This Day in History
12 Oct 1160
Maurice de Sully is elected bishop of Paris will initiate plan to build Notre Dame
12 Oct 1968
IXX Summer Olympic Games open at Mexico City Mexico first Olympics in Latin America
12 Oct 1979
Typhoon Tip becomes the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded with peak sustained winds of 305kmh (190mph) and a wind diameter of 2220km (1380mi)
12 Oct 1991
Professional wrestler Rip is Oliver forced to retire after being injured by Crush
More History
USS Cole attacked by terrorists
At 1215 p.m. local time a motorized rubber dinghy loaded with explosives blows a 40-by-40-foot hole in the port side of the USS Cole a U.S. Navy destroyer th...
The origin of Oktoberfest
Bavarian Crown Prince Louis later King Louis I of Bavaria marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Mu...
USSR leads the space race
The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into orbit around Earth with cosmonauts Vladamir Komarov Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov aboard. Voskhod 1 was th...
Terrorists kill 202 in Bali
On October 12 2002 three bombings shatter the peace in the town of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The blasts the work of militant Islamist terrorists...
Conscientious objector awarded Medal of Honor
Private First Class Desmond T. Doss of Lynchburg Virginia is presented the Congressional Medal of Honor for outstanding bravery as a medical corpsman the fir...
Columbus reaches the New World
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went...
Racial violence breaks out aboard U S Navy ships
On this day racial violence flares aboard U.S. Navy ships. Forty six sailors are injured in a race riot involving more than 100 sailors on the aircraft carrier...
Thomas Jefferson composes romantic letter
On October 12 1786 a lovesick Thomas Jefferson composes a romantic and introspective letter to a woman named Maria Cosway.Early in 1786 widower Thomas Jeffer...
John Denver dies in an aircraft accident
To those who bought records like Rocky Mountain High and Take Me Home Country Roads by the millions in the 1970s John Denver was m...
Al Gore wins Nobel Prize in the wake of An Inconvenient Truth
On October 12 2007 former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are awarded the Nobel Peace Pri...
Fire rages in Minnesota
A massive forest fire rages through Minnesota on October 12 1918 killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands homeless. The fire burned at least 1500 squ...
The victim of an anti gay assault dies
University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard dies after a vicious attack by two anti-gay bigots. After meeting Shepard in a Laramie Wyoming gay bar The Fire...
Nikita Khrushchev brandishes his shoe at the United Nations
In one of the most surreal moments in the history of the Cold War Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev removes his shoe and threatens to pound a table with it in p...
Robert E Lee dies
General Robert Edward Lee the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia dies peacefully at his home in Lexington Virginia. He was 63 years old.L...
British nurse Edith Cavell executed
On the morning of October 12 1915 the 49-year-old British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad in Brussels Belgium.Before World War I bega...
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