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Today In History – October 20
There are 72 days remaining until the end of the year.
Today in History in 1968 former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis; and in 2018 Donald Trump decides to pull the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.
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 20 is the 293rd day of the year (294th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 72 days remaining until the end of the year.
EVENTS
1548 - The city of La Paz, Bolivia, is founded.
1708 - The new Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, designed by Christopher Wren, is completed.
1714 - George I of Great Britain and Ireland is crowned.
1720 - Caribbean pirate Calico Jack is captured by the Royal Navy.
1728 - The Great Fire of Copenhagen break out, and lasts for three days.
1740 – Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony refuse to honour the Pragmatic Sanction and the War of the Austrian Succession begins.
1803 – United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.
1818 - The Convention of 1818 is signed between the United States and United Kingdom. Among other things, it settles most of the Canada-United States border to run along the 49th parallel.
1827 – Battle of Navarino – a combined Turkish and Egyptian armada is destroyed by an allied British, French, and Russian naval force in the port of Navarino in Pylos, Greece. The most important result of this battle is the end of the Greek Liberation War and the affirmation of independence of modern Greece.
1831 - First day of trading on the Madrid Stock Exchange.
1883 – Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province was ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.
1904 - Chile and Bolivia sign the Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
1910 - The hull of the ship RMS Olympic is launched in Belfast.
1914 - World War I: The First Battle of Flanders begins.
1935 – The Long March ends in China.
1943 - Cargo vessel Sinfra is attacked by allied aircraft at Suda Bay, Crete and sunk. 2,098 Italian POWs drown.
1944 – The Soviet army captures Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia
1944 – Liquid natural gas leaks from storage tanks in Cleveland, Ohio, then explodes; the explosion and resulting fire level 30 blocks and kill 130.
1947 – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
1948 - A KLM Lockheed L-049 Constellation airliner crashes at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland, killing all 40 people on board.
1952 - In then-British Kenya, leaders of the Mau-Mau uprising are arrested, including Jomo Kenyatta.
1968 – Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
1970 - Siad Barre declares Somalia a socialist state.
1971 - West German Chancellor Willy Brandt wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
1971 – The Nepal stock exchange collapses.
1973 – The Saturday Night Massacre: President Nixon fires Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Robert Bork.
1973 – The Sydney Opera House opens.
1973 – The Six Million Dollar Man premieres on ABC.
1976 - The ferry George Prince is struck by a ship on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, killing 78 people. 18 survive.
1977 – A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in Mississippi, killing several band members, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines.
1982 – St. Louis Cardinals defeat Milwaukee Brewers 6-3 to win 9th World Series Championship.
1986 – Yitzhak Shamir begins his second office term as Israel's prime minister.
1991 – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake in northern India kills around 1,000 people.
1991 – The Oakland Hills firestorm kills 25 and destroys 3469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.
1995 - NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes resigns.
1999 – Abdurrahman Wahid is elected President of Indonesia.
2004 - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono becomes President of Indonesia.
2007 – South Africa wins the Rugby World Cup, defeating England in the final.
2011 – 2011 Libyan civil war: Forces loyal to the National Transitional Council take the city of Sirte, the last remaining pro-Gaddafi stronghold. Subsequently, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi is captured and killed.
2013 - Luxembourg holds an early election after long-serving Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was involved in a spy scandal.
2014 - Joko Widodo becomes President of Indonesia.
2018 - Around 700,000 people march against Brexit (and for a second referendum on the issue) in London, in the biggest such gathering in the United Kingdom since 2003.
2018 - Donald Trump decides to pull the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.