On an October 16:
2002 Nautilus Group (NLS) is downgraded by Wells Fargo Securities and by UBS Warburg from Buy to Hold, by Adams Harkness from Strong Buy to Market Perform, by CIBC World Markets from Sector Outperform to Sector Perform, by USB Piper Jaffray from Outperform to Underperform. On the New York Stock Exchange, 9 million of the 35 million NLS shares are traded, dropping from their previous close of $23.85 (also the intraday high, after a rise from an 08 October intraday low of $17.31) to an intraday low of $13.55 and closing at $13.65. They had traded as high as $45.89 as recently as 02 May 2002. They had started trading on 05 May 1999 at 4.23. [4~year price chart >] The Nautilus Group is a fitness concern offering in-the-home equipment under brand names such as Bowflex, StairMaster, and Schwinn, as well as Nautilus. On 15 October, NLS announced third-quarter earnings of 71 cents per share, 1 cent above analysts' estimates and 49% above the 2001 third-quarter. But the company expressed some uncertainty for 2003, hence the downgrades.

2002 On 15 October AMERCO (UHAL) announced default on a $100 million debt due that day. Fitch Ratings lowers AMERCO's senior unsecured debt and preferred stock ratings to 'DD' and 'D' from 'B+' and 'B-' (to which, one day earlier, it had reduced them from 'BB+' and 'BB-'). On the NASDAQ, 415 thousand of the 26 million UHAL shares are traded, dropping from their previous close of $7.20 to an intraday low of $3.10 and closes at $7.20. It had trended downward for at least the last 5 years ($35.88 on 20 October 1997) and traded as high as $18.20 as recently as 15 May 2002. [< 5~year price chart]. AMERCO is a holding company whose principal subsidiaries are U-Haul International, Inc. (U-Haul), Republic Western Insurance Co., Oxford Life Insurance Co., and AMERCO Real Estate Co. U-Haul is the leading consumer truck and trailer rental company in North America and maintains a strong market position in the self-storage market.

2002 On the 24th anniversary of John Paul II`s election to the papacy, he puts out the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, a part of which adds these “mysteries of light” (of the ministry of Jesus) to the Rosary: the Baptism of Jesus [Mt 3:17], the miracle of Cana [Jn 2:1-12], the call to conversion and promise of forgiveness [Mk 1:15, 2:3-13; Lk 7:47-48; Jn 20:22-23], the Transfiguration [Lk 9:35], and the Eucharist [Jn 13:1]. — [I cannot find the text in Latin!] translations: English — Français — Castellano — Italiano — Deutsch — Português

2002 The Netherlands' Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a Christian Democrat, resigns. He will stay on as the head of a caretaker government until new elections in about two months. In the government three-party coalition, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals grew exasperated with the infighting among their coalition partners, the right-wing List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), created in February, which came in second in the 15 May 2002 general elections, just nine days after Fortuyn, its populist founder, was killed by a lone gunman, an animal rights activist. The government had already adopted some of the LPF's proposals, including a stricter immigration policy, a crackdown on crime and some reforms of the inefficient public health system. But the LPF's 26 seats in Parliament and its four ministerial posts were occupied by newcomers who lacked political experience, party discipline, and a coherent program. They contradicted each other, changing leaders, forcing some members to resign and expelling two deputies. One faction now wants to replace the latest party leader, Harry Wijnschenk, the publisher of a motorcycle magazine. Two LPF cabinet members were constantly fighting to control the party: Herman Heinsbroek, a wealthy owner of a record company who was the economy minister, and deputy prime minister Eduard Bomhoff, who had been an economist and an iconoclastic newspaper columnist. It is questionable whether the LPF can survive at all. A recent opinion poll said that it could win just 4 of its present 26 seats in new elections.

2002 At a ceremony at the statue of Sherlock Holmes outside Baker Street subway station in London, he becomes the first fictional character to be made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Fellow fellow John Watson (no, not the fictional Dr. Watson) says: “Sherlock Holmes was way beyond his time in using chemistry and chemical sciences as a means of cracking crime. Many years ago Holmes was using what would one day be forensic science in detection. Thanks to this science today, more crimes are solved than ever before”. This year is the centenary of Holmes' most celebrated case, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

2001 The Times of London reveals that, recently, Scottish charity worker Lady Morton, 100, hit a traffic island while driving her 100th birthday present, a new car. It is her first accident since she bought her first car in 1927. She intends to continue driving, as her license goes on until 2004.
2001 Best-selling British novelist Ken Follett bids 2200 pounds ($3185) at a London charity auction to appear in another author's next book. The millionaire thriller writer is taking part in the 'Immortality Auction' — a charity event which allows members of the public to pay to star in a bestseller. Follett won the right to appear in the next book by British cult fantasy writer Terry Pratchett. "I want to appear as a giant but Terry is making no promises," Follett said in a statement. "All he asked me is how I want to die, which is a little disconcerting." Pratchett's "Discworld" series dominated a recent survey of Britain's best-selling books of all time. The auction raised 5000 pounds for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which supports refugees and asylum seekers. Follett was also one of nine authors selling a place in their next novel. Organizers did not name the other successful bidders, but said the amount raised by each author was: Raymond Benson 180 pounds, Margaret Atwood 200 pounds, Pat Barker 200 pounds, Robert Harris 220 pounds, Ian McEwan 280 pounds, David Lodge 300 pounds, Zadie Smith 300 pounds and Follett 350 pounds. In last year's inaugural auction, Australian satirical writer Kathy Lette received the highest bid of 6200 pounds ($9090) and pledged to give Sherlaine Green a major part in her next comic romp. The charity raised nearly 25'000 pounds from last year's auction.
2000 As the al-Aqsa intifada heats up, US President Clinton initiates a fresh effort to try to cool Middle East tensions at an emergency summit in Egypt that includes Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as the leaders of Egypt and Jordan and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
2000 Million Family March, organized by Louis Farrakhan.
1999 Russia pursues Chechen Islamist campaign (CNN)
1998 The Norwegian Nobel Committee announces that it has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1998 to John Hume and David Trimble for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland. — MORE
1998 Hackers break into America Online and altered the online service's Internet address. Millions of e-mail messages were misdirected as a result.
1995 The Million Man March for 'A Day of Atonement' takes place in Washington, D.C., organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
1995 Primer juicio con jurado, de carácter experimental, que se celebra en España desde la aprobación de la Ley que lo establece. Siete hombres y dos mujeres juzgaron y condenaron en la Audiencia de Palma de Mallorca a un hombre acusado de asesinato.
1994 Finlandia ratifica en referéndum su integración en la Unión Europea (UE) con el 57% de los votos.
1994 La coalición gobernante del canciller Helmut Kohl vence en las elecciones legislativas en Alemania.
1991 Levon Ter Petrosian, hasta entonces presidente del Soviet Supremo de Ereván, resulta elegido presidente de Armenia en las primeras elecciones presidenciales y democráticas.
1990 US forces reach 200'000 in the Persian Gulf
1987 175-kph winds cause blackout in London, much of southern England
1987 At 20:30 in Midland, Texas, Jessica McClure, 19 months old, is rescued 59 hours (58 of digging and of intensive TV and other news media coverage) after falling 6.7 m into a narrow well shaft on 14 October 1987. Jessica would remember nothing though she lost her right little toe and would be left with a minor scar from a cosmetic surgery skin graft on her forehead, performed at Midland's Memorial Hospital, from which she was released on 20 November 1987. But the intense publicity affected the other people involved. Robert O’Donnell, the paramedic who freed Jessica from the well, suffered from depression and post traumatic stress syndrome after the incident and the controversy surrounding a movie made about it; he shot himself dead in 1995. Jessica's mother, Reba “Cissy”, 18 at the time, and teenaged father, Chip, would divorce and marry others. Chip would also divorce his second wife. Odessa American photographer Scott Shaw, 24, would win a Pulitzer Prize for his photo of the newly rescued infant surrounded by weary-eyed rescuers. The ABC TV movie Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure would be first shown on 21 May 1989.
1986 Se decreta el estado de excepción en Nicaragua.
1986 The Nobel Prize in literature goes to Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, in his early fifties. Among his writings are the collection of essays Myth, Literature and the African World and some of he finest poetical plays that have written in English, such as A Dance of the Forests and Death and The King's Horseman. — MORE
1986 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the1986 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Professor James McGill Buchanan, of George Mason University, Virginia, for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making.— MORE
1986 US government closes down due to budget problems
1985 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1985 to Professor Klaus von Klitzing, Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Federal Republic of Germany, for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect. — MORE
1984  The Norwegian Nobel Committee has chosen to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1984 to Black Bishop Desmond Tutu, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, for his role as a unifying leader figure in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa. — MORE

1984 First Baboon Heart Transplant       At Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performs the first baboon heart transplant, an operation in which a diseased human heart is replaced by a healthy baboon heart. The patient is a fifteen-day-old baby girl known as "Baby Fae," whose plight attracts national attention. After a month-long struggle, the infant's immune system finally rejects the baboon heart, and Baby Fae dies on 15 November.

1982 Mt Palomar Observatory 1st to detect Halley's comet on 13th return
1982 Shultz warns US will withdraw from UN if it votes to exclude Israel.
1981 Una delegación del PCE (Partido Comunista de España) entrega en el Ministerio de la Presidencia 500'000 firmas contra el ingreso de España en la OTAN.
1978 The college of cardinals elects the Archbishop of Kracow, Poland, Karol Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, 58, the first non-Italian Pope since 1523, he takes the name of John Paul II. [Cardinal Wojtyla greeted a few weeks earlier by his immediate predecessor, the 33-day pope John Paul I >]
1978 Juan Marsé gana el premio Planeta de novela con su obra La muchacha de las bragas de oro.
1975 María Estela Martínez de Perón retoma la presidencia de Argentina.
1973 The Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting decides to award the Peace Prize for 1973 to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the two chief negotiators who succeeded in arranging the Vietnam ceasefire after negotiating for nearly four years. Kissinger would accept, but Tho decline the award until such time as "peace is truly established.” — MORE
1970 Anwar Sadat elected president of Egypt, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1968 Vietnam: Bombing halt discussed         ^top^       In a series of meetings with US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu insists that North Vietnam assent to three conditions prior to a bombing halt. He said the North Vietnamese had to (1) agree to respect the neutrality of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), (2) stop shelling South Vietnamese cities and towns, and (3) agree to South Vietnamese participation in the Paris talks. He also demanded that the National Liberation Front, the Communist political organization in South Vietnam, be excluded from the negotiations. Thieu seemed to soften during his discussions with Bunker: on October 22, he announced that he would not oppose a bombing halt.

1967 Ángel María de Lera García obtiene el premio Planeta, con la novela Las últimas banderas.

1964 China becomes world's 4th nuclear power         ^top^      The People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear bomb at the Lop Nor test site in the western province of Xin Jiang. The successful explosion of the twenty-two-kiloton fission bomb makes China the world's fourth nuclear power, after the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Nuclear testing at the Lop Nor site continues well into the 1990s, with China detonating an average of one nuclear weapon every year within the extremely radioactive area of Lop Nor. In 1980, exactly sixteen years after the detonation of their first bomb, China moved its nuclear testing out of the atmosphere and underground.      The People's Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability, after a successful nuclear test on this day in 1964. China is the fifth member of this exclusive club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.       US officials were not terribly surprised by the test; intelligence reports since the 1950s indicated that China was working to develop an atomic bomb, possibly aided by Soviet technicians and scientists. Nevertheless, the successful test did cause concern in the US government. During the early 1960s, China took a particularly radical stance that advocated worldwide revolution against the forces of capitalism, working strenuously to extend its influence in Asia and the new nations of Africa. The test, coming just two months after the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (a congressional resolution giving President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to respond to communist aggression in Vietnam) created a frightening specter of nuclear confrontation and conflict in Southeast Asia.       The test also concerned the Soviet Union; the split between the USSR and Communist China over ideological and strategic issues had widened considerably by 1964. The Chinese acquisition of nuclear capabilities only heightened the tensions between the two nations. Indeed, the test might have been a spur to the Soviets to pursue greater efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons; in 1968, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Little wonder that the Soviets would wish to see China's nuclear force limited, since the first Chinese intermediate-range missiles were pointedly aimed at Russia. The Cold War nuclear arms race had just become a good deal more complicated.

1964 Brezhnev and Kosygin replace Krushchev as head of Russia
1964 James Harold Wilson, primer ministro británico tras el triunfo laborista en las elecciones.
1964 El comité de descolonización de la ONU pide al Reino Unido y a España que inicien negociaciones sobre Gibraltar.
1962 Byron R White becomes a Supreme Court Justice

1962 Kennedy awakes to the Cuban Missile Crisis       AStill in his pajamas, US President Kennedy is informed during his breakfast that photoanalysts have the previous day detected offensive Soviet missile bases in Cuba. It is now clear that for months the Soviets had purposely been deceiving the US by claiming that they only have purely defensive missiles in Cuba. Kennedy immediately schedules two meetings for that morning. First, he wants to see the photographs himself. Kennedy remarks, "They look like footballs on a football field." Those missiles have a range of 2000 km, they could reach New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Houston. The missiles are not yet operational but they soon can be.       For the second meeting Kennedy picks a group of trusted government officials, later referred to as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EX-COMM). Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara outlines three possible courses of action for the US to take against Cuba and the Soviet Union. 1. Diplomacy with Castro and Khrushchev — an option which most members of EX-COMM deem unlikely to succeed. 2. Surveillance combined with a blockade against offensive weapons entering Cuba. 3. Military action against Cuba, starting with an air attack against the missiles, followed by an invasion.       EX-COMM works from the premise that the missile warheads were not yet in Cuba. Therefore, the goal is to stop the warheads from reaching Cuba or to prevent the missiles from becoming fully operational. Most of the discussion is of the military option and how the Soviets would respond.       What EX-COMM dosn't know was that the Soviets do have nuclear warheads in Cuba. They had also installed battlefield nuclear weapons in Cuba to stop an invasion.       Kennedy wants to appear tough yet avoid a military confrontation. No matter what action the US takes, EX-COMM expects Khrushchev to retaliate.

1956 William J Brennan Jr becomes a Supreme Court Justice a
1973 Israeli General Ariel Sharon crosses the Suez Canal and begins to encircle two Egyptian armies.
1946 President Harry Truman lifts price controls on meat.
1944 El " maquis", una fuerza expedicionaria de 4000 hombres armados organizada por los comunistas, se introduce en España.
1944 Tropas soviéticas penetran en Prusia Oriental.
1941 German invading troops advances to within 100 km of Moscow
1940 Lottery for 1st US WW II draftees held; #158 drawn 1st
1940 Warsaw Ghetto established

1934 Mao's Long March begins.      Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base in Kiangsi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. With his pregnant wife and about 30'000 Red Army troops, he sets out on the "Long March.”      The embattled Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China. Known as Ch'ang Cheng — the "Long March" — the retreat lasted 368 days and covered 6,000 miles, nearly twice the distance from New York to San Francisco. Civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists broke out in 1927. In 1931, Communist leader Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic of China, based in Kiangsi province in the southwest. Between 1930 and 1934, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek launched a series of five encirclement campaigns against the Soviet Republic.       Under the leadership of Mao, the Communists employed guerrilla tactics to resist successfully the first four campaigns, but in the fifth, Chiang raised 700'000 soldiers and built fortifications around the Communist positions. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed or died of starvation in the siege, and Mao was removed as chairman by the Communist Central Committee. The new Communist leadership employed more conventional warfare tactics, and its Red Army was decimated. With defeat imminent, the Communists decided to break out of the encirclement at its weakest points. The Long March began at 5:00 p.m. on October 16, 1934. Secrecy and rear-guard actions confused the Nationalists, and it was several weeks before they realized that the main body of the Red Army had fled. The retreating force initially consisted of 86'000 soldiers, 15'000 civilian men, and 35 women. Weapons and supplies were borne on men's backs or in horse-drawn carts, and the line of marchers stretched for 80 km. The Communists generally marched at night, and when the enemy was not near, a long column of torches could be seen snaking over valleys and hills into the distance.       The first disaster came in November, when Nationalist forces blocked the Communists' route across the Hsiang River. It took a week for the Communists to break through the fortifications and cost them 50'000 men — more than half their number. After that debacle, Mao steadily regained his influence, and in January he was again made chairman during a meeting of the party leaders in the captured city of Tsuni. Mao changed strategy, breaking his force into several columns that would take varying paths to confuse the enemy. There would be no more direct assaults on enemy positions. And the destination would now be Shensi Province, in the far northwest, where the Communists hoped to fight the Japanese invaders and earn the respect of China's masses. After enduring starvation, aerial bombardment, and almost daily skirmishes with Nationalist forces, Mao halted his columns at the foot of the Great Wall of China on 20 October 1935. Waiting for them were five machine-gun- and red-flag-bearing horsemen. "Welcome, Chairman Mao," one said. "We represent the Provincial Soviet of Northern Shensi. We have been waiting for you anxiously. All that we have is at your disposal!" The Long March was over. The Communist marchers crossed 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges, mostly snow-capped. Only 4000 soldiers completed the journey. The majority of those who did not, perished. It was the longest continuous march in the history of warfare and contributed to the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communists. Learning of the Communists' heroism and determination in the Long March, thousands of young Chinese traveled to Shensi to enlist in Mao's Red Army. After fighting the Japanese for a decade, the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945. Four years later, the Nationalists were defeated, and Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. He served as chairman until his death in 1976.

1931 Las Cortes españolas establecen el divorcio por mutuo disenso o a petición de cualquiera de las partes; este último supuesto sólo es aplicable bajo ciertas condiciones.
1925 Texas School Board prohibits teaching of evolution
1924 Fin de la conferencia de Locarno.
1916 Margaret Sanger opens 1st birth control clinic (46 Amboy St, Brooklyn)
1914 Los alemanes utilizan por primera vez un arma nueva, el lanzallamas, en la batalla de Iser.

1911 Progressive Party nominates LaFollette for President         ^top^       The Progressive Party was searching for a presidential candidate to help them wage war against the ever-expanding corporations that they felt were engulfing the nation. The party had once nominated Teddy Roosevelt, but the former president, who had allowed the United States Steel Corporation to grow into an industry-dominating giant, was hardly a model trust-buster. So, on this day, the Progressives gave the nod to Republican reformer Robert LaFollette. However, fatigue prevented LaFollette from carrying the nomination through to the convention and he was quickly replaced by the more trust-friendly Roosevelt. Despite his populist appeal and previous experience in the Oval Office, Roosevelt went on to lose the general election to William Howard Taft.

1911 Se descubre un complot para asesinar al presidente de EE.UU. William Howard Taft, que pretendía hacer saltar la vía férrea al paso del tren presidencial.
1902 Alphonse Bertillon utiliza por primera vez las huellas digitales para solucionar un caso judicial.
1902 Guerra civil en Venezuela, donde los combates son encarnizados.
1901 President Theodore Roosevelt causes controversy by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to the White House.
1869 Hotel in Boston becomes the 1st to have indoor plumbing
1867 Alaska adopts the Gregorian calendar, crosses intl date line
1863 US Grant named to command Union Military Division of the Mississippi
1861 Confederacy starts selling postage stamps

1859 Abolitionists led by John Brown raid Harpers Ferry         ^top^       At midnight, the radical abolitionist John Brown leads a group of twenty-one followers, calling themselves the "Provisional Army of the United States," on a raid of the Federal arsenal of Harpers Ferry, located in present-day West Virginia.       Brown, born in Connecticut on 9 May 1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader of the Free State forces in the territory of Kansas he fought pro-slavery settlers, contributing to the sharply divided territory's popular designation as "Bleeding Kansas.” For example on 24 May 1856 he led the "Pottawatomie Massacre" by John Brown's gang In retaliation for the sacking of the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, by pro-slavery forces, militant abolitionist John Brown led a raid against a pro-slavery settlement along Pottawatomie Creek. Brown’s small force, which included four of his sons, fell on the settlement at night and massacred five men, including two teenage boys.       Although they owned no slaves, Brown deemed the Pottawatomie settlers deserving of capital punishment because they had supported the Missouri faction in the dispute over the Kansas territorial government. Trouble in the territory began with the signing of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas’ first election proved a violent affair as over 5000 so-called "Border Ruffians" invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature.       To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, appointed territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of John Brown. In 1859, Brown left "Bleeding Kansas," as it had become popularly known, and settled on a more ambitious plan.      Achieving only moderate success against slavery on the Kansas frontier, Brown settled on a more ambitious plan in 1859. With a group of racially mixed followers, Brown set out to Harpers Ferry, intending to seize the arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. Their republic would form a guerilla army to fight slaveholders and ignite slave insurrections, and its population would grow exponentially with the influx of liberated and fugitive slaves.       At Harpers Ferry, Brown's well-trained unit is initially successful — in the space of two hours, the raiders seize the Shenandoah Bridge, Hall's Rifle Works, and the Federal arsenal, barricade the bridge across the Potomac, cut telegraph wires, and take several prisoners. But at 1:20 A.M., Brown's plans begin to deteriorate when his raiders stop a Baltimore-bound train, and then allow it to pass through.       News of the raid spreads quickly and militia companies from Maryland and Virginia arrive the next day, killing or capturing several raiders. On October 18, US Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, both of whom are destined to become famous Confederate generals, recapture the Federal arsenal, taking John Brown and several other raiders alive.       John Brown was tried by the Commonwealth of Virginia for treason, murder and inciting slaves to rebellion. On November 2, Brown is sentenced to death by hanging, and on the day of his execution, 2 December 1859, ten months before the outbreak of the Civil War, he prophetically writes, "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”      Abolitionist Thoreau wrote A Plea for Captain John Brown , A Plea for Captain John Brown      Walter Hawkins wrote Old John Brown: The Man Whose Soul is Marching On      Stephen Vincent Benet wrote John Brown's Body

1849 British seize Tigre Island in Gulf of Fonseca from Honduras
1846 A demonstration of anesthesia (by ether) is made at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston by dentist Dr. William Thomas Green Morton during an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren.
1829 George Stephenson gana el primer concurso mundial de velocidad de locomotoras, celebrado en un tramo de la línea Liverpool-Manchester, al alcanzar los 50 km/h.
1813 Comienza la batalla de Leipzig. Se saldará con la derrota de Napoleón por parte de las fuerza aliadas de Prusia, Austria y Rusia.
1812 Los habitantes de Moscú prenden fuego a la ciudad en un acto desesperado por vencer al ejército de Napoleón.
1781 Washington takes Yorktown
1775 Portland, Maine burned by British
1765 Se autoriza el libre comercio con territorios de las Antillas desde los puertos españoles de Santander, Gijón, La Coruña, Cádiz, Sevilla, Málaga, Cartagena y Barcelona. Esta medida refuerza el papel de España en el comercio de América con Europa.
1649 The American colony of Maine passed legislation granting religious freedom, sort of, to all its citizens, on condition that those of contrary religious persuasions behave "acceptably".
1472 Barcelona capitula ante las tropas de Juan II rey de Aragon y I de Navarra.
1311 Council of Vienne (15th ecumenical council) opens, called by Clement V. During its three sessions, the council would suppress the Knights Templars (the principal military-religious order of the Middle Ages, whose wealth was coveted by kings and others).