12 October Events

October 12 is the 285th day of the year (286th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

Events

539 BC – The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon (Julian calendar)
633 – Battle of Hatfield Chase: King Edwin of Northumbria is defeated and killed by the British under Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon of Gwynedd.
1113 – The city of Oradea is first mentioned under the Latin name Varadinum ("vár" means fortress in Hungarian).
1279 – Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, is said to have inscribed the Dai Gohonzon.
1398 – The Treaty of Salynas is signed between Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Teutonic Knights, who received Samogitia.
1492 – Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached the Indies.
1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1654 – The Delft Explosion devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100 people.
1692 – The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor Sir William Phips.
1748 – British and Spanish naval forces engage at the Battle of Havana during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
1773 – America's first insane asylum opens.
1792 – The first celebration of Columbus Day is held in New York City.
1793 – The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina.
1798 – Flemish and Luxembourgish peasants launch the rebellion against French rule known as the Peasants' War.
1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 900 metres (3,000 ft).
1810 – First Oktoberfest: The Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
1822 – Pedro I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Empire of Brazil.
1823 – Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1847 – German inventor and industrialist Werner von Siemens founds Siemens & Halske, which later becomes Siemens AG.
1849 – The city of Manizales, Colombia is founded by 'The Expedition of the 20'.
1871 – Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals. Repealed in 1949, after Independence of India.
1890 – Uddevalla Suffrage Association is formed.
1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.
1901 – President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
1915 – World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium
1917 – World War I: The First Battle of Passchendaele takes place resulting in the largest single day loss of life in New Zealand history.
1918 – A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Cloquet, Minnesota.
1928 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.
1933 – The military Alcatraz Citadel becomes the civilian Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
1942 – World War II: Japanese ships retreat after their defeat in the Battle of Cape Esperance.
1944 – World War II: The Axis occupation of Athens comes to an end.
1945 – World War II: Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor.
1959 – At the national congress of APRA in Peru a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party who later form APRA Rebelde.
1960 – Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe.
1960 – Television viewers in Japan unexpectedly witness the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japan Socialist Party, when he is stabbed to death during a live broadcast.
1962 – The Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead and at least U.S. $230 million in damages.
1963 – After nearly 23 years of imprisonment, Reverend Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit missionary, was released from the Soviet Union.
1964 – The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits.
1967 – Vietnam War: US Secretary of State Dean Rusk states during a news conference that proposals by the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives are futile because of North Vietnam's opposition.
1968 – Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain.
1970 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas
1971 – The 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire is held (until October 16).
1979 – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams is published.
1979 – The lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in the Western Pacific during Typhoon Tip.
1983 – Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from Lockheed and is sentenced to four years in jail.
1984 – Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
1984 – American actor Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally shoots himself with a prop gun. He dies six days later.
1986 – Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit China.
1988 – Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down execution-style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia.
1992 – A 5.8 earthquake occurred in Cairo, Egypt. At least 510 died.
1994 – The Magellan spacecraft burns up in the atmosphere of Venus.
1997 – Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria that killed 43 at a fake roadblock.
1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, dies five days after he was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside of Laramie, Wyoming.
1999 – Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup.
1999 – The former Autonomous Soviet Republic of Abkhazia declares its independence from Georgia
2000 – The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
2005 – The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè Hǎishèng for five days in orbit.
2008 – Lithuanian nuclear power referendum, 2008 is performed.
2013 – Fifty-one people are killed after a truck veers off a cliff in La Convención Province, Peru.
2017 – The United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO.[1] and is immediately followed by Israel.

Source: wikipedia