October

1

A.D. 959 -- Edgar the Peace­ful be­gins his 16-year reign, giv­ing Eng­land a bit of a break be­tween wars and in­va­sions.

2

1979 -- Pope John Paul II⁺ speaks out against tor­ture to a some­what un­com­fort­able crowd of U.N. del­e­gates.

3

1990 -- East and West Ger­many merge and be­gin a pro­cess of cen­tral­iza­tion.

4

1582 -- Euro­pean coun­tries be­gin to adopt the Gre­go­ri­an cal­en­dar, re­sult­ing in stag­gered ten-day spans with no his­to­ry.

5

1966 -- Detroit, Mich. and sur­round­ings es­cape pre­ma­ture dis­as­ter, af­ter a par­tial nu­cle­ar melt­down at a near­by pow­er plant has no of­fi­cial ex­ter­nal ef­fect.

6

1995 -- First ex­o­plan­et or­bit­ing a dis­tant Sun is found. It fails to cap­ture pop­u­lar in­ter­est, af­ter it is es­tab­lished that noth­ing ex­ist­ing there is like­ly to in­vade Earth or vice-ver­sa.

7

2001 -- The U.S. and Bri­tain joint­ly launch a new overt war in Afghanistan.

8

2001 -- The Of­fice of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty is es­tab­lished, its pri­ma­ry job be­ing to keep the U.S. out of reach of ter­ror­ists, or fail­ing that, help to clear up the mess.

9

2006 -- North Korea con­ducts its first nu­cle­ar test, a few days af­ter an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly nov­el act of giv­ing pri­or no­tice.

10

1967 -- The Outer Space Treaty takes ef­fect, pro­hibit­ing sign­ing Earth na­tions from us­ing the Moon or oth­er ce­les­tial bod­ies for col­o­niza­tion or mil­i­tary use. Earth it­self is still fair game.

11

1958 -- Launch of NASA's first space­craft Pioneer 1, which would suc­cess­ful­ly gath­er im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion about the at­mo­sphere as it plum­mets back to Earth.

12

1492 -- Al­leged first sight­ing of Christo­pher Colum­bus in the Ba­hamas.

13

1792 -- White House con­struc­tion be­gins. De­spite tak­ing eight years to com­plete, an im­me­di­ate ex­pan­sion will be or­dered by First Tenant Thomas Jef­fer­son.

14

1066 -- The Bat­tle of Hast­ings is fought be­tween English and Nor­man forces, for the en­tire day dur­ing busi­ness hours with a break for tea.

15

2011 -- Over a mil­lion peo­ple at­tend protests world­wide to ex­press their views against cor­rup­tion and in­equal­i­ty, af­ter which they de­part for home or prison.

16

1846 -- Ether anes­the­sia is first demon­strat­ed in the U.S., ren­der­ing near­ly ob­so­lete such time-hon­ored meth­ods as whiskey and blows to the head.

17

1973 -- Oil cri­sis be­gins, in­flict­ed most­ly up­on Western coun­tries by OPEC and lead­ing to con­ser­va­tion mea­sures, for­eign pol­i­cy changes and oth­er ru­mored ef­fects.

18

1867 -- The Rus­sian flag is low­ered for the last time in front of the Alas­ka gov­er­nor's of­fice.

19

1933 -- Ger­many drops out of the peace­mon­ger­ing League of Na­tions.

20

1947 -- The House Un-Amer­i­can Ac­tiv­i­ties Com­mit­tee be­gins its doomed at­tempts to root the Com­mu­nists out of Hol­ly­wood.

21

1959 -- Need­ing to com­pete in the Space Race with the Sovi­ets and their con­fined Nazi en­gi­neers, the U.S. sends its own set of Nazis to work for NASA.

22

A.D. 362 -- An­ti­och tem­ple fire of­fi­cial­ly de­clared ar­son by Or­a­cle at Del­phi.

23

1951 -- Dur­ing his suc­cess­ful elec­tion cam­paign, Win­ston Churchill as­sures the pub­lic that he is not a war­mon­ger, a term con­sid­ered pe­jo­ra­tive at the time.

24

1795 -- The Pol­ish-Lithua­ni­an Com­mon­wealth is por­tioned out to sev­er­al coun­tries. Nei­ther Poland nor Lithua­nia is among them.

25

1917 -- Civ­il un­rest orig­i­nat­ing from Rus­sian work­er strikes cul­mi­nates in the oc­cu­pa­tion of gov­ern­ment build­ings.

26

1881 -- Wy­att Earp on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing out­come of cor­ral shoot­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

27

1973 -- Me­te­orite lands in Cañon Ci­ty, Co­lo. in vi­o­la­tion of lo­cal or­di­nance.

28

1918 -- The na­tion of Cze­choslo­vakia and its peo­ple are cre­at­ed from lib­er­at­ed rem­nants of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Em­pire.

29

1998 -- The Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mit­tee's re­port on hu­man rights gives South Africa the grade of F-triple-mi­nus; bare­ly pass­ing.

30

1938 -- Ru­mors of an alien in­va­sion ap­pear to have been noth­ing more than wish­ful think­ing by the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

31

1992 -- The Vat­i­can for­mal­ly ad­mits that Galileo might have had a point af­ter all.