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625 Death of Pope Boniface V.  

1315 Adam Banastre, Henry de Lea and William Bradshaw, led an attack on Liverpool Castle.

1247 A Tynwald convention of all the Manx (Isle of Man) people took place.

1400 Death of Geoffrey Chaucer, English poet. Chaucer (b. c. 1343), author of Troylus and Cryseyde (Troilus and Criseyde) and The Canterbury Tales, died at his home in the gardens of Westminster Abbey in London, aged 72. He is buried at Westminster Abbey, and was the first person laid to rest in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner, because he had been Clerk of Works to the Palace of Westminster, not as a result of his writing.

Our knowledge of his life is sketchy, but he was educated at Oxford or Cambridge and after travel joined the court of Edward III. He wrote poetry as a diversion from his job as Comptroller of the Customs for the port of London. He spent time in the Tower for his religious and political convictions, but after his release he retired to write The Canterbury Tales, a classic of the English language.  

Shop Chaucer

1415 The English army of King Henry V of England defeated the French army of Charles VI of France (Charles the Mad) under Charles d'Albret at the Battle of Agincourt.

Former USA V-P Nelson Rockefeller (1908 - 1979) 'flips the bird'

Agincourt and alleged origins of flipping 'the Finger' ('the Bird')

"Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, and [sic] proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. 

"Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow. English soldiers, therefore, would be incapable of fighting in the future. 

"This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as 'plucking the yew' (or 'pluck yew'). Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, 'See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!' Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. 

"It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird".. And yew thought yew knew everything."   Source

A cool story, but probably an urban myth

It's very likely an urban myth. The first literary reference to the Finger is in a 423 BCE version of The Clouds by the Greek comic poet, Aristophanes (c. 446 BCE - 385 BCE):

Socrates: ... Polite society will accept you if you can discriminate, say, between the martial anapest and common dactylic – sometimes vulgarly called 'finger-rhythm'.

Strepsiades: Finger-rhythm? I know that.

Socrates: Define it then.

Strepsiades: [Extending his middle finger] Why, it's tapping time with this finger. Of course, when I was a boy [raising his phallus], I used to make rhythm with this one.

[Note that in the USA just one finger is used, not two.]

More   Finger gallery

1495 Death of King John II of Portugal (b. 1455).

1556 Charles V of Spain, and also Holy Roman Emperor, retired to a monastery of Spain.

The bizarre Gil Perez teleportation case

1593 On the evening of October 24, one of the strangest occurrences in history took place in Mexico. Or, so it is said.

A Guardia Civil soldier, Gil Perez, appeared suddenly in a confused state in the Plaza Mayor (the principal square) of Mexico City, wearing the uniform of a Philippine regiment. He claimed that moments before finding himself in Mexico he had been on sentry duty in Manila at the governor's palace. He admitted that while he was aware that he was no longer in the Philippines, he had no idea where he was or how he had got there. He said the governor, Don Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, had been assassinated.

When it was explained to him that he was now in Mexico City, Perez refused to believe it, saying that he had received his orders on the morning of October 25 in Manila and that it was therefore impossible for him to be in Mexico City on the evening of the 24th. The authorities placed Perez in jail, as a deserter and for the possibility that he may have been in the service of Satan. The Most Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition questioned the soldier, but all he could say in his defence was that he had travelled from Manila to Mexico "in less time than it takes a cock to crow".

Two months later, news from the Philippines arrived by Manila galleon, confirming the fact of the literal axing on October 23 of   in a mutiny of Chinese rowers, as well as other points of the mysterious soldier's fantastic story. Witnesses confirmed that Gil Perez had indeed been on duty in Manila just before arriving in Mexico. Furthermore, one of the passengers on the ship recognized Perez and swore that he had seen him in the Philippines on October 23. Gil Perez eventually returned to the Philippines and took up his former position as a palace guard, living thenceforth an apparently uneventful life.

[The only source I have found for this curious tale is various websites that offer no citations earlier than Encounter Cases from 'Flying Saucer Review', Bowen, Charles (ed.), Signet Book, New American Library, 1977]

::Aha!:: Synchronicity Central

1616 Dutch sea captain Dirk Hartog nailed a pewter plate to a tree at Cape Inscription, Western Australia, marking his landfall on the continent. (Willem de Vlamingh put up his own plate eighty years later and took the original back to Holland. A French explorer later removed the de Vlamingh plate. The second plate is now in Australia, but the Hartog plate remains in the Netherlands.)

1760 King George II died at Kensington, London, and was succeeded by his grandson, George III, as King of Great Britain.

1794 The 'Scottish Martyrs' (political prisoners) arrived in Sydney.

1813 War of 1812: Canadians and Mohawks beat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay.

1828 St Katharine Docks opened in London

1839 The world's first railway timetable was published in Manchester.

1852 USA: Two unknown males were killed, and given by the authorities the names of John and Richard Doe.

John Doe

On this day in 1852 an early American use of the name John Doe, meaning an unknown person, is recorded. We associate this term with Hollywood cop shows and movies, but in fact the John Doe label came from merrie olde England. The terms John and Richard Doe were introduced into English legal practice about the time of King Edward III (1312 - 1377) following a Magna Carta provision.

More anonymities

1852 Death of Daniel Webster, American lawyer and politician.

1854 Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Although the orders at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War were clearly absurd, 670 English horsemen bravely (some might say stupidly) attacked a heavily-protected Russian position, and only 198 returned. The English poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, immortalized the tragedy in a poem he wrote under the obligations of his Poet Laureateship.

Balaclava Day

Balaclava Day is old British Army slang for pay day, because in the Crimean War of 1854, Balaclava was where the British troops could go for rest and recreation and to make purchases. The port town also gave its name to the woolly head covering so de rigeur for bank robbers.

'Charge' on screen

There have been several films made about the Charge.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1898)

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912)

The Victoria Cross aka The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912)

Pimple's Charge of the Light Brigade (1914)

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) (Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, David Niven and Nigel Bruce.

More

A letter from an Almaniac

Pip,
William Brittain, my great something uncle, was the orderly bugler to Lord Cardigan, the aristocratic twit who led the Charge of the Light Brigade. Billy as he was called was the son of a thirty five year veteran of the British Army. His brother Fred was a bugler with the Scots Greys, immortalized on that day as "The Thin Red Line" when they held off a numerically superior force of Russian cavalry. His commander was the much respected General Colin Campbell. 
  Billy Brittain acting on Cardigan's orders sounded the charge that swept hundreds of brave Lancers to their doom. As Billy Brittain rode down the valley at Lord Cardigan's side his horse was cut from under him by cannon fire and Billy was severely wounded. He was carried from the field of battle by his sergeant, Fred Nunnerly and ended up in Florence Nightingale's hospital at Scutari on the outskirts of what is now Istanbul. 
  Billy was well regarded by his mates and particularly by Lord Cardigan who visited him on his death bed. The visit was recorded in a letter from one of the Irish nurses in attendance. (enclosed) 
  Unfortunately due mainly to the poor standard of nursing and hygiene at Nightingale's hospital Billy died not from his wounds but from bedsores three months after the battle. 
  As he lay dying, Billy begged his sergeant to hang on to his battered bugle. The bugle was eventually given to his father and was retained in the Brittain family in Dublin until it was sold by Billy's nephew in 1905 to the landlord of a pub in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north of England. (see enclosed photo) The bugle was displayed in the pub, The Percy Arms, for twenty years and after that disappeared until turning up at auction in London in the early sixties. It was bought by, of all people, Ed Sullivan, the American TV host and the English actor Lawrence Harvey. They donated the bugle to the Regimental Museum in Grantham, Lincolnshire where it can be seen today.
Des Brittain

In a previous email (Oct 5, 2002), Des wrote:

There is some dispute about whether the charge was actually sounded at all and in Chiswick Old Church graveyard behind Fullers brewery near Hogarth's corner lies Trumpet Major Joy who also claimed to have sounded the charge. In fact you can see it inscribed on his tombstone. Absolute rubbish! Joy was in the Heavy Brigade and did not ride in the charge. I have copies of letters from veterans of the charge who verify that Billy Brittain sounded the charge having ridden alongside him into the valley of death. Even in the Army Museum in Chelsea they claim that the charge was probably never sounded. Absolute rubbish, yet again! I have the proof. Is there anyone out there who may have more info on the charge that might be relevant? By the way Billy Brittain was an Irishman from Dublin as where many of his comrades on that day.

(Des is part of a BBC message board thread on this, but it requires log-in.)

1857 Australia: Many members of the Fraser family were massacred by Aboriginal people near Emerald, Queensland. A posse of Europeans sought the attackers out and wrought a bloody revenge.

1857 Australia: Parramatta Park (near Sydney) was gazetted.

1861 The Toronto Stock Exchange was created.

1879 South Australia became the first Australian state to use the totalisator system at horse races.

1895 Death of Charles Hallé (b. 1819), pianist and conductor.

1900 United Kingdom annexed the gold-rich southern African territory of the Transvaal

1903 United States Senate began investigating the Teapot Dome Scandal.

1906 Lee de Forest, an American electrical engineer, patented the three-diode amplification valve.

1917 The inaugural rail service from Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, to Port Augusta, South Australia, was made.

1920 Death of Alexander I, King of the Hellenes, of sepsis (after being bitten by a pet monkey).

1921 Bat Masterson (b. 1853 or 1856), famed American lawman, died the way he lived: at his desk at the New York Morning Telegraph where he worked as sports editor. He'd done a few other things along the way, including a position as US Marshal for the Southern District of New York, the formation of a friendship with US President Theodore Roosevelt, and acting as Deputy Sheriff to the legendary Wyatt Earp.

1922 The Dail of the Irish Free State approved the constitution of the new state, formally bringing it into being.

1924 First appearance of the cartoon strip Little Orphan Annie.

1924 Four days before the general elections in Britain, Soviet leader Grigory Zinoviev's probably forged letter (Zinoviev Letter) urging socialists in all countries to revolt, was leaked to the British press and published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of re-election. British Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald's attempts to cast doubt on the letter's authenticity were hampered by its widespread acceptance among government officials.

1936 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1936 In Berlin, a radio station broadcast the world's first request show, named You Ask –  We Play.

1944 Japan launched the first kamikaze attacks, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

1944 Heinrich Himmler ordered a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich. See also White Rose movement.

1945 Japan surrendered Taiwan to the Republic of China.

1950 China joined the Korean War, sending thousands of 'volunteers' across the Yalu river border to attack United Nations forces.

1951 The Conservative Party won the British General Election and the next day Winston Churchill was made Prime Minister.

1952 For the third year in a row, the USA blocked the entry of the People's Republic of China to the UN.

1954 The US Air Force concluded that 'flying saucers' are nothing but explainable phenomena such as optical illusions.

1961 UK: Private Eye magazine was first published.

1961 The Australian Medical Association (AMA) was registered.

1962 Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson showed photos at the UN proving Russian missiles were installed in Cuba.

1962 Australia: The one millionth Holden car was assembled, fourteen years after the first.

1976 Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Royal National Theatre.

1981 Massive demonstrations were held in London, Rome, Paris and Brussels against nuclear missiles in Europe.

1981 Australia: Daylight saving time was introduced into NSW, ACT, Victoria and South Australia for the first time since World War II.

1983 Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and Caribbean allies invaded Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters were executed in a violent coup d'état.

1984 Bolinas, California, USA: Hip poet and author Richard Brautigan (b. 1935) (Revenge of the Lawn; Please Plant This Book; Trout Fishing in America; In Watermelon Sugar) was found dead, having committed suicide sometime in September, aged 49. For five weeks, Brautigan's body lay between his bed and his desk, the gun to one side, a couple of empty bottles of bourbon nearby.

'The Final Ride'

By Richard Brautigan

The act of dying
is like hitch-hiking
into a strange town
late at night
where it is cold
and raining,
and you are alone
again

Shop Brautigan    Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1986 Four paintings by Paul Gauguin and Eugène Boudin were stolen from the Garrick Hill Estate mansion in Adelaide, South Australia.

1992 Latvia established its first post-Soviet constitution.

1993 Jean Chrétien became prime minister of Canada with a massive majority for his Liberal Party in a general election in which the governing Progressive Conservatives lost 149 of 151 seats in the parliament.

1991 Steely Dan reunited.

1994 Susan Smith of Union, South Carolina claimed that a black carjacker had driven off with her two sons. Smith later confessed to having drowned the children in John D Long Lake, and was convicted of murder.

1997 After a brief civil war which had driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso proclaimed himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.

2002 Paul Wellstone, US Senator, a Democrat from Minnesota, died in a plane crash.

2001 US: Congress gave police sweeping new powers to search homes and business records secretly and eavesdrop on phone and computer conversations.

"Odd how those conservatives who 'hate big government' and its intrusions always make it bigger and more intrusive, and the liberals who claim to 'defend' civil rights are so quick to give them up."

Source: The Daily Bleed

2003 USA: The Cedar Fire was reported at 5:37 pm. It became the largest wildfire in California's history.

2004 Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announced that transactions using the American Dollar would be banned by November 8.

Tomorrow: Angam (Homecoming) Day, Nauru

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Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
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© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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