On this day in History - Oct. 8

• 0451 - At Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia in Asia Minor, the first session of the Council of Chalcedon begins (ends on November 1).
• 0705 - Death of Caliph Abd al-Malik, in Damascus.
• 0976 - Jelena of Zadar dies. Croatian queen
• 1085 - St Mark's Cathedral in Venice was consecrated.
• 1179 - Death of Odo de Saint-Amand, 8th Master of the Templars.
• 1286 - John I of Dreux dies (b. 1217). Duke of Brittany
• 1317 - Fushimi dies (b. 1265). Emperor of Japan.
• 1515 - Margaret Douglas was born (d. 1578). Countess of Lennox.
• 1515 - Partida da expedição de Juan Díaz de Solís (descobridor do Rio da Prata)
• 1542 - Rodrigues Cabrilho lands at Santa Monica, California
• 1575 - Jan Massys dies. Flemish painter.
• 1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
• 1585 - Heinrich Schutz was born. Composer
• 1600 - San Marino adopts its written constitution.
• 1604 - The supernova called "Kepler's nova" is 1st sighted.
• 1610 - Polish troops capture Moscow.
• 1621 - Antoine de Montchrétien dies. French dramatist and economist
• 1647 - Christian Sørensen Longomontanus dies (b. 1562). Danish astronomer.
• 1652 - John Greaves dies (b. 1602). English mathematician and antiquarian.
• 1656 - John George I, Elector of Saxony dies (b. 1585)
• 1659 - Jean de Quen dies. French Jesuit missionary and historian
• 1676 - Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro was born (d. 1764). Spanish scholar.
• 1708 - Jean Perronet was born (d. 27 Feb 1794). French civil engineer renowned for his stone-arch bridges, especially the Pont de la Concorde, Paris.
• 1735 - Yongzheng dies (b. 1678). Emperor of China
• 1747 - Jean-François Rewbell was born (d. 1807). French politician
• 1754 - Henry Fielding dies in Lisbon (b. 1707). English novelist and dramatist. His Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon will appear the following year.
• 1765 - Harman Blennerhassett was born (d. 1831). Irish lawyer.
• 1772 - Jean Joseph de Mondonville dies (b. 1711). French composer.
• 1789 - John Ruggles was born (d. 1874). American politician
• 1793 - John Hancock dies (b. 1737). American revolutionary and businessman
• 1795 - Andrew Kippis dies (b. 1725). English non-conformist clergyman and biographer
• 1803 - Vittorio Alfieri dies. Italian earl/writer
• 1809 - James Elphinston dies (b. 1721).Scottish philologist.
• 1818 - John Henninger Reagan was born (d. 1905). American and Confederate politician
• 1820 - Henri Christophe dies (b. 06 Oct 1767). He was a leader in the war of Haitian independence (1791-1804) and later president (1807-1811) and self-proclaimed King Henry I (1811-1820) of northern Haiti.
• 1826 - George Garrard dies (b. 31 May 1760). English painter and sculptor.
• 1826 - Friedrich Krupp dies. Industrialist.
• 1834 - Walter Kittredge was born (d. 1905). American musician and composer
• 1834 - François-Adrien Boieldieu dies (b. 1775). French composer.
• 1835 - HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin reaches James Island, Galapagos archipelago
• 1846 - Portugal: Com a prisão do Duque da Terceira, lugar-tenente da Rainha D. Maria II nas províncias do Norte, por José Passos e forças revoltadas de infantaria 6, tem início a Guerra Civil da Patuleia.
• 1840 - First constitution in Haway is proclaimed.
• 1850 - Henry-Louis Le Chatelier was born (d. 17 Sep 1936). French chemist who is best known for the principle of Le Chatelier, which makes it possible to predict the effect a change of conditions (temperature, pressure, and concentration of reaction components) will have on a chemical reaction
• 1862 - American Civil War: Battle of Perryville - Union forces under General Don Carlos Buell halt the Confederate invasion of Kentucky by defeating troops led by General Braxton Bragg at Perryville, Kentucky.
• 1865 - António Pedro Lopes de Mendonça dies. Portuguese writer.
• 1869 - Franklin Pierce dies (b. 1804). 14th President of the United States.
• 1870 - Louis Vierne was born (d. 1937). French organist
• 1871 - Three major fires break out on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and Holland, Michigan. The Great Chicago Fire is the most famous of these, burning 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²) in one day, eventually destroying about 17,450 buildings, and killing about 250 people while leaving another 90,000 homeless. The Peshtigo Fire burns 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²) across six counties in one day and kills 1,200 to 2,500 people, making it the deadliest in United States history. The Holland Fire destroys at least two towns.
• 1872 - John Cowper Powys was born (d. 17 Jun 1963). Welsh novelist, essayist, and poet. He is known chiefly for his long panoramic novels, including Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932), and Owen Glendower (1940). His other works include an Autobiography (1934) and books of essays such as The Meaning of Culture (1930), The Pleasures of Literature (1938), The Art of Growing Old (1943).
• 1873 - Ejnar Hertzsprung was born in Copenhagen (d. 21 Oct 1967). Danish astronomer who classified types of stars by relating their surface temperature (or colour) to their absolute brightness
• 1878 - Alfred Munnings was born. British painter
• 1879 - Ch'en Ch'ien-sheng “Ch'en Tu-hsiu” was born (d. 27 May 1942). Founder of the Chinese Communist Party (May 1920) and a major leader in developing the cultural basis of revolution in China. He was removed from his position of leadership in 1927 and was expelled from the Communist Party in 1929.
• 1883 - Otto Warburg was born (d. 1 Aug 1970). German biochemist awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1931 for his research on cellular respiration, the process by which substances directly supplied to cells or stored in them are broken down into simpler components while using up oxygen.
• 1887 - Huntley Gordon was born (d. 1956). Canadian actor
• 1888 - Ernst Kretschmer was born (d. 8 Feb 1964). German psychiatrist who attempted to correlate body build and physical constitution with personality characteristics and mental illness
• 1889 - C. E. Woolman was born (d. 1966). American airline founder.
• 1890 - Edward Rickenbacker was born (d. 1973). American pilot.
• 1894 - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. dies (b. 1809). American physician and writer
• 1895 - The Berliner Gramophone Company was founded in Philadelphia. Record players were not too far off in the future
• 1895 - Juan Perón was born (d. 1 Jul 1974). President of Argentina (1946-1955; 1973-1974); married Eva Peron [Evita] who died in 1952; married Maria Estela Martinez aka Isabel, who became Vice President of Argentina in 1973 and then took over the presidency upon the death of her husband [1974];
• 1895 - Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, was assassinated.
• 1895 - Berliner Gramophone Company is founded
• 1896 - Dow Jones starts reporting an average of selected industrial stocks.
• 1897 - Alexei Savrasov dies (b. 1830). Russian painter.
• 1901 - Doris Allen was born (d. 2002). American psychologist.
• 1901 - Eivind Groven was born (d. 1977).Norwegian composer and ethnomusicologist.
• 1904 - Clemens Alexander Winkler dies. German chemist who discovered the element germanium (1886).
• 1905 - A permanent waving machine was first used on a woman's hair, by Charles Nessler.
• 1906 - Harry Gilbert Day was born. American nutritional biochemist who helped develop (with Joe Muhler and William Nebergall) the fluoride additive used in toothpaste to combat tooth decay
• 1910 - Kirk Alyn was born (d. 1999). American actor.
• 1910 - Ray Lewis was born (d. 2003). Canadian runner.
• 1912 - First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against Turkey.
• 1913 - Robert Rowe Gilruth was born (d. 17 Aug 2000). American aerospace scientist, engineer, and a pioneer of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs
• 1914 - Joseph Déchelette dies (b. 8 Jan 1862). French archaeologist who was an authority on Gallo-Roman and Celtic coins. He wrote Le Manuel d'archéologie préhistorique, celtique et gallo-romaine (1908-14) about the pre-history of France.
• 1915 - World War I - The Battle of Loos ended. Almost 430,000 French, British & Germans killed
• 1917 - Walter Lord was born (d. 2002). American author.
• 1917 - Billy Conn was born (d. 1993). American boxer.
• 1917 - Danny Murtaugh was born (d. 1976). Baseball player and manager.
• 1917 - Rodney Porter was born (d. 7 Sep 1985). British biochemist who (with Gerald M. Edelman) was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies.
• 1918 - Jens Christian Skou was born. Danish biophysicist who (with Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997 for his discovery of the enzyme called sodium-potassium-activated adenosine triphosphatase.
• 1918 - World War I - In the Argonne Forest in France, United States Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
• 1918 - Saturnino Hernán dies. Mexican painter.
• 1920 - Frank Herbert was born (d. 1986). American writer.
• 1925 - Álvaro Alfredo Magaña Borja was born. President of S. Salvador (1982-1984)
• 1927 - Jim Elliot was born (d. 1956). American missionary.
• 1927 - César Milstein was born in Bahía Blanca (d. 24 Mar 2002). Argentine immunologist biochemist. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 shared with Niels K. Jerne and Georges J.F. Köhler "for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies"
• 1927 - Ricardo Güiraldes dies in Paris (d. 13 Feb 1886). Argentine writer "Don segundo sombra".
• 1928 - Bill Maynard was born. British actor
• 1928 - Larry Semon dies (b. 1889). Silent film comedian
• 1929 - Franklin W. Stahl was born. U.S. geneticist who, in 1958, (with Matthew Meselson) elucidated the mode of replication of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA; the gene substance) a double-stranded helix that dissociates to form two strands, each of which directs the construction of a new sister strand
• 1929 - Betty Boothroyd was born. British MP, the Speaker of the House of Commons
• 1931 - Sir John Monash dies (b. 1865). Australian soldier general.
• 1932 - Ray Reardon was born. Welsh snooker player
• 1932 - The Indian Air Force is established.
• 1933 - Martinez Barrios forms new Spanish government
• 1935 - Ozzie Nelson marries Harriet Hilliard (Ozzie & Harriet)
• 1936 - William Henry Stark dies (b. 1851). American business leader.
• 1936 - David Carradine was born. Actor.
• 1936 - Rona Barrett was born. Entertainment reporter.
• 1936 - Red Ames dies (b. 1882). American baseball player.
• 1937 - Merle Park was born. British ballerina.
• 1938 - Fred Stolle was born. Australian tennis player
• 1939 - Paul Hogan was born. Australian actor (Crocodile Dundee series, Lightning Jack, Flipper)
• 1939 - World War II: Germany annexes Western Poland.
• 1940 - Robert Emden dies (b. 4 Mar 1862). Swiss physicist and astrophysicist who developed a theory of expansion and compression of gas spheres and applied it to stellar structure
• 1941 - World War II: In their invasion of the Soviet Union, Germany reaches the Sea of Azov with the capture of Mariupol.
• 1941 - Jesse Jackson was born. American clergyman and civil rights activist
• 1942 - Sergei Chaplygin dies. Soviet engineer
• 1943 - Chevy Chase was born. American comedian and actor
• 1943 - R. L. Stine was born. American author
• 1944 - The radio show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet debuts
• 1944 - Wendell Willkie dies (b. 1892). American politician and Presidential candidate
• 1945 - Felix Salten dies (b. 1869). Austrian author
• 1946 - Dennis Kucinich was born. U.S. Congressman and Presidential candidate
• 1947 - Tony Wilson was born. British bassist and singer
• 1948 - Johnny Ramone was born (d.2004). American guitarist (The Ramones)
• 1949 - Sigourney Weaver was born. American actress (Gorillas in the Mist, Alien series, Working Girl, Dave, Ghostbusters series, Annie Hall, The Year of Living Dangerously); daughter of Sylvester Pat Weaver
• 1950 - Robert Kool Bell was born. American musician (Kool & the Gang)
• 1952 - At least 85 people are killed in the UK's worst peacetime rail crash after three trains collide at Harrow and Wealdstone.
• 1952 - Jan Marijnissen was born. Dutch politician
• 1952 - Joe Adams dies (b. 1877). American baseball player.
• 1953 - Nigel Bruce dies (b. 1895). British actor
• 1953 - Kathleen Ferrier dies (b. 1912). British contralto
• 1954 - Michael Dudikoff was born. Actor: Virtual Assassin, Soldier Boyz, The Human Shield, American Ninja series, Platoon Leader, Avenging Force, Bachelor Party, I Ought to Be in Pictures, The Black Marble, Star of the Family, Cobra
• 1956 - Stephanie Zimbalist was born. American actress
• 1956 - New York Yankees baseball pitcher Don Larsen pitches first (and only) perfect game in World Series history in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.
• 1957 - Baseball: Walter O'Malley announces that the Dodgers are going to move from Brooklyn, New York to Los Angeles, California
• 1958 - Ran Bosilek dies (b. 1886). Bulgarian author and translator.
• 1959 - Nick Bakay was born.American actor, voice actor, and comedian
• 1962 - Spiegel scandal: Der Spiegel publishes the article "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("Conditionally prepared for defense") about a NATO manoeuver called "Fallex 62", which uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's army) facing the communist threat from the east at the time. The magazine was soon accused of treason.
• 1962 - Algeria admitted as 109th member of the UN
• 1964 - CeCe Winans was born. American singer.
• 1965 - London's Post Office Tower, Britain's tallest building, opened.
• 1965 - Ardal O'Hanlon was born. Irish comedian
• 1965 - C-Jay Ramone was born. American bassist (The Ramones)
• 1967 - Guerrilla leader Che Guevara (b. 14 Jun 1928) and his men are captured in Bolivia. He was executed next day.
• 1967 - Clement Attlee dies (b. 1883). Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 1968 - Vietnam War: Operation Sealords - United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
• 1968 - Leeroy Thornhill was born. British musician (The Prodigy)
• 1968 - Zvonimir Boban was born. Croatian football player
• 1969 - Julia Ann was born. American porn actress
• 1969 - Dylan Neal was born. Canadian actor
• 1970 - Matt Damon was born. American actor ( Saving Private Ryan, Courage Under Fire, Good Will Hunting, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ocean's Eleven )
• 1970 - Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon's October 7 peace proposal as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion."
• 1970 - Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 11 Dec 1918) won the Nobel Prize in literature, “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.”
• 1970 - Tetsuya Nomura was born. Japanese Video Games Director, Character Designer and Concept Designer
• 1970 - Mitr Chaibancha dies (b. 1934). Thai film actor.
• 1970 - Jean Giono dies (b. 1895). French author.
• 1971 - John Lennon releases his megahit "Imagine"
• 1972 - DJ Q-Ball was born. American Musician (Bloodhound Gang)
• 1973 - Rhys Evans was born. Renowned Welsh born raconteur and street performer
• 1973 - LBC (London Broadcasting), Britain's first legal commercial radio station, began transmitting.
• 1973 - Gabriel Marcel dies (b. 1889). French philosopher.
• 1974 - Fredrik Modin was born. Swedish ice hockey player
• 1976 - Renate Groenewold was born. Dutch speed skater
• 1977 - Anne-Caroline Chausson was born. French down hill mountain bike rider
• 1978 - Australia's Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 317.60 mph at Blowering Dam, Australia.
• 1979 - Kristanna Loken was born. American actress and model
• 1980 - USSR & Syria sign peace treaty.
• 1980 - Mike Mizanin was born. American professional wrestler and host of Smackdown!
• 1982 - Poland bans Solidarity. A new law in Poland banned Solidarity and forbid the setting up of new trade unions.
• 1982 - Fernando Lamas dies (b. 1916).Argentine actor.
• 1982 - Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker dies (b. 1889). English peace activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 1983 - Joan Hackett dies (b. 1934). American actress.
• 1984 - Anne Murray won the Country Music Association’s Album of the Year Award this day for A Little Good News. Murray was the first woman to win this award
• 1985 - Eiji Wentz was born. German-Japanese entertainer and singer.
• 1987 - Dustin Breeding was born. American singer (B5)
• 1989 - The Latvian Popular Front announced its intention to seek independence from the USSR.
• 1990 - Britain's first full day in ERM Hectic trading in the City marks Britain's first day as a full member of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System.
• 1990 - Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: In Jerusalem, Israeli police kill 17 Palestinians and wound over 100 near the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount
• 1990 - American doctors Joseph E. Murray and E. Donnall Thomas won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, “for their discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease.”
• 1991 - The Croatian Parliament cuts all remaining ties with Yugoslavia
• 1992 - Willy Brandt dies (b. 1913). Chancellor of Germany, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 1992 - West Indian poet Derek Walcott was the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in literature, “for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.”
• 1996 - American economist William Vickrey (Columbia University) and British professor James Mirrlees (Cambridge University) were winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information.” The 82-year-old Vickrey died October 11, 1996 (three days after the Nobel announcement).
• 1996 - US economist William Vickrey (b. 21 Jun1914 – d. 11 Oct 1996) and British professor James Mirrlees [05 Jul 1936~] are named co-winners of the 1996 Nobel economics prize.
• 1997 - Bertrand Goldberg dies (b. 1913). American architect.
• 1998 - Oslo Airport Gardermoen, Norway opens.
• 1998 - José Saramago (b. 16 Nov 1922), Portuguese novelist is laureate with The Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy said it gave the award to Saramago for work that “with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an illusory reality.”
• 1999 - New Coligny Calendar, NCC, The beginning of a new era of the Colignay Calendar, the oldest material Celtic calendar.
• 1999 - John McLendon dies (b. 1915). American basketball coach.
• 2001 - A twin engine Cessna and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) jetliner collide in heavy fog during takeoff from Milan, Italy killing 118.
• 2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security, which will be headed by Tom Ridge.
• 2001 - The main body of the Russian submarine Kursk, is raised from 108 m down on be Barents Sea floor where it had sunk on 12 August 2000, killing all 116 on board. The salvage operation is conducted from a giant barge with computer-controlled cables by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International, contracted for some $65 million by the Russian government.
• 2001 - The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announces that the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2001 is awarded to Leland H. Hartwell (b. 30 Oct 1939~) (USA), Richard Timothy “Tim” Hunt (b.19 Feb 1943~) (UK) and Paul M. Nurse (b.25 Jan 1949~ ) (UK), for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle
• 2002 - The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announces the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2002 with one half jointly to Raymond Davis Jr (USA) (b. 14 Oct 1914~), and Masatoshi Koshiba (Japan) (b.19 Sep 1926~) “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos” and the other half to Riccardo Giacconi (USA) (b. 06 Oct 1931~) “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources”.
• 2003 - Film star Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California, ousting the incumbent, Gray Davis, three years before the end of his term of office.
• 2003 - Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark's engagement to Australian lawyer Mary Donaldson is announced
• 2003 - This year's Nobel Prize for Economics is announced to go to Robert F. Engle “for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)” and to Clive W. J. Granger (b. 1934~) “for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)”. Both laureates are from the US.
• 2003 - This year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry is announced to be awarded “for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes”, to Peter Agre [1949~] “for the discovery of water channels” and to Roderick MacKinnon (b. 1956~) “for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels”. Both laureates are from the US
• 2004 - Martha Stewart goes to jail.
• 2004 - Schapelle Corby is arrested for drugs smuggling in Bali.
• 2004 - Jacques Derrida dies (b. 15 Jul 1930 in Algeria). French Jewish philosopher
• 2004 - It is announced that the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize will go to Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai [01 Apr 1940] “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” One of her achievements is the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977.
• 2005 - Many hundreds of people die in Pakistan, north India and Afghanistan following a massive quake.