October 12

October 12 is the 285th day of the year (286th in Leap years). There are 80 days remaining.

• 1492 - Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean
• 1810 - First Oktoberfest, in celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Louis of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen
• 1847 - Siemens AG & Halske founded
• 1859 - Emperor Norton I of the United States orders that country's congress dissolved.
• 1860 - British and French capture Peking, China
• 1933 - Alcatraz becomes a federal prison
• 1960 - Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a table at the United Nations to protest discussion of Soviet Union policy towards Eastern Europe
• 1968 - 1968 Summer Olympics open in Mexico City, Mexico
• 1976 - Hua Guo-feng[?] succeeds Mao Tse-tung as chairman of Chinese Communist Party
• 1998 - United States Congress passes Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• 1999 - Military coup in Pakistan
• 2000 - USS Cole (DDG 67) badly damaged by an attack in Aden, Yemen
• 2002 - Bali: Terrorists detonate massive bomb in two nightclubs in Kuta, killing 190

Births:

• 1537 - King Edward VI of England
• 1860 - Elmer Sperry[?], inventor
• 1866 - Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (+ 1937)
• 1875 - Aleister Crowley, occultist, author (+ 1947)
• 1906 - Joe Cronin[?], Baseball Hall of Famer
• 1912 - Alice Childress[?], novelist (+ 1994)
• 1918 - P.S. Ramakrishna Rao[?], film director (+ 1986)
• 1923 - Jean Nidetch[?], founder of Weight Watchers[?]
• 1932 - Dick Gregory, comedian, activist
• 1935 - Luciano Pavarotti, opera singer
• 1935 - Joan Rivers[?], comedienne, television host
• 1968 - Hugh Jackman[?], actor, singer
• 1975 - Marion Jones, track and field star

Deaths:

• 632 - Edwin, king of Northumbria and Bretwalda
• 638 - Pope Honorius I
• 642 - Pope John IV
• 1870 - Robert E. Lee, United States Civil War general (Confederate)
• 1915 - Edith Cavell, nurse
• 1924 - Anatole France, author, Nobel Prize winner
• 1940 - Tom Mix[?], actor
• 1946 - General Joseph Stillwell[?]
• 1969 - Sonja Henie, figure skater
• 1971 - Dean Acheson, United States Secretary of State
• 1984 - Sir Anthony Berry, British politician, along with three of the other victims of the Brighton bombing
• 1993 - Leon Ames[?], actor
• 1997 - John Denver, singer
• 1998 - Matthew Shepard, gay college student and gay-bashing victim
• 1999 - Wilt Chamberlain, basketball player
• 2001 - Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, British politician
• 2002 - Ray Conniff[?], band leader, musician

Holidays:

• National day of Spain.
• Columbus Day (traditionally) - United States
• El Dia de la Raza[?] - Latin America

October 11 - October 13 - September 12 - November 12 - more historical anniversaries