Historical Events on Saturday, 4th October

04/10/2017

Joint Nigerien-American Special Forces are ambushed by Islamic State militants outside the village of Tongo Tongo.

The United States Army Special Forces (SF), colloquially known as the "Green Berets" due to their distinctive service headgear, is a branch of the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC).

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04/10/2010

The Ajka plant accident in Hungary releases a million cubic metres of liquid alumina sludge, killing nine, injuring 122, and severely contaminating two major rivers.

The Ajka alumina plant accident in October 2010 was a caustic waste reservoir chain collapse at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in Ajka, Veszprém County, in western Hungary.

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04/10/2006

WikiLeaks is launched.

WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange. Kristinn Hrafnsson is its editor-in-chief. Its website states that it has released more than ten million documents and associated analyses. WikiLeaks' most recent publication of original documents was in 2019 and its most recent publication was in 2021. From November 2022, numerous documents on the organisation's website became inaccessible. In 2023, Assange said that WikiLeaks is no longer able to publish due to his imprisonment and the effect that US government surveillance and WikiLeaks' funding restrictions were having on potential whistleblowers.

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04/10/2004

SpaceShipOne wins the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.

SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (2,000 mph) / 910 m/s (3,300 km/h) using a hybrid rocket motor. The design features a unique "feathering" atmospheric reentry system where the rear half of the wing and the twin tail booms folds 70 degrees upward along a hinge running the length of the wing; this increases drag while retaining stability. SpaceShipOne completed the first crewed private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mother ship was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million.

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04/10/2003

The Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in Israel kills twenty-one Israelis, both Jews and Arabs.

The Maxim restaurant bombing was a Palestinian suicide bombing which occurred on October 4, 2003, in the beachfront restaurant Maxim in Haifa, Israel. Twenty-one civilians were killed and 60 were injured. Among the victims were two families and four children, including a two-month-old baby.

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04/10/2001

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 crashes after being struck by an errant Ukrainian missile. Seventy-eight people are killed.

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 was a commercial flight shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001, en route from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk, Russia. The aircraft, a Soviet-made Tupolev Tu-154, carried 66 passengers and 12 crew members. There were no survivors. The crash site is about 190 km west-southwest of the Black Sea resort of Sochi, 140 km north of the Turkish coastal town of Fatsa and 350 km south-southeast of Feodosiya in Crimea. The crash was caused by a missile launched during joint Ukrainian-Russian military air-defence exercises at the Russian-controlled training ground of the 31st Russian Black Sea Fleet Research center on Cape Opuk near the city of Kerch in Crimea. Ukraine eventually admitted that it might have caused the crash, probably by an errant S-200 missile fired by its armed forces. Ukraine paid $15 million to surviving family members of the 78 victims.

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04/10/1997

The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history occurs in North Carolina.

On the evening of October 4, 1997, $17.3 million in cash was stolen from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. The robbery was committed by Loomis vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his married girlfriend Kelly Campbell, Steven Eugene Chambers, his wife Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobbies, and four other co-conspirators. An FBI criminal investigation ultimately resulted in the arrest and conviction of eight people directly involved in the heist, as well as sixteen others who had indirectly helped them, and the recovery of approximately 88% of the stolen money.

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04/10/1993

Battle of Mogadishu occurs killing 18 U.S. Special Forces, two UN Peacekeepers and at least 600 Somalian militia men and civilians.

The Battle of Mogadishu, also known as the Black Hawk Down Incident, was part of Operation Gothic Serpent. It was fought on 3–4 October 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of the United States—supported by UNOSOM II—against Somali National Alliance (SNA) fighters and other insurgents in south Mogadishu.

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Tanks bombard the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Yeltsin rally outside.

In September and October 1993, a constitutional crisis arose in the Russian Federation from a conflict between the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the country's parliament. Yeltsin performed a self-coup, dissolving parliament and instituting a presidential rule by decree system. The crisis ended with Yeltsin using military force to attack Moscow's House of Soviets and arrest the lawmakers. In Russia, the events are known as the "October Coup" or "Black October".

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04/10/1992

The Rome General Peace Accords end a 16-year civil war in Mozambique.

The Rome General Peace Accords, officially the General Peace Accords, was a peace treaty signed between the government of Mozambique and RENAMO, ending the Mozambican Civil War on October 4, 1992. Negotiations preceding the agreement began in July 1990. They were brokered by a team of four mediators, two members of the Community of Sant'Egidio, Andrea Riccardi and Matteo Zuppi, as well as Bishop Jaime Gonçalves and Italian government representative Mario Raffaelli. The delegation of the Mozambican government was headed by Armando Guebuza, who went on to become President of Mozambique. The RENAMO delegation consisted of Raul Domingos, José de Castro, Vicente Ululu, Agostinho Murrial, João Almirante, José Augusto and Anselmo Victor. The accords were then signed by the then-president of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano, and by the leader of RENAMO, Afonso Dhlakama.

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El Al Flight 1862 crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground.

On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The accident is known in Dutch as the Bijlmerramp.

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04/10/1991

The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature.

The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, also known as the Madrid Protocol, is a complementary legal instrument to the Antarctic Treaty signed in Madrid on 4 October 1991. It entered into force on 14 January 1998.

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04/10/1985

The Free Software Foundation is founded.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organization supports the free software movement, with its preference for software being distributed under copyleft terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Boston where it is also based.

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04/10/1983

Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour (1,019.468 km/h) at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

Richard James Anthony Noble, OBE is a Scottish entrepreneur who was holder of the land speed record between 1983 and 1997. He was also the project director of ThrustSSC, the vehicle which holds the current land speed record, set at Black Rock Desert, Nevada in 1997.

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04/10/1967

Omar Ali Saifuddien III of Brunei abdicates in favour of his son.

Omar Ali Saifuddien III Sa'adul Khairi Waddien was the Sultan of Brunei from 1950 until his abdication in 1967.

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04/10/1966

Basutoland becomes independent from the United Kingdom and is renamed Lesotho.

Basutoland was a British Crown colony that existed from 1884 to 1966 in present-day Lesotho, bordered with the Cape Colony, Natal Colony and Orange River Colony until 1910 and completely surrounded by South Africa from 1910. Though the Basotho and their territory had been under British control starting in 1868, the rule by Cape Colony was unpopular and unable to control the territory. As a result, Basutoland was brought under direct authority of Queen Victoria, via the High Commissioner, and run by an Executive Council presided over by a series of British Resident Commissioners.

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04/10/1965

Pope Paul VI begins the first papal visit to the Americas.

Pope Paul VI was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council, which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms. He fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements.

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04/10/1963

Hurricane Flora kills 6,000 in Cuba and Haiti.

Hurricane Flora was an extremely deadly and devastating tropical cyclone that is among the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history, with a death total of at least 7,193. The seventh tropical storm and sixth hurricane of the 1963 Atlantic hurricane season, Flora developed from a disturbance in the Intertropical Convergence Zone on September 26 while located 755 miles (1,215 km) southwest of the Cape Verde islands. After remaining a weak depression for several days, it rapidly organized on September 29 to attain tropical storm status. Flora continued to strengthen, reaching Category 3 hurricane status after moving through the Windward Islands and passing over Tobago, and it reached maximum sustained winds of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) in the Caribbean.

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04/10/1960

Eastern Airlines flight 375 crashes on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 people of the 72 aboard.

Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, registration N5533, was a Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft that crashed on takeoff from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 4, 1960. Ten survived, nine with serious injuries, but 62 of 72 on board were killed in the accident.

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04/10/1958

The current constitution of France is adopted.

The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic (French: la Constitution de la Cinquième République), and it replaced the Constitution of the Fourth Republic of 1946, keeping its preamble. The current Constitution regards the separation of church and state, democracy, social welfare, and indivisibility as core principles of the French state.

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04/10/1957

Sputnik 1 becomes the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

Sputnik 1, often referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batteries became depleted. Aerodynamic drag caused it to fall back into the atmosphere on 4 January 1958.

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04/10/1941

Norman Rockwell's Willie Gillis character debuts on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

Willie Gillis, Jr. is a fictional character created by Norman Rockwell for a series of World War II paintings that appeared on the covers of 11 issues of The Saturday Evening Post between 1941 and 1946. Gillis was an everyman with the rank of private whose career was tracked on the cover of the Post from induction through discharge without being depicted in battle. He and his girlfriend were modeled by two of Rockwell's acquaintances.

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04/10/1936

The Metropolitan Police and various anti-fascist organizations violently clash in the Battle of Cable Street.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), commonly known as the Metropolitan Police, Met Police, or the "Met", is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and crime prevention within Greater London. In addition, it is responsible for specialised tasks throughout the United Kingdom, such as dealing with counter-terrorism throughout the UK, and the protection of certain individuals, including the monarch, royal family, governmental officials, and other designated figures. It is also referred to as an eponym as "Scotland Yard" or "the Yard", after the location of its original headquarters in Great Scotland Yard, Whitehall, in the 19th century. The Met is presently headquartered at New Scotland Yard, in a building situated on the Victoria Embankment.

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04/10/1927

Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore.

John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American sculptor best known for his work on Mount Rushmore. He is also associated with various other public works of art across the U.S., including Stone Mountain in Georgia, statues of Union General Philip Sheridan in Washington, D.C., and in Chicago, as well as a bust of Abraham Lincoln exhibited in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt and now held in the United States Capitol crypt in Washington, D.C.

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04/10/1925

Great Syrian Revolt: Rebels led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji capture Hama from the French Mandate of Syria.

The Great Syrian Revolt, also known as the Revolt of 1925, was a general uprising across the State of Syria and Greater Lebanon during the period of 1925 to 1927. The leading rebel forces initially comprised fighters of the Jabal Druze State in southern Syria, and were later joined by Sunni, Druze and Shiite and factions all over Syria. The common goal was to end French occupation in the newly mandated regions, which passed from Turkish to French administration following World War I.

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S2, a Finnish Sokol class torpedo boat, sinks during a fierce storm near the coast of Pori in the Gulf of Bothnia, taking with it the whole crew of 53.

S2 was a Finnish Sokol-class torpedo boat captured from Russia after the Finnish Civil War in 1918. She sank in a severe storm on 4 October 1925, with the loss of all 53 crew members.

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04/10/1920

The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare, a Finnish non-governmental organization, is founded on the initiative of Sophie Mannerheim.

Mannerheim League for Child Welfare is a Finnish non-governmental organization founded in 1920 that promotes the well-being of children, young people and families with children. MLL's goal is a child-friendly Finland. It can be attributed to the construction of a comprehensive counseling system in Finland.

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04/10/1918

World War I: An explosion kills more than 100 people and destroys a Shell Loading Plant in New Jersey.

The T. A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant explosion, sometimes called the Morgan Munitions Depot explosion or similar titles, began at 7:36 pm EDT on Friday, October 4, 1918, at a World War I ammunition plant in the Morgan area of Sayreville in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. The initial explosion, generally believed to be accidental, triggered a fire and subsequent series of explosions that continued for three days, totaling approximately six kilotons, killing about 100 people and injuring hundreds more. The facility, one of the largest in the world at the time, was destroyed along with more than 300 surrounding buildings, forcing the evacuation and reconstruction of Sayreville, South Amboy, and Laurence Harbor. Over a century later, explosive debris continues to surface regularly across a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) radius.

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04/10/1917

World War I: The Battle of Broodseinde is fought between the British and German armies in Flanders.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific. The war saw important developments in weaponry including tanks, aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and chemical weapons. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, it resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million military and civilian casualties and genocide. The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic.

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04/10/1895

Horace Rawlins wins the first U.S. Open Men's Golf Championship.

Horace Thomas Rawlins was an English professional golfer who won the first U.S. Open Championship at Newport Country Club in October 1895.

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04/10/1883

First run of the Orient Express.

The Orient Express was a long-distance passenger luxury train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe, with terminal stations in Paris in the northwest and Istanbul in the southeast, and branches extending service to Athens, Brussels, and London.

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First meeting of the Boys' Brigade in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Boys' Brigade (BB) is an international interdenominational Christian youth organisation, conceived by the Scottish businessman Sir William Alexander Smith to combine drill and fun activities with Christian values. Following its inception in Glasgow in 1883 the BB quickly spread across the United Kingdom, becoming a worldwide organisation by the early 1890s. As of 2018, the Boys' Brigade claimed 750,000 members in 60 countries.

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04/10/1876

The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now known as Texas A&M) opens as the first public college in Texas.

Texas A&M University is a public land-grant research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. Since 2021, Texas A&M has enrolled the largest student body in the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and since 2001 has been a member of the Association of American Universities.

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04/10/1862

American Civil War: The two-day Second Battle of Corinth ends in a Union victory, with General William Rosecrans protecting the critical rail junction of Corinth, Mississippi from Confederate forces under General Earl Van Dorn.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war lasted a little over four years, ending with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

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04/10/1853

The Crimean War begins when the Ottoman Empire declares war on the Russian Empire.

The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the Eastern question, expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.

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04/10/1830

The Belgian Revolution takes legal form when the provisional government secedes from the Netherlands.

The Belgian Revolution was a conflict which led to the secession of the southern provinces from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the establishment of an independent Kingdom of Belgium.

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04/10/1824

Mexico adopts a new constitution and becomes a federal republic.

The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1824 was the first constitution of Mexico, enacted on October 4 of 1824, inaugurating the First Mexican Republic.

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04/10/1795

Napoleon first rises to prominence by suppressing counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the National Convention.

13 Vendémiaire, Year 4 in the French Republican Calendar, was a battle between the French Revolutionary troops and Royalist forces in the streets of Paris. This battle was part of the establishing of a new form of government, the Directory, and it was a major factor in the rapid advancement of Republican General Napoleon Bonaparte's career.

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04/10/1777

American Revolutionary War: Troops under George Washington are repelled by British troops under William Howe.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

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04/10/1693

Nine Years' War: Piedmontese troops are defeated by the French.

The Nine Years' War was a European great power conflict from 1688 to 1697 between France and the Grand Alliance. Fought primarily in Europe, related conflicts include the Williamite war in Ireland, and King William's War in North America.

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04/10/1636

Thirty Years' War: The Swedish Army defeats the armies of Saxony and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Wittstock.

The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from the effects of battle, famine, or disease, with parts of Germany reporting population declines of over 50%. Related conflicts include the Eighty Years' War, the War of the Mantuan Succession, the Franco-Spanish War, the Torstenson War, the Dutch–Portuguese War, and the Portuguese Restoration War.

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04/10/1602

Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Spanish War: A fleet of Spanish galleys are defeated by English and Dutch galleons in the English Channel.

The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, excessive taxation, and the rights and privileges of the Dutch nobility and cities.

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04/10/1597

Governor Gonzalo Méndez de Canço begins to suppress a native uprising against his rule in what is now the US state of Georgia.

Gonzalo Méndez de Canço y Donlebún was a Spanish admiral who served as the seventh governor of the Spanish province of La Florida (1596–1603). He fought in the Battle of San Juan (1595) against the English admiral Francis Drake. During his tenure as governor of Florida, he dealt severely with a rebellion known as Juanillo's revolt among the Native Americans in Guale, forcing them, as well as other tribes in Florida, to submit to Spanish domination. De Canço was best known, however, for promoting the cultivation of maize in the province, and for introducing its cultivation to Asturias, Spain, where it eventually became an important crop.

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04/10/1582

The Gregorian Calendar is introduced by Pope Gregory XIII.

The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull Inter gravissimas issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years slightly differently to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long rather than the Julian calendar's 365.25 days, thus more closely approximating the 365.2422-day "tropical" or "solar" year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun.

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04/10/1535

The Coverdale Bible is printed, with translations into English by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale.

The Coverdale Bible, compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete Modern English translation of the Bible, and the first complete printed translation into English. The later editions published in 1537 were the first complete Bibles printed in England. The 1537 folio edition carried the royal licence and was therefore the first royally approved Bible translation in English. The Psalter from the Coverdale Bible was included in the Great Bible of 1540 and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer beginning in 1662, and in all editions of the U.S. Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer until 1979.

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04/10/1511

Formation of the Holy League of Aragon, the Papal States and Venice against France.

The War of the League of Cambrai, also known by its second stage as the War of the Holy League, was fought from December 1508 to December 1516, as part of the wider Italian Wars of 1494–1559. The main participants of the war, who fought for its entire duration, were France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, and the Republic of Venice; they were joined at various times by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, England, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara, and the Swiss.

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04/10/1363

Battle of Lake Poyang: In one of the largest naval battles in history, Zhu Yuanzhang's rebels defeat rival Chen Youliang.

The Battle of Lake Poyang was a naval battle which took place between the rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang during the Red Turban Rebellion which led to the fall of the Yuan dynasty. Chen Youliang besieged Nanchang with a large fleet on Lake Poyang, one of China's largest freshwater lakes, and Zhu Yuanzhang met his force with a smaller fleet. After an inconclusive engagement exchanging fire, Zhu employed fire ships to burn the enemy tower ships and destroyed their fleet. This was the last major battle of the rebellion before the rise of the Ming dynasty.

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04/10/1302

The Byzantine–Venetian War comes to an end.

The Byzantine–Venetian War of 1296–1302 was an offshoot of the second Venetian–Genoese War of 1294–1299.

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04/10/1209

Otto IV is crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Innocent III.

Otto IV was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1209 until his death in 1218.

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04/10/0023

Rebels sack the Chinese capital Chang'an during a peasant rebellion.

AD 23 (XXIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Pollio and Vetus. The denomination AD 23 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

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