680 Battle of Karbala: Hussain bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I.
732 Battle of Tours: The leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeated a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, was killed during the battle.
1471 Battle of Brunkeberg: Sten Sture the Elder, the Regent of Sweden, with the help of farmers and miners, repelled an attack by Christian I, King of Denmark.
1575 Battle of Dormans: Roman Catholic forces under Duke Henry of Guise defeat the Protestants, capturing Philippe de Mornay among others.
1580 After a three-day siege, the English Army beheaded over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir, Ireland.
1780 The Great Hurricane of 1780 killed 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean.
1813 Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer, was born (d. 1901).
1830 Queen Isabella II f Spain, was born (d. 1904).
1845 In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opened with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.
1868 Carlos Céspedes issued the Grito de Yara from his plantation, La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba’s independence.
1900 Helen Hayes, American actress, was born (d. 1993).
1911 The Wuchang Uprising led to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.
1911 The KCR East Rail commenced service between Kowloon and Canton.
1913 President Woodrow Wilson triggered the explosion of the Gamboa Dike, ending construction on the Panama Canal.
1920 The Carinthian Plebiscite determined that the larger part of Carinthia should remain part of Austria.
1923 Nicholas Parsons, English actor, was born.
1930 Harold Pinter, English playwright, Nobel laureate, was born (d. 2008)
1933 United Airlines Chesterton Crash: A United Airlines Boeing 247 was destroyed by sabotage
1935 A coup d’état by the royalist leadership of the Greek Armed Forces tak overthrew the government of Panagis Tsaldaris and established a regency under Georgios Kondylis, effectively ending the Second Hellenic Republic.
1938 The Munich Agreement ceded the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.
1943 Double Tenth Incident in Japanese controlled Singapore.
1944 Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children were murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp.
1945 The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang signed a principle agreement in Chongqing about the future of post-war China – the Double-Ten Agreement.
1950 Nora Roberts, American novelist, was born.
1957 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologised to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he was refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.
1957 – The Windscale fire in Cumbria – the world’s first major nuclear accident.
1963 France ceded control of the Bizerte naval base to Tunisia.
1964 The opening ceremony at The 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, was broadcast live in the first Olympic telecast relayed by geostationary communication satellite.
1967 The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, comes into force.
1970 Fiji became independent.
1970 – In Montreal, Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte became the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
1971 London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
1973 Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with federal income tax evasion.
1975 The government created the Waitangi Tribunal to hear Maori claims of breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi by successive New Zealand governments.
1978 – Caroline Meyer and Georgina Earl (nee Evers-Swindell), Olympic gold medal rowers were born.
1985 United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercepted an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily.
1986 An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale in San Salvador killed an estimated 1,500 people.
1997 An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashed and exploded near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74.
1998 A Lignes Aériennes Congolaises Boeing 727 was shot down by rebels in Kindu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 41 people.
2006 The Greek city of Volos flooded in one of the prefecture’s worst recorded floods.
2008 The 10 October 2008 Orakzai bombing killed 110 and injured 200 more.
2009 Armenia and Turkey signed protocols in Zurich, Switzerland to open their borders which had been closed for about 200 years.
1010 – The Netherlands Antilles were dissolved.
Sourced from NZ history Online & Wikipedia
Posted by homepaddock 
