455 – Emperor Avitus entered Rome with a Gallic army and consolidated his power.
1217 Livonian Crusade: The Estonian tribal leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo were killed in Battle of St. Matthew’s Day.
1411 Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, claimant to the English throne, was born (d. 1460).
1745 Battle of Prestonpans: A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope was defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
1756 John Macadam, Scottish engineer and road-builder, was born (d. 1836).
1792 The National Convention declared France a republic and abolished the monarchy.
1827 Joseph Smith, Jr. was reportedly visited by the angel Moroni, who gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Smith has translated into The Book of Mormon.
1834 Betty Guard and her children were rescued from Ngati Ruanui (who had held them captive in Taranaki since April) by troops from HMS Alligatorand Isabella.
1860 In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeated Chinese troops at the Battle of Baliqiao.
1866 – H. G. Wells, English writer, was born (d. 1946).
1874 – Gustav Holst, English composer, was born (d. 1934).
1897 The “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial was published in the New York Sun.
1898 Empress Dowager Cixi seized power and ended the Hundred Days’ Reform in China.
1902 Sir Allen Lane, British founder of Penguin Books, was born (d. 1970).
1921 A storage silo in Oppau, Germany, exploded, killing 500-600 people.
1934 A large typhoon hit western Honshū killing 3,036 people.
1937 J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was published.
1938 The Great Hurricane of 1938 made landfall on Long Island, killing an estimated at 500-700 people.
1939 Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu was assassinated by ultranationalist members of the Iron Guard.
1942 On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis sent more than 1,000 Jews of Pidhaytsi to Belzec extermination camp.
1942 In Poland, at the end of Yom Kippur, Germans ordered Jews to permanently evacuate Konstantynów and move to the Ghetto inBiała Podlaska, established to assemble Jews from seven nearby towns.
1942 In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murdered 2,588 Jews.
1942 The B-29 Superfortress made its maiden flight.
1947 Stephen King, American author, was born.
1947 Don Felder, American guitarist (Eagles), was born.
1950 Bill Murray, American comedian and actor, was born.
1957 Kevin Rudd, 26th Prime Minister of Australia, was born.
1961 Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter.
1964 Malta became independent from the United Kingdom.
1964 The XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s first Mach 3 bomber, made its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
1965 David Wenham, Australian actor, was born.
1972 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signed Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.
1976 Orlando Letelier, a member of the Chilean socialist government which was overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet, was assassinated in Washington, D.C.
1978 Doug Howlett, New Zealand rugby union footballer, was born.
1981 Belize was granted full independence from the United Kingdom.
1981 Sandra Day O’Connor was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice.
1989 Hurricane Hugo made landfall in South Carolina.
1991 Armenia was granted independence from Soviet Union.
1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspended parliament and scrapped the then-functioning constitution, thus triggering the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in central Taiwan, left about 2,400 people dead.
2001 – AZF chemical plant exploded in Toulouse killing 31 people.
2003 – Galileo mission was terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it was crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.
2004 The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India merged to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
2008 Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two last remaining independent investment banks on Wall Street, become bank holding companies as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.
2013 – al-Shabaab Islamic militants attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
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