Today in History in 1910 former President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to fly in an airplane; and in 1968 NASA launches the Apollo 7 mission; Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham on board.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

October 11 is the 284th day of the year (285th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 81 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

1138 – 1138 Aleppo earthquake: A massive earthquake destroys much of Aleppo, Syria.

1142 – A peace treaty between the Jin Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty is formally ratified when a Jin Dynasty envoy arrives at the Song court.

1531 – Huldrych Zwingli is killed in battle with the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland.

1634 – A flood disaster kills 15,000 people in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany.

1649 – After a 10-day siege, the English New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell storms the town of Wexford, Ireland - 2,000 Irish troops and 1,500 civilians are killed.

1727 – King George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Ansbach are crowned king and queen.

1737 – Calcutta is struck by an earthquake, killing around 300,000 people.

1746 – War of Austrian Succession: The French defeat an army consisiting of Austrians, Dutch and British troops.

1767 – Surveying for the Mason–Dixon line, separating Maryland and Pennsylvania, is completed.

1776 – American War of Independence: In the Battle of Valcou, British forces destroy most United States Navy ships.

1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: The Royal Navy captures eleven Dutch Navy ships without any losses in the Battle of Camperdown.

1809 – Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies in mysterious circumstances.

1833 – A big demonstration at the gates of the legislature of Buenos Aires forces the ousting of governor Juan Ramon Balcarce and his replacement with Juan Jose Viamonte.

1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia is inaugurated.

1864 – Campina Grande, Brazil becomes a city.

1890 – In Washington, DC, the group Daughters of the American Revolution is founded.

1899 – The Second Boer War erupts between the United Kingdom and the Boers of Transvaal and the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.

1906 – The San Francisco school board orders Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools (different schools from White American students), sparking a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Japan.

1910 – Former President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to fly in an airplane.

1912 – First Balkan War: The Greek army liberates the city of Kozani.

1918 – The San Fermin earthquake hits Puerto Rico.

1941 – Beginning of the National Liberation War of Macedonia.

1942 – World War II: Battle of Cape Esperance - In northwest Guadalcanal, US troops intercept and defeat a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.

1949 – Wilhelm Pieck is elected the first, and only, President of East Germany.

1954 – Frist Indochina War: The Viet Minh takes control of North Vietnam.

1957 – M.I.T. scientists calculate Sputnik's booster rocket's orbit.

1958 – NASA launches the Pioneer 1 lunar probe, which falls back to Earth and burns up.

1963 – West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, aged 87, submits his resignation.

1968 – NASA launches the Apollo 7 mission; Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham on board.

1975 – Saturday Night Live is first broadcast.

1982 – The Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, is salvaged near Portsmouth, England.

1984 – On board the Space Shuttle Challenger, Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a spacewalk.

1984 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-54 airplane crashes into maintenance vehicles in Omsk, Siberia, killing 178 people.

1986 – Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan meet for talks in Reykjavik, Iceland.

1987 – German politician Uwe Barschel is found dead in his hotel room in Geneva, Switzerland.

1996 – A wood lorry and a school bus collide in Jogeva County, Estonia, killing 8 children.

2000 – The 100th Space Shuttle mission launches, with the Space Shuttle Discovery.

2002 – 7 people are killed in a bomb attack on a shopping mall in Vantaa, Finland.

2006 – A small aircraft piloted by baseball player Cory Lidle crashes into a residential building (a building where people live) in New York City, killing both Lidle and his flight instructor, with 21 people being injured.

2008 – Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider is killed in a car crash.

2012 – The UN designates this the first International Day of the Girl Child.

2013 – The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons wins the Nobel Peace Prize, the second time in a row that an organization has won the prize outright.

2013 – At least 30 people die when a boat carrying them from North Africa gets into trouble off Lampedusa, in the Mediterranean Sea, just over a week after over 300 people are killed in a similar accident there.

2014 – Charles Michel becomes Prime Minister of Belgium, replacing Elio Di Rupo.

2019 – Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed wins the Nobel Peace Prize.