Monthly Archives: October 2024

History

On this day October 23

Today in History

  • 2002 Dubrovka Theater Hostage Crisis

    About 50 Chechen rebels led by Movsar Barayev took over the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow during the performance of Nord-Ost, a musical. The rebels took about 850 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. The siege lasted for about 3 days and ended after Russian security forces released a chemical gas in the theater. All of the rebels and about 170 hostages died during the siege.

  • 2001 Apple announces the first iPod Player

    The iPod is the world’s best-selling portable media player. Already 6 years after its initial launch, Apple announced that 100 million devices had been sold. The company has been criticized for its aggressive policies forcing users to use only original batteries and preventing them from freely sharing content with others.

  • 1998 Swatch Announces Internet Time

    The Swiss watch company invented a new unit of time called the .beat, which corresponds to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Under the Internet Time system, a day is divided into 1000 .beats.

  • 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing

    Two bombs exploded in front of American and French barracks during the Lebanese Civil War, killing about 300 French and American military personnel. Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the bombings.

  • 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre Turns Down Nobel Prize

    The French existentialist philosopher and writer published a letter in the newspaper Le Figaro to explain why he did not want to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature he had been awarded the day before on October 22. In his letter, he said he did not want to take sides in the East and West struggle of the Cold War, by accepting an award that was given out by Western institutions.

History

On this day October 22

 

Today in History

  • 2008 India Launches its First Lunar Mission

    The unmanned space probe called Chandrayaan-1 was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation. The probe successfully landed on the Moon on November 14, 2008, making India the 5th country to land a spacecraft on the Moon.

  • 1957 François Duvalier takes office

    François Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, became the President of Haiti.

  • 1936 End of the Long March in China

    The Long March, a 6000-mile journey made by members of the Red Army led by Mao Zedong came to an end. The March was undertaken as a way to escape the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek. The end of the March is also known in China as the “union of the three armies”.

  • 1884 International Meridian Conference Adopts Greenwich, England as initial longitudinal meridian

    26 countries participated in the conference which was held in Washington, D.C. In addition to making the meridian passing through the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude or 0 degree longitude, the conference also defined a universal day which would “begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight at the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian; and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours”.

  • 1797 First Person to Jump With a Parachute

    French balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin jumped out of a balloon over Parc Monceau in Paris using a silk parachute that he made himself.