October 9 in history

768  Carloman I and Charlemagne were crowned Kings of The Franks.

1201 Robert de Sorbon, French theologian and founder of the Sorbonne, was born (d. 1274).

1238  James I of Aragon conquered Valencia and founded the Kingdom of Valencia.

1264   The Kingdom of Castile conquered the city of Jerez that was under Muslim occupation since 711.

1446  The hangul alphabet was published in Korea.

1514  Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor.

1604  Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.

1635  Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.

1701  The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) was chartered in Old Saybrook.

1771  The Dutch merchant ship Vrouw Maria sank near the coast of Finland.

1776  Father Francisco Palou founded Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.

1799  Sinking of HMS Lutine, with the loss of 240 men and a cargo worth £1,200,000.

1804  Hobart, capital of Tasmania, was founded.

1812  War of 1812: In a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces captured two British ships: HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.

1820  Guayaquil declared independence from Spain.

1824  Slavery was abolished in Costa Rica.

1831  Capo d’Istria was assassinated.

1835  The Royal College, Colombo in Sri Lanka was established with the name Hillstreet Academy.

1837  A meeting at the U.S. Naval Academy established the U.S. Naval Institute.

1845  The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

1854  Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol began.

1861  American Civil War: Battle of Santa Rosa Island – Union troops repelled a Confederate attempt to capture Fort Pickens.

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Tom’s Brook – Union cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley defeated Confederate forces.

1888  The Washington Monument officially opened to the general public.

1900 Alastair Sim, Scottish actor, was born (d. 1976).

1911  An accidental bomb explosion in Hankou, Wuhan, China les to the ultimate fall of the Qing Empire

1913  Steamship SS Volturno caught fire in the mid-Atlantic.

1914  World War I: Siege of Antwerp – Antwerp fell to German troops.

1931 Tony Booth, British actor and father of Cherie Blair, was born.

1934  The assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou, Foreign Minister of France.

1936   Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) began to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.

1937 Brian Blessed, English actor, was born.

1940 John Lennon, British musician and songwriter (The Beatles), was born (d. 1980).

1940   Battle of Britain – During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s Cathedral was hit by a bomb.

1941  A coup in Panama declared Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango the new president.

1942   Statute of Westminster 1931 formalised Australian autonomy.

1942 The last day of the October Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps forces withdrew back across the Matanikau River after destroying most of the Japanese Army’s 4th Infantry Regiment.

1944 John Entwistle, British musician (The Who), was born (d. 2002).

1945   Parade in NYC for Fleet Admiral Nimitz and 13 USN/USMC Medal of Honor recipients.

1950 Jody Williams, American teacher and aid worker, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was born.

1952 Sharon Osbourne, English music manager and wife of Ozzy Osbourne, was born.

1954 James Fearnley, English musician (The Pogues), was born.

1962  Uganda becomes an independent Commonwealth realm.

1963  In northeast Italy, over 2,000 people were killed when a large landslide behind the Vajont Dam caused a giant wave of water to overflow it.

1966  David Cameron, British politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born.

1967 The six-o’clock swill ended.

1967  A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.

1970   The Khmer Republic was proclaimed in Cambodia.

1978 Nicky Byrne, Irish musician (Westlife), was born.

1981  Abolition of capital punishment in France.

1983  Rangoon bombing: attempted assassination of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during an official visit to Rangoon, Burma. Chun survived but the blast killed 17 of his entourage, including four cabinet ministers, and injured 17 others. Four Burmese officials also died in the blast.

1986  The musical The Phantom of the Opera had its first performance at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London.

1989  An official news agency in the Soviet Union reported the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.

1989  In Leipzig, East Germany, 70,000 protesters demanded the legalisation of opposition groups and democratic reforms.

1992  A 13 kilogramme (est.) fragment of the Peekskill meteorite landed in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family’s 1980 Chevrolet Malibu.

1999 The last flight of the SR-71.

2001  Second mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attack.

2006  North Korea allegedly tested its first nuclear device.

2009  First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Programme.

2012 – Members of the Pakistani Taliban made a Failed attempt to assassinate Malala Yousafzai on her way home from school.

Sourced from NZ Hisory Online & Wikipedia