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686 - Conon becomes Pope.

1512 - Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg

1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-Nineteenth century.

1774 - First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.

1797 - In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS ''Constitution'' is launched.

1805 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar - a British fleet led by Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signalled the virtual end of French maritime power and left Britain navally unchallenged until the twentieth century.

1805 - Napoleonic Wars: Austrian General Mack surrenders his army to the Grand Army of Napoleon at Ulm, reaping Napoleon over 30,000 prisoners and inflicting 10,000 casualties on the losers. Ulm was considered to be one of Napoleon's finest hours.

1824 - Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement.

1854 - Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.

1861 - American Civil War: Battle of Ball's Bluff - Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.

1867 - Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge Treaty - Near Medicine Lodge, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate a reservation in western Oklahoma.

1879 - Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13½ hours before burning out).

1892 - Opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition were held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1, 1893.

1895 - The Republic of Formosa collapses as Japanese forces invade.

1902 - In the United States, a five month strike by United Mine Workers ends.

1921 - President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south.

1944 - The first kamikaze attack: HMAS ''Australia'' was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1945 - Women's suffrage: Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time.

1945 - Argentine military officer and politician Juan Perón married actress Evita.

1947 - 21 die as a fire destroys an asylum in Hoff, Germany.

1954 - The first part of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring is published in the U.S.A.

1957 - The movie Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, opens.

1959 - In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

1959 - US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.

1965 - Helen Schucman commits the first lines of A Course in Miracles to paper.

1966 - Aberfan disaster: A coal tip falls on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren

1967 - Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, DC. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and United States Marshals protecting the facility (event lasts until October 23; 683 people were arrested). Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.

1969 - A coup d'état in Somalia brings Siad Barre to power.

1973 - John Paul Getty III's ear is cut off by his kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in Rome; it doesn't arrive until November 8.

1976 - Keith Moon plays his last public show with The Who. He will die in 1978.

1977 - The European Patent Institute is founded

1977 - Meat Loaf's hit album Bat Out of Hell is released under Epic's Cleveland International Records

1978 - Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes in a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1983 - The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

1986 - In Lebanon, pro-Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he was released in August 1991).

1987 - Former Miss America Bess Myerson is arrested on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud, all involving an alimony-fixing scandal. She is later found not guilty.

1994 - North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea and the United States sign an agreement that requires North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.

1994 - In Seoul, 32 people are killed when the Seongsu Bridge collapses.

2001 - "United We Stand" benefit concert for September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks victims, held at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. Event organized and headlined by Michael Jackson, also featuring pop stars Aerosmith, Mariah Carey, The Backstreet Boys, and others.

2002 - Violence in Badlapur located in Mumbai Conurbation created a tension in the city resulted in a lot of property damage injuring 4 people.

2003 - Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.

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1449 - George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV of England and Richard III of England (d. 1478)

1527 - Louis I, Cardinal of Guise, French cardinal (d. 1578)

1581 - Domenico Zampieri, Italian painter (d. 1641)

1650 - Jean Bart, French admiral (d. 1702)

1660 - Georg Ernst Stahl, German scientist (d. 1734)

1675 - Emperor Higashiyama of Japan (d. 1710)

1687 - Nicolaus I Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1759)

1712 - Sir James Denham Steuart, 4th Baronet, British economist (d. 1780)

1725 - Franz Moritz Graf von Lacy, Austrian field marshal (d. 1801)

1757 - Pierre François Charles Augereau, duc de Castiglione, French marshal (d. 1816)

1762 - Herman Willem Daendels, Dutch statesman (d. 1818)

1772 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet (d. 1834)

1775 - Giuseppe Baini, Italian composer (d. 1844)

1790 - Alphonse de Lamartine, French writer (d. 1869)

1833 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize (d. 1896)

1847 - Giuseppe Giacosa, Italian writer (d. 1906)

1851 - George Ulyett, British cricketer (d. 1898)

1895 - Edna Purviance, American actress (d. 1958)

1904 - Patrick Kavanagh, Irish poet (d. 1967)

1912 - Sir Georg Solti, Hungarian conductor (d. 1997)

1914 - Martin Gardner, American mathematician and writer

1917 - Dizzy Gillespie, American musician (d. 1993)

1921 - Sir Malcolm Arnold, British composer (d. 2006)

1924 - Celia Cruz, Cuban singer (d. 2003)

1925 - Louis Robichaud, Canadian politician, premier of New Brunswick (d. 2005)

1928 - Whitey Ford, baseball player

1929 - Ursula K. Le Guin, American author

1938 - Carl Brewer, National Hockey League defenseman (d. 2001)

1940 - Geoff Boycott, British cricketer

1940 - Manfred Mann, British musician

1941 - Steve Cropper, American musician

1942 - Elvin Bishop, American musician

1942 - Judy Sheindlin, American judge and television host

1943 - Brian Piccolo, American football player (d. 1970)

1949 - Benjamin Netanyahu, 9th Prime Minister of Israel

1949 - Mike Keenan, Canadian hockey coach/GM

1949 - Michel Brière, National Hockey League player (d. 1971)

1952 - Trevor Chappell, Australian Cricketer

1952 - Brent Mydland, American keyboardist (Grateful Dead) (d. 1990)

1953 - Peter Mandelson, British politician

1953 - Keith Green, American musician (d. 1982)

1954 - Brian Tobin, Canadian politician, former premier of Newfoundland

1955 - Rich Mullins, American musician (d. 1997)

1956 - Carrie Fisher, American actress and writer

1957 - Wolfgang Ketterle, German physicist, Nobel Prize laueate

1957 - Steve Lukather, American musician

1959 - Ken Watanabe, Japanese actor

1962 - David Campese, Australian rugby player

1964 - Jon Carin, American musician (Pink Floyd, The Who)

1967 - Paul Ince, British footballer

1968 - Melora Walters, Saudi American actress

1971 - Damien Martyn, Australian cricketer

1971 - Nick Oliveri, American musician

1972 - Felicity Andersen, Australian actress

1973 - Lera Auerbach, Russian composer

1976 - Lavinia Miloşovici, Romanian gymnast

1976 - Jeremy Miller, American TV actor

1978 - Joey Harrington, American football player

1978 - Will Estes, American actor

1978 - Jessica Jones, American costume designer

1979 - Gabe Gross, American Baseball player

1980 - Brian Pittman, American musician (Inhale Exhale, formerly of Relient K)

1981 - Nemanja Vidic. Serbian footballer

1984 - Kieran Richardson, British footballer

1986 - Alex Kew, British child actor

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1125 - Cosmas of Prague, Bohemian writer

1221 - Alix of Thouars, Duchess of Brittany (b. 1201)

1266 - Birger jarl, Swedish statesman and founder of Stockholm (b. 1210)

1422 - King Charles VI of France (b. 1368)

1500 - Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado of Japan (b. 1442)

1505 - Paul Scriptoris, German mathematician

1558 - Julius Caesar Scaliger, Italian humanist scholar (b. 1484)

1600 - Toda Katsushige, Japanese warlord (b. 1557)

1623 - William Wade, English statesman and diplomat (b. 1546)

1662 - Henry Lawes, English composer (b. 1595)

1687 - Sir Edmund Waller, English poet (b. 1606)

1765 - Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Italian painter and architect (b. 1691)

1775 - Peyton Randolph, American president of the Continental Congress (b. 1721)

1777 - Samuel Foote, English dramatist and actor (b. 1720)

1805 - Horatio Nelson, British admiral (mortally wounded in battle) (b. 1758)

1872 - Jacques Babinet, French physicist (b. 1794)

1873 - Johann Sebastian Welhaven, Norwegian poet (b. 1807)

1896 - James Henry Greathead, British engineer (b. 1844)

1904 - Isabelle Eberhardt, explorer and writer who spent a lot of time in North Africa (b. 1877)

1931 - Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian writer (b. 1862)

1944 - Alois Kayser, German missionary to Nauru (b. 1877)

1965 - Bill Black, american musician (b. 1926)

1969 - Jack Kerouac, American novelist (b. 1922)

1969 - Waclaw Sierpinski, Polish mathematician (b. 1882)

1975 - Charles Reidpath, American athlete (b. 1887)

1978 - Anastas Mikoyan, Soviet politician (b. 1895)

1980 - Hans Asperger, Austrian psychologist (b. 1906)

1984 - François Truffaut, French film director (b. 1932)

1986 - Lionel Murphy, Australian politician and judge (b. 1922)

1992 - Jim Garrison, American attorney (b. 1921)

1995 - Shannon Hoon, American singer (Blind Melon) (b. 1967)

1995 - Jesús Blasco, Spanish comic book author (b. 1919)

1995 - Maxene Andrews, American singer (The Andrews Sisters) (b. 1916)

2003 - Fred Berry, American actor (b. 1951)

2003 - Luis A. Ferré, Governor of Puerto Rico (b. 1940)

2003 - Louise Day Hicks, American politician (b. 1916)

2003 - Elliott Smith, American musician (b. 1969)

2005 - Tara Correa-McMullen, American actres (b. 1989)

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R.C. saints - Saint Ursula; Saint Hilarion

Republic of China - Overseas Chinese Day

Trafalgar Day — celebrated throughout much of the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th Century.

Diwali in Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism (2006)

French Republican Calendar - Tonneau (Barrel) Day, thirtieth day in the Month of Vendémiaire

Sweetest Day - Celebrated mostly in the Midwest United States (2006)

Police Day - South Korea

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In the comic novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, the Earth was born on this day in 4004 BC, within a quarter of an hour of 9 in the morning. This was supposedly because God liked to get things over with early.

In the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel 30 years into the future from 1985 to October 21, 2015.