Today' s Importance In History October 15

Today in History

October 15

1529 :  Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade.

1582 :  The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.

1783 :  Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.

1813  : During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.

1863  : For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sinks during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.

1878  : Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.

1880 :  Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.

1892 :  An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.

1894  : Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.

1914  : Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls “labor’s charter of freedom.” The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
1917  : Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari is executed by firing squad at Vincennes, outside Paris, on charges of spying for the German Empire during World War I. [From MHQ—The Quarterly Journal of Military History].

1924 :  A German ZR-3 flies 5000 miles, the furthest Zeppelin flight to date.

1941 :  Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.

1945  : Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.

1950 :  President Harry Trumanmeets with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.

1964 :  Nikita Khrushchev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.

1966  : Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale establish the Black Panther Party, an African-American revolutionary socialist political group, in the US.

1969  : Rallies for The Moratorium to End the War  in Vietnam draw over 2 million demonstrators across the US, a quarter million of them in the nation’s capital.

1987 :  The Great Storm of 1987 strikes the UK and Europe during the night of Oct 15-16, killing over 20 people and causing widespread damage.

1989 :  Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky makes his 1,851st goal, breaking the all-time scoring record in the National Hockey League. 

1990  : Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in making his country more open and reducing Cold War tensions. 

1997 :  Andy Green of the UK becomes the first person to break the sound barrier in the Earth’s atmosphere, driving the ThrustSSCsupersonic car to a record 763 mph (1,228 km/h). 

2003 :  China launches its first manned space mission, Shenzhou I. 

2007  : New Zealand police arrest 17 people believed to be part of a paramilitary training camp. 

2008  : The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop in the Dow’s history. 

2011 :  Protests break out in countries around the globe, under the slogan “United for Global Democracy.”