above), and the original photo made at the United Nations General Assembly, September 23, 1960, AP archives;
United States President Ronald Reagan with President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, Reykjavik, Iceland Summit. Guardian UK.
October 12th, 1962
Typhoon / Storms:
1962 - Infamous Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead.
1979 - Typhoon Tip; the lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in the Western Pacific.
Wikipedia Photo: Typhoon Ketsana. NASA Earth Observatory.
October 12th, 1964
Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits.
Wikipedia Photo: Voskhod 1
October 12th, 1967
Vietnam War:
1967 - U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk states during a news conference that proposals by the United States Congress for peace initiatives are futile because of North Vietnam's opposition.
1970 - U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam War: Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965. (AP Photo / Horst Faas) / Boston Globe
October 12th, 2000
USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
Wikipedia Photo: USS Cole bombing; Military Sealift Command fleet ocean tug USNS Catawba towing USS Cole.
October 12th, 2002
2002 Bali bombings: terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
Wikipedia Photo: 2002 Bali bombings
October 12th, 2017
United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO, and is immediately followed by Israel.
Wikipedia Photo: Audrey Azoulay, a former French culture minister, was elected director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Trump administration’s decision a day earlier to withdraw the United States from the organization. (Philippe Wojazer/Reuters)