Today In History – This Day In History Funny Events

The Hebrew calendar, also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as yahrzeits, and the scheduling of public Torah readings. In Israel, it is used for religious and agriculture purposes, and is also an official calendar for civil holidays alongside the Gregorian calendar.

The epoch reference date epoch (origin) of the modern Hebrew calendar (Proleptic Julian calendar).

The Battle of Modon was fought on 7 October 1403 between the fleets of the Republic of Venice and of the Republic of Genoa, then under French control, commanded by the French marshal Jean Le Maingre, better known as Boucicaut. One of the last clashes in the Venetian–Genoese wars, the battle ended in a decisive Venetian victory.

Battle of Modon: Genoese fleet under Jean Le Maingre (Marshal Boucicaut) is defeated by the Republic of Venice at Modon in the Peloponnese.

Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing British Crown Dependency in Northwestern Europe 14 miles (23 km) off the Cotentin Peninsula of north-west France. At 45 square miles (120 km2), the main island, Jersey, is the largest of the Channel Islands. Although not a sovereign state, Jersey has its own legal, fiscal and governmental systems; on that basis, it is regarded as a small nation or island country. Jersey's territory also includes some surrounding uninhabited islands and rocks. As of 2021, the island had a population of 103,267.

French troops comprising 1,000 men at arms landed on Jersey and fought a battle against 3,000 defenders.

Uppsala University (UU) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries.

Uppsala University is inaugurated after receiving its corporate rights from Pope Sixtus IV in February the same year.

The Battle of La Motta, also known as the Battle of Schio, Battle of Vicenza or Battle of Creazzo, took place at Schio, in the Italian region of Veneto, Republic of Venice, on 7 October 1513, between the forces of the Republic of Venice and a combined force of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and was a significant battle of the War of the League of Cambrai. A Venetian army under Bartolomeo d'Alviano was decisively defeated by the Spanish/Imperial army commanded by Ramón de Cardona and Fernando d'Ávalos.

Battle of La Motta: Spanish troops under Ramón de Cardona defeat the Venetians.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was a Portuguese maritime explorer best known for investigations of the west coast of North America, undertaken on behalf of the Spanish Empire. He was the first European to explore present-day Alta California, navigating along the coast of California in 1542–1543 on his voyage from New Spain.

Explorer Cabrillo discovers Santa Catalina Island off of the California coast.

The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic states arranged by Pope Pius V and led by the navies of the Spanish Empire and the Republic of Venice, inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras. The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval station in Lepanto when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east from Messina, Sicily.

The Battle of Lepanto is fought, and the Ottoman Navy suffers its first defeat.

The Gregorian calendar is the calendar currently 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+97⁄400, or 365.2425, days long rather than the Julian calendar's 365+1⁄4 days, thus more closely approximating the 365.2422-day tropical, or solar, year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun.

Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day is skipped in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in New England which became one of the thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III and Mary II, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and was based on the merging of several earlier British colonies in New England. The charter took effect on May 14, 1692, and included the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony, the Province of Maine, the Territory of Sagadahock, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the direct successor. Maine has been a separate state since 1820, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are now Canadian provinces, having been part of the colony only until 1697.

The English royal charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is issued.

George III was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. During his reign, the Acts of Union 1800 merged Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom. He was concurrently duke and prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the first monarch of the House of Hanover who was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

King George III of the United Kingdom issues the Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing aboriginal lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlements.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence or simply the American Revolution, 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.

American Revolutionary War: The Americans defeat the British in the Second Battle of Saratoga, also known as the Battle of Bemis Heights.

The Battle of Kings Mountain was fought on October 7, 1780, in South Carolina during the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. Fought almost entirely between Patriot and Loyalist troops, the battle resulted in a decisive Patriot victory. Taking place 9 miles (14 km) south of the present-day town of Kings Mountain, North Carolina in what is now rural Cherokee County, South Carolina, the battle has been described as "the war's largest all-American fight."

American Revolutionary War: Battle of Kings Mountain: American Patriot militia defeat Loyalist irregulars led by British major Patrick Ferguson in South Carolina.

Corsairs were privateers, authorised to conduct raids on shipping of a foreign state at war with the Kingdom of France, on behalf of the French crown. Seized vessels and cargo were sold at auction, with the corsair captain entitled to a portion of the proceeds. Although not French Navy personnel, corsairs were considered legitimate combatants in France, provided the commanding officer of the vessel was in possession of a valid letter of marque, and the officers and crew conducted themselves according to contemporary admiralty law. By acting on behalf of the French Crown, if captured by the enemy, they could in principle claim treatment as prisoners of war, instead of being considered pirates.

French corsair Robert Surcouf, commander of the 18-gun ship La Confiance, captures the British 38-gun Kent inspiring the traditional French song Le Trente-et-un du mois d'août.

The Granite Railway was one of the first railroads in the United States, built to carry granite from Quincy, Massachusetts, to a dock on the Neponset River in Milton. From there boats carried the heavy stone to Charlestown for construction of the Bunker Hill Monument. The Granite Railway is popularly termed the first commercial railroad in the United States, as it was the first chartered railway to evolve into a common carrier without an intervening closure. The last active quarry closed in 1963; in 1985, the Metropolitan District Commission purchased 22 acres (8.9 ha), including Granite Railway Quarry, as the Quincy Quarries Reservation.

The Granite Railway begins operations as the first chartered railway in the U.S.

The Morea expedition is the name given to the land intervention of the French Army in the Peloponnese between 1828 and 1833, at the time of the Greek War of Independence, with the aim of expelling the Ottoman-Egyptian occupation forces from the region. It was also accompanied by a scientific expedition mandated by the French Academy.

Morea expedition: The city of Patras, Greece, is liberated by the French expeditionary force in the Peloponnese under General Maison.

William II was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg from 1840 until his death.

Willem II becomes King of the Netherlands.

Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH) is among the oldest hospitals in British Columbia and one of the busiest in the Fraser Health Authority. It is located in New Westminster overlooking the Fraser River and is the only hospital in the Lower Mainland that is immediately adjacent to a Skytrain station (Sapperton).

Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH) opens as the first hospital in the Colony of British Columbia

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. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

American Civil War: Bahia incident: USS Wachusett illegally captures the CSS Florida Confederate raider while in port in Bahia, Brazil in violation of Brazilian neutrality.

Cornell University is a private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson White in 1865. Since its founding, Cornell University has been a co-educational and nonsectarian institution. As of fall 2024, the student body included 16,128 undergraduate and 10,665 postgraduate students from all 50 U.S. states and 130 countries.

Cornell University holds opening day ceremonies; initial student enrollment is 412, the highest at any American university to that date.

The Franco-Prussian War, occasionally known as the Franco-German War, and sometimes referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between France and the North German Confederation led by Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871, the conflict was caused primarily by France's determination to reassert its dominant position in continental Europe, which appeared in question following the decisive Prussian victory over Austria in 1866.

Franco-Prussian War: Siege of Paris: Léon Gambetta flees Paris in a hot-air balloon.

Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and officially as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, was a multi-national empire in Central Europe under a constitutional dual monarchy that existed between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic real union, it consisted of two largely self governing states with a single monarch who was titled both the Emperor of Austria and the Apostolic King of Hungary. Austria-Hungary constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy: it was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, following wars of independence by Hungary in opposition to Habsburg rule. It was dissolved shortly after Hungary terminated the union with Austria in 1918 at the end of World War I.

Germany and Austria-Hungary sign the "Twofold Covenant" and create the Dual Alliance.

Nasdaq Helsinki, formerly known as the Helsinki Stock Exchange, is a stock exchange located in Helsinki, Finland. Since 3 September 2003, it has been part of Nasdaq Nordic. After the OMX merger, it was referred to as OMX Helsinki (OMXH), then after NASDAQ's acquisition of OMX in February 2008, NASDAQ OMX Helsinki, and currently Nasdaq Helsinki.

The Helsinki Stock Exchange sees its first transaction.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the largest student enrollment of the University System of Georgia, with satellite campuses in Savannah, Georgia, and Metz, France.

Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222-0 in the most lopsided college football game in American history.

The Regency Council of the Kingdom of Poland was a semi-independent and Provisional appointed authority in Poland during World War I. It was formed by Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary within historically Polish lands in September 1917 after the dissolution of the previous authority, the Provisional Council of State, due to the Oath crisis.

The Regency Council of the Kingdom of Poland declares independence from the German Empire and forms the Republic of Poland.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, or simply KLM, is the flag carrier of the Netherlands. KLM's headquarters are located in Amstelveen, with its hub at nearby Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM group and a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance. Founded in 1919, KLM is the oldest operating airline still using its original name, having gone through significant changes in its ownership and legal structure over its history, including a period of majority government ownership. The company had a fleet of 110 aircraft and 35,488 employees as of 2021. KLM operates scheduled passenger and cargo services to 171 destinations.

KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, is founded. It is the oldest airline still operating under its original name.

Andreas Michalakopoulos was an important liberal politician in the interwar period who served as Prime Minister of Greece from 7 October 1924 to 26 June 1925, the day after the overthrow of the government by Greek Army troops led by General Theodoros Pangalos, who forced President Pavlos Kountouriotis to dismiss the government and appoint Pangalos as the new Premier.

Andreas Michalakopoulos becomes Prime Minister of Greece for a short period of time.

Ecumenical Patriarch Photius II was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 7 October 1929 until his death in 29 December 1935, serving as the primus inter pares and spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christianity worldwide.

Photius II becomes Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Air France, stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France, and is headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. The airline is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and is one of the founding members of the SkyTeam airline alliance. As of 2013, Air France served 29 destinations in France and operates worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to 201 destinations in 78 countries and also carried 46,803,000 passengers in 2019. The airline maintains its global and domestic hub at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Air France's corporate headquarters, previously in Montparnasse, Paris, are located at the Roissypôle complex on the grounds of Charles de Gaulle Airport, north of Paris.

Air France is inaugurated, after being formed by a merger of five French airlines.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

World War II: The McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.

The Actions along the Matanikau—sometimes referred to as the Second and Third Battles of the Matanikau—were two separate but related engagements between the United States and Imperial Japanese naval and ground forces in the Pacific theater of World War II. The actions occurred around the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal Island in the southwestern Pacific during the Guadalcanal campaign. These particular engagements—the first taking place between 23 and 27 September, and the second between 6 and 9 October—were two of the largest and most significant of the Matanikau actions.

World War II: The October Matanikau action on Guadalcanal begins as United States Marine Corps forces attack Imperial Japanese Army units along the Matanikau River.

Auschwitz, also known as Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and dozens of subcamps.

World War II: During an uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Jewish prisoners burn down Crematorium IV.

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally viewed as a communist state and described itself as a socialist workers' and peasants' state.

The communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed.

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa or Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity and a Catholic saint.

Mother Teresa establishes the Missionaries of Charity.

The President of Pakistan is the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The president is the nominal head of the executive and the federal parliament, the first citizen of the country, and the supreme commander of the Pakistan Armed Forces. Serving as the ceremonial head of the federation, the president is bound to act on advice of the prime minister and the federal cabinet. Asif Ali Zardari is the 14th and current president, having assumed the presidency on 10 March 2024.

President of Pakistan Iskander Mirza, with the support of General Ayub Khan and the army, suspends the 1956 constitution, imposes martial law, and cancels the elections scheduled for January 1959.

Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights, and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $2.83 billion. The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.

The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years, and the first Catholic president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency.

John F. Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The 1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union, officially the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was the communist state constitution adopted on 7 October 1977.

The adoption of the Fourth Soviet Constitution.

The 1985 Puerto Rico floods produced showers and thunderstorms across the island and the deadliest single landslide on record on United States territory, that killed at least 130 people in the Mameyes neighborhood of barrio Portugués Urbano in Ponce. The floods were the result of a westward-moving tropical wave that emerged off the coast of Africa on September 29. The system moved into the Caribbean Sea on October 5 and produced heavy rains across Puerto Rico, peaking at 31.67 in (804 mm) in Toro Negro State Forest. Two stations broke their 24-hour rainfall records set in 1899. The rains caused severe flooding in the southern half of Puerto Rico, which isolated towns, washed out roads, and caused rivers to exceed their banks. In addition to the deadly landslide in Mameyes, the floods washed out a bridge in Santa Isabel that killed several people. The storm system caused about $125 million in damage and 180 deaths, which prompted a presidential disaster declaration. The tropical wave later spawned Tropical Storm Isabel.

The Mameyes landslide kills almost 200 people in Puerto Rico.

The Khalistan movement is a separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing an ethnoreligious sovereign state called Khalistan in the Punjab region. The proposed boundaries of Khalistan vary between different groups; some suggest the entirety of the Sikh-majority Indian state of Punjab, while larger claims include Pakistani Punjab and other parts of North India, such as Chandigarh, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.

Sikh nationalists declares the independence of Khalistan from India; it is not internationally recognized.

The Iñupiat, also known as Alaskan Inuit, are a group of Alaska Natives whose traditional territory roughly spans northeast from Norton Sound on the Bering Sea to the northernmost part of the Canada–United States border. Their current communities include 34 villages across Iñupiat Nunaat, including seven Alaskan villages in the North Slope Borough, affiliated with the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation; eleven villages in Northwest Arctic Borough; and sixteen villages affiliated with the Bering Straits Regional Corporation. They often claim to be the first people of the Kauwerak.

An Iñupiat hunter discovers three gray whales trapped under the ice in Barrow, Alaska, US; the situation becomes a multinational effort to free the whales.

The Croatian War of Independence was an armed conflict fought in Croatia from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the Government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations by 1992.

Croatian War of Independence: Bombing of Banski dvori in Zagreb, Croatia.

The Great Flood of 1993 was a flood that occurred in the Midwestern United States, along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries, from April to October 1993.

The flood of '93 ends at St. Louis, Missouri, 103 days after it began, as the Mississippi River falls below flood stage.

The Fox News Channel (FNC), often referred to as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website based in New York City. Owned by the Fox News Media subsidiary of Fox Corporation, as of 2022, it is the most-watched cable news network in the United States, and as of 2023, it generates approximately 70% of its parent company's pre-tax profit. The channel broadcasts primarily from studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan. Fox News provides service to 86 countries and territories, with international broadcasts featuring Fox Extra segments during advertising breaks.

Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on October 6, 1998. He was transported by rescuers to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries sustained during the attack.

Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming.

The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global military campaign initiated by the United States in response to the September 11 attacks in 2001. A global conflict spanning multiple wars, some researchers and political scientists have argued that it replaced the Cold War.

The Global War on Terrorism begins as a result of the September 11 attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan initiates with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.

Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis Jr. is an American attorney and former politician who served as the 37th governor of California from 1999 until he was recalled and removed from office in 2003. He is the second state governor in U.S. history to have been recalled, after Lynn Frazier of North Dakota.

The governor of California, Gray Davis, is recalled in favor of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

2008 TC3 was an 80-tonne (80-long-ton; 90-short-ton), 4.1-meter (13 ft) diameter asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere on October 7, 2008. It exploded at an estimated 37 kilometers (23 mi) above the Nubian Desert in Sudan. Some 600 meteorites, weighing a total of 10.5 kilograms (23.1 lb), were recovered; many of these belonged to a rare type known as ureilites, which contain, among other minerals, nanodiamonds.

Asteroid 2008 TC3 impacts the Earth over Sudan, the first time an asteroid impact is detected prior to its entry into earth's atmosphere.

Hurricane Matthew was a powerful and devastating tropical cyclone which caused catastrophic damage and a humanitarian crisis in Haiti, as well as widespread devastation across Cuba, the Bahamas, and the southeastern United States. The deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Stan in 2005, and the first Category 5 Atlantic hurricane since Felix in 2007, Matthew was the thirteenth named storm, fifth hurricane and second major hurricane of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season. It caused extensive damage to landmasses in the Greater Antilles, and severe damage in several islands of the Bahamas which were still recovering from Joaquin, which had pounded the archipelago nearly a year earlier. Matthew also approached the southeastern United States, but stayed just offshore, paralleling the Florida coastline.

In the wake of Hurricane Matthew, the death toll rises to 800.