KWSN Orbiting Fortress

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 22

362 – A mysterious fire destroys the Temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.
794 – Emperor Kanmu relocates the Japanese capital to Heiankyo (now Kyoto).
1383 – The 1383-1385 Crisis in Portugal: King Fernando dies without a male heir to the Portuguese throne, sparking a period of civil war and disorder.
1575 – Foundation of Aguascalientes.
1633 – Battle of southern Fujian sea: The Ming dynasty defeats the Dutch East India Company.
1707 – Scilly naval disaster: four British Royal Navy ships run aground near the Isles of Scilly because of faulty navigation. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and thousands of sailors drown.
1730 – Construction of the Ladoga Canal is completed.
1746 – The College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) receives its charter.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: American defenders of Fort Mercer on the Delaware River repulse repeated Hessian attacks in the Battle of Red Bank.
1784 – Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
1790 – Warriors of the Miami tribe under Chief Little Turtle defeat United States troops under General Josiah Harmar at the site of present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the Northwest Indian War.
1797 – One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.
1836 – Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.
1844 – The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment.
1859 – Spain declares war on Morocco.
1866 – A plebiscite ratifies the annexion of Veneto and Mantua to Italy, occurred three days before, on October 19.
1875 – First telegraphic connection in Argentina.
1877 – The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners.
1878 – The first rugby match under floodlights takes place in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton.
1879 – Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13½ hours before burning out).
1883 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod's Faust.
1895 – In Paris an express train overruns a buffer stop and crosses more than 30 metres of concourse before plummeting through a window at Gare Montparnasse.
1907 – Panic of 1907: A run on the stock of the Knickerbocker Trust Company sets events in motion that will lead to a depression.
1910 – Dr. Crippen is convicted at the Old Bailey of poisoning his wife and is subsequently hanged at Pentonville Prison in London.
1924 – Toastmasters International is founded.
1926 – J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal.
1927 – Nikola Tesla exposed his six (6) new inventions including motor with onephase electricity
1928 – Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus.
1934 – In East Liverpool, Ohio, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents shoot and kill notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.
1941 – World War II: French resistance member Guy Môquet and 29 other hostages are executed by the Germans in retaliation for the death of a German officer.
1943 – World War II: in the Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless.
1957 – Vietnam War: First United States casualties in Vietnam.
1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the Communist nation.
1963 – A BAC One-Eleven prototype airliner crashes in UK with the loss of all on board.
1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor.
1964 – Canada: A Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects the design which becomes the new official Flag of Canada.
1966 – The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' Go-Go).
1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 12.
1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times.
1972 – Vietnam War: In Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris.
1975 – The Soviet unmanned space mission Venera 9 lands on Venus.
1976 – Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs. The dye is still used in Canada.
1981 – The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization for its strike the previous August.
1983 – Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons.
1999 – Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity.
2005 – Tropical Storm Alpha forms in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record with 22 named storms.
2006 – A Panama Canal expansion proposal is approved by 77.8% of voters in a National referendum held in Panama.
2007 – Raid on Anuradhapura Air Force Base is carried out by 21 Tamil Tiger commandos. All except one died in this attack. Eight Sri Lankan Air Force planes are destroyed and 10 damaged.
2008 – India launches its first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1.
[center]------------------------------------------[/center]

The Cuban Missile Crisis (known as the October Crisis in Cuba or Caribbean Crisis (Russ: Kарибский кризис) in the USSR) was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War. In August 1962, after some unsuccessful operations by the US to overthrow the Cuban regime (Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose), the Cuban and Soviet governments secretly began to build bases in Cuba for a number of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) with the ability to strike most of the continental United States. This action followed the 1958 deployment of Thor IRBMs in the UK (Project Emily) and Jupiter IRBMs to Italy and Turkey in 1961 – more than 100 US-built missiles having the capability to strike Moscow with nuclear warheads. On October 14, 1962, a United States Air Force U-2 plane on a photoreconnaissance mission captured photographic proof of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba.

The ensuing crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade, the Suez Crisis and the Yom Kippur War as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict. It also marks the first documented instance of the threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD) being discussed as a determining factor in a major international arms agreement.

The United States considered attacking Cuba via air and sea, and settled on a military "quarantine" of Cuba. The US announced that it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed in Cuba and remove all offensive weapons. The Kennedy administration held only a slim hope that the Kremlin would agree to their demands, and expected a military confrontation. On the Soviet side, Premier Nikita Khrushchev wrote in a letter to Kennedy that his quarantine of "navigation in international waters and air space" constituted "an act of aggression propelling humankind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war".

The Soviets publicly balked at the US demands, but in secret back-channel communications initiated a proposal to resolve the crisis. The confrontation ended on October 28, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached a public and secret agreement with Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement never to invade Cuba. Secretly, the US agreed that it would dismantle all US-built Thor and Jupiter IRBMs deployed in Europe and Turkey.

Only two weeks after the agreement, the Soviets had removed the missile systems and their support equipment, loading them onto eight Soviet ships from November 5–9. A month later, on December 5 and 6, the Soviet Il-28 bombers were loaded onto three Soviet ships and shipped back to Russia. The quarantine was formally ended at 6:45 pm EDT on November 20, 1962. Eleven months after the agreement, all American weapons were deactivated (by September 1963). An additional outcome of the negotiations was the creation of the Hotline Agreement and the Moscow–Washington hotline, a direct communications link between Moscow and Washington, D.C.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a historian and adviser to John F. Kennedy, told National Public Radio in an interview on October 16, 2002 that Castro did not want the missiles, but that Khrushchev had pressured Castro to accept them. Castro was not completely happy with the idea but the Cuban National Directorate of the Revolution accepted them to protect Cuba against US attack, and to aid its ally, the Soviet Union. Schlesinger believed that when the missiles were withdrawn, Castro was angrier with Khrushchev than he was with Kennedy because Khrushchev had not consulted Castro before deciding to remove them.

In early 1992, it was confirmed that Soviet forces in Cuba had, by the time the crisis broke, received tactical nuclear warheads for their artillery rockets and Il-28 bombers. Castro stated that he would have recommended their use if the US invaded despite knowing Cuba would be destroyed.

Arguably the most dangerous moment in the crisis was only recognized during the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana conference in October 2002. Attended by many of the veterans of the crisis, they all learned that on October 26, 1962 the USS Beale had tracked and dropped signaling depth charges (the size of hand grenades) on the B-59, a Soviet Project 641 (NATO designation Foxtrot) submarine which, unknown to the US, was armed with a 15 kiloton nuclear torpedo. Running out of air, the Soviet submarine was surrounded by American warships and desperately needed to surface. An argument broke out among three officers on the B-59, including submarine captain Valentin Savitsky, political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and Deputy brigade commander Captain 2nd rank (US Navy Commander rank equivalent) Vasili Arkhipov. An exhausted Savitsky became furious and ordered that the nuclear torpedo on board be made combat ready. Accounts differ about whether Commander Arkhipov convinced Savitsky not to make the attack, or whether Savitsky himself finally concluded that the only reasonable choice left open to him was to come to the surface. During the conference Robert McNamara stated that nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."

The crisis was a substantial focus of the 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.


[center]------------------------------------------[/center]

Chandrayaan-1 (Sanskrit: चन्द्रयान-१, lit: moon vehicle About this sound pronunciation (help·info)) was India's first unmanned lunar probe. It was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation in October 2008, and operated until August 2009. The mission included a lunar orbiter and an impactor. India launched the spacecraft with a modified version of the PSLV, PSLV C11 on 22 October 2008 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, Nellore District, Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km north of Chennai, at 06:22 IST (00:52 UTC). Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced the project on course in his Independence Day speech on 15 August 2003. The mission was a major boost to India's space program, as India researched and developed its own technology in order to explore the Moon. The vehicle was successfully inserted into lunar orbit on 8 November 2008.

On 14 November 2008, the Moon Impact Probe separated from the Chandrayaan orbiter at 20:06 and struck the south pole in a controlled manner, making India the fourth country to place its flag on the Moon. The probe impacted near Shackleton Crater at 20:31 ejecting underground soil that could be analysed for the presence of lunar water ice.

The estimated cost for the project was 3.86 billion Indian rupees (US$90 million).

The remote sensing lunar satellite had a mass of 1,380 kilograms (3,042 lb) at launch and 675 kilograms (1,488 lb) in lunar orbit. It carried high resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, and soft and hard X-ray frequencies. Over a two-year period, it was intended to survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and three-dimensional topography. The polar regions are of special interest as they might contain ice. The lunar mission carries five ISRO payloads and six payloads from other space agencies including NASA, ESA, and the Bulgarian Aerospace Agency, which were carried free of cost.

After suffering from several technical issues including failure of the star sensors and poor thermal shielding, Chandrayaan stopped sending radio signals at 1:30 AM IST on 29 August 2009 shortly after which, the ISRO officially declared the mission over. The Main culprit is said to be the failure of onboard DC-DC Converter manufactured by mdipower USA. The converters failed to meet the radiation specifications for the intended mission time. Chandrayaan operated for 312 days as opposed to the intended two years but the mission achieved 95 percent of its planned objectives. Among its many achievements was the discovery of the widespread presence of water molecules in lunar soil.

_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 23

42 BC – Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus's army. Brutus commits suicide.
425 – Valentinian III is elevated as Roman Emperor, at the age of 6.
502 – The Synodus Palmaris, called by Gothic king Theodoric the Great, discharges Pope Symmachus of all charges, thus ending the schism of Antipope Laurentius.
1086 – At the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI.
1157 – The Battle of Grathe Heath ends the civil war in Denmark. King Sweyn III is killed and Valdemar I restores the country.
1295 – The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England is signed in Paris.
1641 – Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
1642 – Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War.
1694 – British/American colonial forces, led by Sir William Phipps, fail to seize Quebec from the French.
1707 – The first Parliament of Great Britain meets.
1739 – War of Jenkins' Ear starts: British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declares war on Spain.
1812 – Claude François de Malet, a French general, begins a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russia and that he is now the commandant of Paris.
1850 – The first National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States.
1861 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Westport – Union forces under General Samuel R. Curtis defeat Confederate troops led by General Sterling Price at Westport, near Kansas City.
1867 – 72 Senators are summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Metz concludes with a decisive Prussian victory.
1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.
1911 – First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies begins.
1915 – Woman's suffrage: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.
1917 – Lenin calls for the October Revolution.
1929 – Great Depression: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to show signs of panic.
1929 – The first North American transcontinental air service begins between New York City and Los Angeles, California.
1935 – Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosencrantz are fatally shot at a saloon in Newark, New Jersey in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre.
1941 – World War II: Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov takes command of Red Army operations to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the Wehrmacht from capturing Moscow.
1942 – World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein: – At El Alamein in northern Egypt, the British Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery begins a critical offensive to expel the Axis armies from Egypt.
1942 – All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Amongst the victims is award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory", "Love in Bloom", "Blue Hawaii").
1942 – World War II: The Battle for Henderson Field begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on October 26.
1944 – World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf – The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.
1944 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
1956 – Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
1958 – The Springhill Mine Bump – An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
1958 – The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves, later popularized in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series, appear for the first time in the story La flute à six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which is serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou.
1965 – Vietnam War: The 1st Cavalry Division (United States) (Airmobile), in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launches a new operation seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleiku in the II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).
1970 – Gary Gabelich sets a land speed record in a rocket-powered automobile called the Blue Flame, fueled with natural gas.
1972 – Operation Linebacker, a US bombing campaign against North Vietnam in response to its Easter Offensive, ends after five months.
1973 – The Watergate Scandal: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.
1973 – A United Nations sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria.
1983 – Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.
1989 – The Hungarian Republic is officially declared by president Mátyás Szűrös, replacing the communist Hungarian People's Republic.
1989 – Phillips Disaster in Pasadena, Texas kills 23 and injures 314.
1992 – Emperor Akihito becomes the first Emperor of Japan to stand on Chinese soil.
1993 – Shankill Road bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb prematurely detonates in the Shankill area of Belfast, killing the bomber and nine civilians.
1998 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a "land for peace" agreement.
2001 – Apple announces the iPod.
2002 – Moscow Theatre Siege begins: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage.
2004 – A powerful earthquake and its aftershocks hit Niigata prefecture, northern Japan, killing 35 people, injuring 2,200, and leaving 85,000 homeless or evacuated.
2007 – A powerful cold front in the Bay of Campeche causes the Usumacinta Jackup rig to collide with Kab 101, leading to the death and drowning of 22 people during rescue operations after evacuation of the rig.
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Second Battle of El Alamein marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. The battle took place over 14 days from 23 October – 5 November 1942. The First Battle of El Alamein had stalled the Axis advance. Thereafter, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery took command of the British Eighth Army from General Claude Auchinleck in August 1942. The Allied victory turned the tide in the North African Campaign. It ended Axis hopes of occupying Egypt, taking control of the Suez Canal, and gaining access to the Middle Eastern oil fields.

By 12 July 1942, after its success at the Battle of Gazala, the Panzer Army Africa (Panzerarmee Afrika), composed of German and Italian infantry and mechanized units under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, had struck deep into Egypt, threatening the British Empire's control of the Suez Canal. General Auchinleck withdrew the Eighth Army to within 50 mi (80 km) of Alexandria to a point where the Qattara Depression came to within 40 mi (64 km) of El Alamein on the coast. This gave the defenders a relatively short front to defend and secure flanks, because tanks could not traverse the Depression. Here, in early July, the Axis advance was halted in the First Battle of El Alamein.

Eighth Army counter-offensives during July were unsuccessful, as Rommel dug in to allow his exhausted troops to regroup. At the end of July, Auchinleck called off all offensive action with a view to rebuilding the army’s strength. In early August, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Sir Alan Brooke—the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff—visited Cairo and replaced Auchinleck as C-in-C Middle East with General Sir Harold Alexander. Lieutenant-General William Gott was to command the Eighth Army, but was killed before taking command when the transport plane he was travelling in was shot down by Luftwaffe fighters; Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery became Eighth Army commander.

Faced with overextended supply lines and a relative lack of reinforcements, and well aware of massive allied reinforcements in men and material on the way, Rommel decided to strike the Allies while their build-up was incomplete. The two armoured divisions of Afrika Korps and a force made up of the reconnaissance units of Panzer Army Africa spearheaded the attack but, on 30 August 1942, the Allies stopped them at Alam el Halfa ridge and Point 102. The attack failed in this second battle at the Alamein line, better known as the Battle of Alam el Halfa (commonly but incorrectly Alam Halfa); expecting a counter-attack by Montgomery's Eighth Army, Panzer Army Africa dug in.

The factors that had favoured the Eighth Army's defensive plan in the First Battle of El Alamein, the short front line and the secure flanks, now favoured the Axis on defence. Rommel, furthermore, had plenty of time to prepare his defensive positions and lay extensive minefields (approximately 500,000 mines) and barbed wire. Alexander and Montgomery were determined to establish a superiority of forces sufficient not only to achieve a breakthrough but also to exploit it and destroy Panzer Army Africa. In all the previous swings of the pendulum in the Western Desert since 1941, neither side had ever had the strength after achieving victory in an offensive battle to exploit it decisively: the losing side had always been able to withdraw and regroup closer to its main supply bases.

After six more weeks of building up its forces, Eighth Army was ready to strike. 220,000 men and 1,100 tanks under Montgomery made their move against the 115,000 men and 559 tanks of Panzer Army Africa.
[center] [/center]
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of a crowded Moscow theater on 23 October 2002 by some 40 to 50 armed Chechens who claimed allegiance to the Islamist militant separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War. The siege was officially led by Movsar Barayev. After a two-and-a-half day siege, Russian Spetsnaz forces pumped an unknown chemical agent (thought to be fentanyl, or 3-methylfentanyl), into the building's ventilation system and raided it.

39 of the attackers were killed by Russian forces, along with at least 129 of the hostages (including nine foreigners). All but a few of the hostages who died during the siege were killed by the toxic substance pumped into the theater to subdue the militants. The use of the gas was widely condemned as heavy handed, but Moscow insisted it had little room for manoeuvre — faced with the prospect of 50 heavily armed rebels prepared to kill themselves and their hostages. Physicians in Moscow condemned the refusal to disclose the identity of the gas that prevented them from saving more lives. However, some reports said the drug naloxone was successfully used to save some hostages. Roughly 170 people died in all.

After the raid, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said that "the operation was carried out brilliantly by special forces"; he claimed he had wanted a negotiated end to the crisis, but the final attack was made necessary by the reported killing of hostages. The Russian presidential special envoy for human rights in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, said the bloody outcome was "a good lesson to the terrorists and their accomplices."

Deputy Interior Minister Vasilyev launched a Moscow-wide operation to catch anyone who may have helped the militants, while his boss, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, urged people to be vigilant and to report anyone acting suspiciously to police. On 29 October, Vasilyev said he only had the authority to state that special chemical agents had been used and that some 30 suspected militants and their collaborators, including several civil servants and security officers, had been arrested around the theater and in other parts of the city in what Gryzlov called an "unprecedented operation" to identify what he described as a vast terrorist network in Moscow and the surrounding region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the scale and violence of the assault in a televised address later on the morning of 26 October, stating that the government had "achieved the near impossible, saving hundreds, hundreds of people" and that the rescue "proved it is impossible to bring Russia to its knees". Putin thanked the special forces as well as the Russian citizens for their "bravery" and the international community for the support given against the "common enemy". He also asked forgiveness for not being able to save more of the hostages, and declared Monday a national day of mourning for those who died. He vowed to continue fighting "international terrorism".

On 29 October, Putin released another televised statement, saying: "Russia will respond with measures that are adequate to the threat to the Russian Federation, striking on all the places where the terrorists themselves, the organizers of these crimes and their ideological and financial inspirers are. I stress, wherever they may be located." It was commonly assumed Putin was threatening the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Putin's comments came as British Prime Minister Tony Blair phoned him to congratulate him on the ending of the siege.

The management of NTV, the last nationwide TV channel effectively independent of the government, was replaced in January 2003 in the aftermath of the crisis, with a profound effect on its editorial policy, as Vladimir Putin was discontent with the broadcaster's coverage of the hostage crisis.
[center][/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

Today makes 864 years my Lisbon is Portuguese. So you have to put up with me. Baaaaaaad Duke

October 24

69 – Second Battle of Bedriacum, forces under Antonius Primus, the commander of the Danube armies, loyal to Vespasian, defeat the forces of Emperor Vitellius.
1147 – After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques reconquered Lisbon.
1260 – The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
1260 – Saif ad-Din Qutuz, Mamluk sultan of Egypt, is assassinated by Baibars, who seizes power for himself.
1360 – The Treaty of Brétigny is ratified at Calais, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War.
1590 – John White, The governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the "lost" colonists.
1648 – The Peace of Westphalia is signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War.
1795 – Partitions of Poland: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is completely divided among Austria, Prussia, and Russia
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Maloyaroslavets takes place near Moscow.
1851 – William Lassell discovers the moons Umbriel and Ariel (moon) orbiting Uranus.
1857 – Sheffield F.C., the world's first football club, is founded in Sheffield, England.
1861 – The First Transcontinental Telegraph line across the United States is completed, spelling the end for the 18-month-old Pony Express.
1901 – Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
1911 – Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo concludes with the Serbian victory.
1917 – Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat by the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany on the Austro-Italian front of World War I (lasts until 19 November - also called Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo).
1926 – Harry Houdini's last performance, which is at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan.
1929 – "Black Thursday" stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.
1930 – A bloodless coup d'état in Brazil ousts Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, the last President of the First Republic. Getúlio Dornelles Vargas is then installed as "provisional president."
1931 – The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic.
1944 – World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1945 – Founding of the United Nations
1946 – A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space.
1947 – Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.
1949 – The cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters is laid.
1954 – Dwight D. Eisenhower pledges United States support to South Vietnam
1957 – The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program.
1960 – Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash
1964 – Northern Rhodesia gains independence from the United Kingdom and becomes the Republic of Zambia (Southern Rhodesia remained a colony)
1973 – Yom Kippur War ends
1977 – Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. (The holiday is once again observed on November 11 beginning the following year.)
1980 – Government of Poland legalizes Solidarity trade union
1986 – Nezar Hindawi is sentenced to 45 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down by a British court, for the attempted bombing on an El Al flight at Heathrow. After the verdict, the United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, claiming that Hindawi is helped by Syrian officials.
1990 – Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian "stay-behind" clandestine paramilitary NATO army.
1998 – Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission
2002 – Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2003 – Concorde makes its last commercial flight.
2005 – Hurricane Wilma makes landfall in Florida resulting in 35 direct 26 indirect fatalities and causing $20.6B USD in damage.
2008 – "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.
[center]-----------------------------------------------[/center]

Afonso I or Dom Afonso Henriques (c. 1109, Guimarães or Viseu – 6 December 1185, Coimbra), more commonly known as Afonso Henriques (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐˈfõsu ẽˈʁikɨʃ]), nicknamed "the Conqueror" (Portuguese: o Conquistador), "the Founder" (o Fundador) or "the Great" (o Grande) by the Portuguese, and El-Bortukali ("the Portuguese") and Ibn-Arrik ("son of Henry", "Henriques") by the Moors whom he fought, was the first King of Portugal. He achieved the independence of the southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia—County of Portugal—from the Kingdom of León, in 1139, doubling its area with the Reconquista, an objective that he pursued until his death, in 1185, after forty-six years of wars against the Moors.

The Siege of Lisbon, from July 1 to October 25, 1147, was the military action that brought the city of Lisbon under definitive Portuguese control and expelled its Moorish overlords. The Siege of Lisbon was one of the few Christian victories of the Second Crusade—it was "the only success of the universal operation undertaken by the pilgrim army," i.e. the Second Crusade, according to the contemporary historian Helmold—and is seen as a pivotal battle of the wider Reconquista.

The Fall of Edessa in 1144 led to a call for a new crusade by Pope Eugene III in 1145 and 1146. In the spring of 1147, the Pope authorized the crusade in the Iberian peninsula. He also authorized Alfonso VII of León and Castile to equate his campaigns against the Moors with the rest of the Second Crusade. In May 1147, the first contingents of crusaders left from Dartmouth in England for the Holy Land. Bad weather forced the ships to stop on the Portuguese coast, at the northern city of Porto on June 16, 1147. There they were convinced to meet with King Afonso I of Portugal.

The crusaders agreed to help the King attack Lisbon, with a solemn agreement that offered to the crusaders the pillage of the city's goods and the ransom money for expected prisoners. The siege began on July 1. After four months, the Almoravid rulers agreed to surrender on October 24, primarily because of hunger within the city. Most of the crusaders settled in the newly captured city, but some of the crusaders set sail and continued to the Holy Land. Lisbon eventually became capital city of the Kingdom of Portugal, in 1255.
[center]

[/center]
[center]-----------------------------------------------[/center]

Deep Space 1 (DS1) of the NASA New Millennium Program is a spacecraft dedicated to testing its payload of advanced, high risk technologies. Launched on 24 October 1998, three of twelve technologies on board had to work within a few minutes of separation from the carrier rocket for the mission to continue. The Deep Space mission carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille which was selected as the mission's science target. Its mission was extended twice to include an encounter with Comet Borrelly and further engineering testing. Problems during its initial stages and with its star tracker led to repeated changes in mission configuration. While the flyby of the asteroid was a partial success, the encounter with the comet retrieved valuable information.

The Deep Space series was continued by the Deep Space 2 probes, which were launched in January 1999 on Mars Polar Lander and were intended to strike the surface of Mars.

Autonav
The Autonav system, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, takes images of known bright asteroids. The asteroids in the inner Solar System move in relation to other bodies at a noticeable, predictable speed. Thus a spacecraft can determine its relative position by tracking such asteroids across the star background, which appears fixed over such timescales. Two or more asteroids let the spacecraft triangulate its position; two or more positions in time let the spacecraft determine its trajectory. Existing spacecraft are tracked by their interactions with the transmitters of the Deep Space Network (DSN), in effect an inverse GPS. However, DSN tracking requires many skilled operators, and the DSN is overburdened by its use as a communications network. The use of Autonav reduces mission cost and DSN demands.

The Autonav system can also be used in reverse, tracking the position of bodies relative to the spacecraft. This is used to acquire targets for the scientific instruments. The spacecraft is programmed with the target's coarse location. After initial acquisition, Autonav keeps the subject in frame, even commandeering the spacecraft's attitude control. The next spacecraft to use Autonav was Deep Impact.
[center][/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 25

1147 – Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
1415 – The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1616 – Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.
1747 – British fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Hawke defeats the French at the second battle of Cape Finisterre.
1760 – George III becomes King of Great Britain.
1812 – War of 1812: The American heavy frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.
1828 – The St Katharine Docks opened in London.
1854 – The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).
1861 – The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.
1900 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.
1920 – After 74 days on Hunger Strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney died.
1924 – The forged Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of re-election.
1938 – The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell".
1940 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.
1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders 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.
1944 – The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.
1944 – The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers occupation.
1944 – Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets.
1945 – The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies.
1962 – Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.
1962 – Uganda joins the United Nations.
1962 – Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years in prison.
1971 – The United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)
1977 – Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0.
1980 – Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude at The Hague.
1983 – Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
1991 – History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
1995 – A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
1997 – After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.
2004 – Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned.
2009 – The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.
[center]------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The October Revolution (Russian: Октябрьская революция, Oktyabr'skaya revolyutsiya), also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (Russian: Великая Октябрьская социалистическая революция), Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Old Style Julian Calendar (O.S.), which corresponds with 7 November 1917 New Style (N.S.). Gregorian Calendar.

It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year. The October Revolution in Petrograd overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and gave the power to the local soviets dominated by Bolsheviks. As the revolution was not universally recognized outside of Petrograd there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.

The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917 (O.S.). The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia), was captured.

On 23 October [O.S. 10 October] 1917, the Bolsheviks' Central Committee voted 10-2 for a resolution saying that "an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe".

On 5 November [O.S. 23 October] 1917, Bolshevik leader Jaan Anvelt led his leftist revolutionaries in an uprising in Tallinn, the capital of the Autonomous Governorate of Estonia. Two days later, Bolsheviks led their forces in the uprising in Petrograd (modern day Saint Petersburg), the capital of Russia, against the Kerensky Provisional Government. For the most part, the revolt in Petrograd was bloodless, with the Red Guards led by Bolsheviks taking over major government facilities with little opposition before finally launching an assault on the poorly defended Winter Palace.

The official Soviet version of events follows: An assault led by Vladmir Lenin was launched at 9:45 p.m. signaled by a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora. (The Aurora was placed in Petrograd and still stands there now.) The Winter Palace was guarded by Cossacks, cadets (military students), and a Women's Battalion. It was taken at about 2 a.m. The earlier date was made the official date of the Revolution, when all offices except the Winter Palace had been taken. More contemporary research with access to government archives significantly corrects accepted Soviet edited and embellished history. The archival version shows that parties of Bolshevik operatives sent out from the Smolny by Lenin took over all critical centers of power in Petrograd in the early hours of the night without a shot being fired. In actual fact the effectively unoccupied Winter Palace also was taken bloodlessly by a small group which broke in, got lost in the cavernous interior, and accidentally happened upon the remnants of Kerensky's provisional government in the imperial family's breakfast room. The illiterate revolutionaries then compelled those arrested to write up their own arrest papers. The stories of the "defense of the Winter Palace" and the heroic "Storming of the Winter Palace" came later as the creative propaganda product of Bolshevik publicists. Grandiose paintings depicting the "Women's Battalion" and photo stills taken from Sergei Eisenstein's staged film depicting the "politically correct" version of the October events in Petrograd came to be taken as truth.

Later official accounts of the revolution from the Soviet Union would depict the events in October as being far more dramatic than they actually had been. (See firsthand account by British General Knox.) This was helped by the historical reenactment, entitled The Storming of the Winter Palace, which was staged in 1920. This reenactment, watched by 100,000 spectators, provided the model for official films made much later, which showed a huge storming of the Winter Palace and fierce fighting (See Sergei Eisenstein's October: Ten Days That Shook the World).[citation needed] In reality the Bolshevik insurgents faced little or no opposition. The insurrection was timed and organized to hand state power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which began on 25 October. After a single day of revolution eighteen people had been arrested and two had been killed.

The dissolution of the USSR had an impact on historical interpretations of the October Revolution. Since 1991, increasing access to large amounts of Soviet archival materials made it possible to re-examine the October Revolution. Though both Western and Russian historians now have access to many of these archives, the impact of the dissolution of the USSR can be seen most clearly in the work of historians in the former USSR. While the disintegration essentially helped solidify the Western and Revisionist views, post-USSR Russian historians largely repudiated the former Soviet historical interpretation of the Revolution. In other words, the established Soviet view of the October Revolution has been challenged, and consequently “Russian historians’ outlook has come closer to that of their Western conferes.” As Stephen Kotkin argues, 1991 prompted “a return to political history and the apparent resurrection of totalitarianism, the interpretive view that, in different ways…revisionists sought to bury.” In other words, after 1991, there has been the revival among some historians of the “continuity thesis,” the idea that there was an uncomplicated, natural evolution from the October Revolution’s organizational structure to Stalin’s Gulags.
[center]
PETROGRAD - RUSSIA

MOSCOW - RUSSIA[/center]
[center]------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings were attacks in Baghdad, Iraq which killed 155 people and injured at least 721 people.

The attack was caused by two suicide car bombs, in a minivan and a 26-seat bus, which targeted the Ministry of Justice and the Baghdad Provincial Council building in a quick succession at 10:30 am local time. The Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works, which is approximately 50 metres (160 ft) from the Justice Ministry, also sustained severe damage. Among the dead were 35 employees of the Ministry of Justice and at least 25 staff members of the Baghdad Provincial Council. Among the wounded were three American contractors. A bus carrying children from a daycare next to the Justice Ministry was also hit, killing the driver and 2 dozen children on board as well as wounding six other children.

The blasts badly damaged St George's church, the only Anglican church in Iraq. Canon Andrew White reported body parts had been blown into the church by the explosion and that a humanitarian medical clinic which operated on the site had been destroyed.

It was the deadliest attack in Iraq since August 2007 and took place very close to where car bombers killed at least 120 people at the Foreign and Finance Ministries two months earlier.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been trying to portray the country as safer than the period of heavy violence in 2006–2007. Local politicians said the blasts were trying to destroy faith in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his ability to secure the country after the U.S. withdrawal. He faces re-election in January 2010, and much of his popularity has rested on the safety of the country. The bombings prompted some Iraqis to reconsider their support for the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister responded, stating, "The cowardly acts of terrorism which occurred today, must not weaken the resolution of Iraqis to continue their journey and to fight the followers of the fallen regime, the Baathists and al-Qaeda".
[center]
BAGHDAD - GREEN ZONE[/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 25

1147 – Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
1415 – The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1616 – Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.
1747 – British fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Hawke defeats the French at the second battle of Cape Finisterre.
1760 – George III becomes King of Great Britain.
1812 – War of 1812: The American heavy frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.
1828 – The St Katharine Docks opened in London.
1854 – The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).
1861 – The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.
1900 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.
1920 – After 74 days on Hunger Strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney died.
1924 – The forged Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of re-election.
1938 – The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell".
1940 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.
1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders 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.
1944 – The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.
1944 – The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers occupation.
1944 – Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets.
1945 – The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies.
1962 – Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.
1962 – Uganda joins the United Nations.
1962 – Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years in prison.
1971 – The United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)
1977 – Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0.
1980 – Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude at The Hague.
1983 – Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
1991 – History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
1995 – A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
1997 – After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.
2004 – Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned.
2009 – The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.
[center]------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The October Revolution (Russian: Октябрьская революция, Oktyabr'skaya revolyutsiya), also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (Russian: Великая Октябрьская социалистическая революция), Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Old Style Julian Calendar (O.S.), which corresponds with 7 November 1917 New Style (N.S.). Gregorian Calendar.

It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year. The October Revolution in Petrograd overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and gave the power to the local soviets dominated by Bolsheviks. As the revolution was not universally recognized outside of Petrograd there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.

The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917 (O.S.). The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia), was captured.

On 23 October [O.S. 10 October] 1917, the Bolsheviks' Central Committee voted 10-2 for a resolution saying that "an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe".

On 5 November [O.S. 23 October] 1917, Bolshevik leader Jaan Anvelt led his leftist revolutionaries in an uprising in Tallinn, the capital of the Autonomous Governorate of Estonia. Two days later, Bolsheviks led their forces in the uprising in Petrograd (modern day Saint Petersburg), the capital of Russia, against the Kerensky Provisional Government. For the most part, the revolt in Petrograd was bloodless, with the Red Guards led by Bolsheviks taking over major government facilities with little opposition before finally launching an assault on the poorly defended Winter Palace.

The official Soviet version of events follows: An assault led by Vladmir Lenin was launched at 9:45 p.m. signaled by a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora. (The Aurora was placed in Petrograd and still stands there now.) The Winter Palace was guarded by Cossacks, cadets (military students), and a Women's Battalion. It was taken at about 2 a.m. The earlier date was made the official date of the Revolution, when all offices except the Winter Palace had been taken. More contemporary research with access to government archives significantly corrects accepted Soviet edited and embellished history. The archival version shows that parties of Bolshevik operatives sent out from the Smolny by Lenin took over all critical centers of power in Petrograd in the early hours of the night without a shot being fired. In actual fact the effectively unoccupied Winter Palace also was taken bloodlessly by a small group which broke in, got lost in the cavernous interior, and accidentally happened upon the remnants of Kerensky's provisional government in the imperial family's breakfast room. The illiterate revolutionaries then compelled those arrested to write up their own arrest papers. The stories of the "defense of the Winter Palace" and the heroic "Storming of the Winter Palace" came later as the creative propaganda product of Bolshevik publicists. Grandiose paintings depicting the "Women's Battalion" and photo stills taken from Sergei Eisenstein's staged film depicting the "politically correct" version of the October events in Petrograd came to be taken as truth.

Later official accounts of the revolution from the Soviet Union would depict the events in October as being far more dramatic than they actually had been. (See firsthand account by British General Knox.) This was helped by the historical reenactment, entitled The Storming of the Winter Palace, which was staged in 1920. This reenactment, watched by 100,000 spectators, provided the model for official films made much later, which showed a huge storming of the Winter Palace and fierce fighting (See Sergei Eisenstein's October: Ten Days That Shook the World).[citation needed] In reality the Bolshevik insurgents faced little or no opposition. The insurrection was timed and organized to hand state power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which began on 25 October. After a single day of revolution eighteen people had been arrested and two had been killed.

The dissolution of the USSR had an impact on historical interpretations of the October Revolution. Since 1991, increasing access to large amounts of Soviet archival materials made it possible to re-examine the October Revolution. Though both Western and Russian historians now have access to many of these archives, the impact of the dissolution of the USSR can be seen most clearly in the work of historians in the former USSR. While the disintegration essentially helped solidify the Western and Revisionist views, post-USSR Russian historians largely repudiated the former Soviet historical interpretation of the Revolution. In other words, the established Soviet view of the October Revolution has been challenged, and consequently “Russian historians’ outlook has come closer to that of their Western conferes.” As Stephen Kotkin argues, 1991 prompted “a return to political history and the apparent resurrection of totalitarianism, the interpretive view that, in different ways…revisionists sought to bury.” In other words, after 1991, there has been the revival among some historians of the “continuity thesis,” the idea that there was an uncomplicated, natural evolution from the October Revolution’s organizational structure to Stalin’s Gulags.
[center]
PETROGRAD - RUSSIA

MOSCOW - RUSSIA[/center]
[center]------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings were attacks in Baghdad, Iraq which killed 155 people and injured at least 721 people.

The attack was caused by two suicide car bombs, in a minivan and a 26-seat bus, which targeted the Ministry of Justice and the Baghdad Provincial Council building in a quick succession at 10:30 am local time. The Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works, which is approximately 50 metres (160 ft) from the Justice Ministry, also sustained severe damage. Among the dead were 35 employees of the Ministry of Justice and at least 25 staff members of the Baghdad Provincial Council. Among the wounded were three American contractors. A bus carrying children from a daycare next to the Justice Ministry was also hit, killing the driver and 2 dozen children on board as well as wounding six other children.

The blasts badly damaged St George's church, the only Anglican church in Iraq. Canon Andrew White reported body parts had been blown into the church by the explosion and that a humanitarian medical clinic which operated on the site had been destroyed.

It was the deadliest attack in Iraq since August 2007 and took place very close to where car bombers killed at least 120 people at the Foreign and Finance Ministries two months earlier.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been trying to portray the country as safer than the period of heavy violence in 2006–2007. Local politicians said the blasts were trying to destroy faith in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his ability to secure the country after the U.S. withdrawal. He faces re-election in January 2010, and much of his popularity has rested on the safety of the country. The bombings prompted some Iraqis to reconsider their support for the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister responded, stating, "The cowardly acts of terrorism which occurred today, must not weaken the resolution of Iraqis to continue their journey and to fight the followers of the fallen regime, the Baathists and al-Qaeda".
[center]
BAGHDAD - GREEN ZONE[/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 26

306 – Martyrdom of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki
1597 – Imjin War: Admiral Yi Sun-sin routs the Japanese Navy of 300 ships with only 13 ships at the Battle of Myeongnyang.
1640 – The Treaty of Ripon is signed, restoring peace between Scotland and Charles I of England.
1689 – General Piccolomini of Austria burned down Skopje to prevent the spread of cholera. He died of cholera himself soon after.
1774 – The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1775 – King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.
1776 – Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
1795 – The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created.
1811 – The Argentine government declare the freedom of expression for the press by decree.
1813 – War of 1812: Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay.
1825 – The Erie Canal opens – passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.
1859 – The Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, north Wales with 459 dead.
1860 – Meeting of Teano. Giuseppe Garibaldi, conqueror of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, gives it to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.
1861 – The Pony Express officially ceases operations.
1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.
1905 – Norway becomes independent from Sweden.
1909 – Itō Hirobumi, Resident-General of Korea, was shot to death by Korean independence supporter Ahn Jung-geun at the Harbin train station in Manchuria.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Ottoman occupied city of Thessaloniki, is liberated and unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron Saint Demetrius. On the same day, Serbian troops captured Skopje.
1917 – World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The young unknown Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel captures Mount Matajur with only 100 Germans against a force of over 7000 Italians.
1917 – World War I: Brazil declared in state of war with Central Powers.
1918 – Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.
1921 – The Chicago Theatre opens.
1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.
1942 – World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.
1943 – World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 "Pfeil".
1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory.
1947 – The Maharaja of Kashmir agrees to allow his kingdom to join India.
1955 – After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares permanent neutrality.
1955 – Ngô Đình Diệm declares himself Premier of South Vietnam.
1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.
1964 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed.
1967 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.
1968 – Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy pilots Soyuz 3 into space for a four-day mission.
1977 – The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
1979 – Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by KCIA head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyu-ha becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May.
1984 – "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon.
1985 – The Australian government returns ownership of Uluru to the local Pitjantjatjara Aborigines.
1992 – The Charlottetown Accord fails to win majority support in a Canada wide referendum.
1992 – The London Ambulance Service is thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Dispatch, system which failed.
1994 – Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty
1995 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki in his hotel in Malta.
1999 – Britain's House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.
2000 – Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Côte d'Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï.
2001 – The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.
2002 – Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.
2003 – The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km2), and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a roughly 30-second gunfight that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Cochise County, of the United States. Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were killed; Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded and survived. Wyatt Earp was the only individual who came through the fight unharmed. It is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West and has come to represent a time in American history when the frontier was open range for outlaws who were confronted by law enforcement that was often sparse, or nonexistent.

The gunfight was relatively unknown to the American public until 1931 when author Stuart Lake published what has since been determined to be a largely fictionalized biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, two years after Wyatt's death. Lake retold his story in a 1946 book that director John Ford developed into the movie My Darling Clementine. After the movie Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was released in 1957, the shootout came to be known by that name. Since then, the conflict has been portrayed with varying degrees of accuracy in numerous Western films and books.

Despite its name, the gunfight actually occurred in a narrow lot six doors west of the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral on Fremont Street. The two opposing parties were initially only about 6 feet (1.8 m) apart. About thirty shots were fired in thirty seconds. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran from the fight, unharmed. The Earps and Doc Holliday were charged by Billy Clanton's brother, Ike Clanton, with murder but were eventually exonerated by a local judge after a 30-day preliminary hearing and then again by a local grand jury.

On December 28, 1881, Virgil Earp was maimed in an assassination attempt by outlaw Cowboys, and on March 19, 1882, they assassinated Morgan Earp. This led to a series of further killings and retributions, with federal and county lawmen supporting different sides of the conflict, which became known as the Earp Vendetta Ride.
[center]
[/center]
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the "Patriot Act") is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The title of the act is a ten letter acronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for: Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.

The act, a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, dramatically reduced restrictions on law enforcement agencies' ability to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eased restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expanded the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and broadened the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.

On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama signed a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act: roving wiretaps, searches of business records (the "library records provision"), and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves" — individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups.

The PATRIOT Act has made a number of changes to U.S. law. Key acts changed were the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Act itself came about after the September 11th attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. After these attacks, Congress immediately started work on several proposed antiterrorist bills, before the Justice Department finally drafted a bill called the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001. This was introduced to the House as the Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001, and was later passed by the House as the Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Act (H.R. 2975) on October 12. It was then introduced into the Senate as the USA Act (S. 1510) where a number of amendments were proposed by Senator Russ Feingold, all of which were passed. The final bill, the USA PATRIOT Act was introduced into the House on October 23 and incorporated H.R. 2975, S. 1510 and many of the provisions of H.R. 3004 (the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act). It was vehemently opposed by only one Senator, Russ Feingold, who was the only Senator to vote against the bill. Senator Patrick Leahy also expressed some concerns. However, many parts were seen as necessary by both detractors and supporters. The final Act included a number of sunsets which were to expire on December 31, 2005.

Due to its controversial nature, a number of bills were proposed to amend the USA PATRIOT Act. These included the Protecting the Rights of Individuals Act, the Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act, and the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE), none of which passed. In late January 2003, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis, published a leaked draft copy of an Administration proposal titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. This highly controversial document was quickly dubbed "PATRIOT II" or "Son of PATRIOT" by the media and organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The draft, which was circulated to 10 divisions of the Department of Justice, proposed to make further extensive modifications to extend the USA PATRIOT Act. It was widely condemned, although the Department of Justice claimed that it was only a draft and contained no further proposals.
[center][/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 27

312 – Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross.
710 – Saracen invasion of Sardinia.
939 – Edmund I succeeds Athelstan as King of England.
1275 – Traditional founding of the city of Amsterdam.
1524 – Italian Wars: The French troops lay siege to Pavia.
1553 – Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva.
1644 – Second Battle of Newbury in the English Civil War.
1682 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded.
1795 – The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, which establishes the boundaries between Spanish colonies and the U.S.
1806 – The French Army enters Berlin.
1810 – United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.
1827 – Bellini's third opera Il pirata is premiered at Teatro alla Scala di Milano
1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated.
1870 – Marshal François Achille Bazaine surrenders to Prussian forces at Metz along with 140,000 French soldiers in one of the biggest French defeats of the Franco-Prussian War.
1904 – The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.
1914 – World War I: The British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious (23,400 tons), is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin.
1916 – Battle of Segale: Negus Mikael, marching on the Ethiopian capital in support of his son Emperor Iyasus V, is defeated by Fitawrari abte Giyorgis, securing the throne for Empress Zauditu.
1922 – A referendum in Rhodesia rejects the country's annexation to the South African Union.
1924 – The Uzbek SSR is founded in the Soviet Union.
1930 – ratifications exchanged in London, for the first London Naval Treaty signed in April modifying the 1925 Washington Naval Treaty and the arms limitation treaty's modified provisions go into effect immediately; further limiting the expensive naval arms race between its five signatories.
1936 – Mrs Wallis Simpson files for divorce which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.
1944 – World War II: German forces capture Banská Bystrica during Slovak National Uprising thus bringing it to an end.
1948 – Léopold Sédar Senghor founds the Senegalese Democratic Bloc.
1953 – British nuclear test Totem 2 is carried out at Emu Field, South Australia.
1954 – Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force.
1958 – Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed in a bloodless coup d'état by General Ayub Khan, who had been appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier.
1961 – NASA launches the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1.
1961 – Mauritania and Mongolia join the United Nations.
1962 – Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.
1962 – A plane carrying Enrico Mattei, post-war Italian administrator, crashes in mysterious circumstances.
1964 – Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as "A Time for Choosing".
1967 – Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and others of the Baltimore Four protest the Vietnam War by pouring blood on Selective Service records.
1971 – The Democratic Republic of the Congo is renamed Zaire.
1973 – The Cañon City meteorite, a 1.4 kg chondrite type meteorite, strikes in Fremont County, Colorado.
1981 – The Soviet submarine U 137 runs aground on the east coast of Sweden.
1986 – The British government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang.
1988 – Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure.
1991 – Turkmenistan achieves independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – United States Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey for being gay, precipitating first military, then national, debate about gays in the military that resulted in the United States "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy.
1994 – The U.S. prison population tops 1 million for the first time in American history.
1994 – Gliese 229B is the first Substellar Mass Object to be unquestionably identified.
1995 – Latvia applies for membership in the European Union.
1995 – Former Prime Minister of Italy Bettino Craxi is convicted in absentia of corruption.
1997 – October 27, 1997 mini-crash: Stock markets around the world crash because of fears of a global economic meltdown. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 554.26 points to 7,161.15.
1999 – Gunmen open fire in the Armenian Parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan, and 6 other members.
2005 – Riots begin in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim teenagers.
2005 – The SSETI Express micro-satellite is successfully launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
[center]----------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit. It is one of the oldest and most extensive public transportation systems in the world, with 468 stations in operation (421, if stations connected by transfers are counted as single stations); 209 mi (337 km) of routes, translating into 656 miles (1,056 km) of revenue track; and a total of 842 miles (1,355 km) including non-revenue trackage. In 2010, the subway delivered over 1.604 billion rides, averaging over five million (5,156,913 rides) on weekdays, over three million (3,031,289 rides) on Saturdays, and over two million (2,335,077 rides) on Sundays.

The New York City Subway is the fourth busiest rapid transit rail system in the world in annual ridership, after Tokyo's, Moscow's, and Seoul's rapid transit systems, and the busiest in the Americas. It is one of the four systems in the U.S., along with portions of the Chicago 'L' system, PATH, and PATCO, to offer service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The system's stations are located throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Staten Island has a rail line, the Staten Island Railway, which opened in 1860 and uses R44 subway cars, but has no links to, and is not officially considered part of, the New York City Subway, though it has been included on all official Subway Maps since 1998.

All services pass through Manhattan except for the Franklin Avenue Shuttle in Brooklyn, Rockaway Park Shuttle in Queens, and Brooklyn–Queens Crosstown Local (G train) connecting Brooklyn and Queens. All but two of the 468 stations of the subway are served 24 hours a day. Contrary to its name, the New York City Subway system is not entirely underground; large portions of the system (especially outside of Manhattan) are elevated, on embankments, or in open cuts. A few stretches of track run at ground level.

In 2005, the New York City Subway hit a 50-year record in usage with a ridership of 1.45 billion. The trend toward higher ridership continued into 2008; MTA released figures that subway use was up 6.8 percent for January and February as higher gasoline prices encouraged riders to use mass transit over automobiles.

According to the United States Department of Energy, energy expenditure on the New York City Subway rail service was 3492 BTU/passenger mile (2289 kJ/passenger km) in 1995. This compares with 3702 BTU/passenger mile (2427 kJ/passenger km) for automobile travel. However, the figure for automobiles is averaged over the entire United States. Driving a car in New York City is significantly less efficient due to the highly urbanized environment.

Many lines and stations have both express and local services. These lines have three or four tracks and normally, the outer two are used for local trains while the inner one or two are used for express trains. Stations served by express trains are typically major transfer points or destinations. The BMT Jamaica Line uses skip-stop service on portions, whereby two services operate over the line during rush hours and certain stations are only served by one of the two.


[center]----------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November (in French Les émeutes des banlieues de 2005) was a series of riots by mostly Muslim North African youths in Paris and other French cities, involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois. Events spread to poor housing projects (the cités HLM) in various parts of France. A state of emergency was declared on 8 November 2005. It was extended for three months on 16 November by the Parliament.

While tension had been building among the juvenile population in France, action was not taken until the reopening of schools in Autumn, since most of the French population is on holiday during the late summer months. However, riots began on Thursday 27 October 2005, triggered by the deaths of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor commune in an eastern banlieue (suburb) of Paris. Initially confined to the Paris area, the unrest subsequently spread to other areas of the Île-de-France région, and spread through the outskirts of France's urban areas, also affecting some rural areas. After 3 November it spread to other cities in France, affecting all 15 of the large aires urbaines in the country. Thousands of vehicles were burned, and at least one person was killed by the rioters. Close to 2900 rioters were arrested.

On 8 November, President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency effective at midnight. Despite the new regulations, riots continued, though on a reduced scale, the following two nights, and again worsened the third night. On 9 November and the morning of 10 November a school was burned in Belfort, and there was violence in Toulouse, Lille, Strasbourg, Marseille, and Lyon.

On 10 November and the morning of 11 November, violence increased overnight in the Paris region, and there were still a number of police wounded across the country. According to the Interior Minister, violence, arson, and attacks on police worsened on the 11th and morning of the 12th, and there were further attacks on power stations, causing a blackout in the northern part of Amiens.

Rioting took place in the city center of Lyon on Saturday, 12 November, as young people attacked cars and threw rocks at riot police who responded with tear gas. Also that night, a nursery school was torched in the southern town of Carpentras.

On the night of the 14th and the morning of the 15th, 215 vehicles were burned across France and 71 people were arrested. Thirteen vehicles were torched in central Paris, compared to only one the night before. In the suburbs of Paris, firebombs were thrown at the treasury in Bobigny and at an electrical transformer in Clichy-sous-Bois, the neighborhood where the disturbances started. A daycare centre in Cambrai and a tourist agency in Fontenay-sous-Bois were also attacked. Eighteen buses were damaged by arson at a depot in Saint-Étienne. The mosque in Saint-Chamond was hit by three firebombs, which did little damage.

Only 163 vehicles went up in flames on the 20th night of unrest, 15 to 16 November, leading the French government to claim that the country was returning to an "almost normal situation". During the night's events, a Roman Catholic church was burned and a vehicle was rammed into an unoccupied police station in Romans-sur-Isère. In other incidents, a police officer was injured while making an arrest after youths threw bottles of acid at the town hall in Pont-l'Évêque, and a junior high school in Grenoble was set on fire. Fifty arrests were carried out across the country.

On 16 November, the French parliament approved a three-month extension of the state of emergency (which ended on 4 January 2006) aimed at curbing riots by urban youths. The Senate on Wednesday passed the extension - a day after a similar vote in the lower house. The laws allow local authorities to impose curfews, conduct house-to-house searches and ban public gatherings. The lower house passed them by a 346-148 majority, and the Senate by 202-125.

A wine festival in Grenoble, Le Beaujolais nouveau, ended in rioting on the night of 18 November, with a crowd throwing rocks and bottles at riot police. Tear gas was deployed by officers. Sixteen youths and 17 police officers were injured. Though those events might have been easily linked with the riots in Paris suburbs, it appears they differ completely in nature and might just well be considered as predictable "wine festival" casualties, caused by misunderstanding and alcohol.

_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 28

97 – Emperor Nerva is forced by the Praetorian Guard, to adopt general Marcus Ulpius Trajanus as his heir and successor.
306 – Maxentius is proclaimed Roman Emperor.
312 – Battle of Milvian Bridge: Constantine I defeats Maxentius, becoming the sole Roman Emperor.
1061 – Empress Agnes, acting as Regent for her son, brings about the election of Bishop Cadalus, the Antipope Honorius II.
1516 – Battle of Yaunis Khan: Turkish forces under the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha defeat the Mameluks near Gaza.
1531 – Battle of Amba Sel: Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi again defeats the army of Lebna Dengel, Emperor of Ethiopia. The southern part of Ethiopia falls under Imam Ahmad's control.
1538 – The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established.
1628 – The Siege of La Rochelle, which had lasted for 14 months, ends with the surrender of the Huguenots.
1636 – A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.
1664 – The Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, later to be known as the Royal Marines, is established.
1707 – The 1707 Hōei earthquake causes more than 5,000 deaths in Honshu, Shikoku and Kyūshū, Japan
1775 – American Revolutionary War: A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of White Plains – British Army forces arrive at White Plains, attack and capture Chatterton Hill from the Americans.
1834 – The Battle of Pinjarra is fought in the Swan River Colony in present-day Pinjarra, Western Australia. Between 14 and 40 Aborigines are killed by British colonists.
1835 – The United Tribes of New Zealand is established with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
1848 – The first railroad in Spain – between Barcelona and Mataró – is opened.
1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Fair Oaks & Darbytown Road (also known as the Second Battle of Fair Oaks) ends – Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond, Virginia.
1886 – In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.
1891 – The Mino-Owari earthquake, the largest earthquake in Japan's history, strikes Gifu Prefecture.
1893 – Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, receives its première performance in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death.
1915 – Richard Strauss conducts the first performance of his tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie in Berlin.
1918 – World War I: Czechoslovakia is granted independence from Austria-Hungary marking the beginning of independent Czechoslovak state, after 300 years.
1918 – New Polish government in Western Galicia is established.
1919 – The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.
1922 – March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.
1928 – Declaration of the Youth Pledge in Indonesia, the first time Indonesia Raya, now the national anthem, was sung
1929 – Black Monday, a day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which also saw major stock market upheaval.
1940 – World War II: Greece rejects Italy's ultimatum. Italy invades Greece through Albania, marking Greece's entry into World War II.
1942 – The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.
1948 – Swiss chemist Paul Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.
1958 – John XXIII, is elected as Pope.
1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
1964 – Vietnam War: U.S. officials deny any involvement in bombing North Vietnam.
1965 – Nostra Aetate, the "Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions" of the Second Vatican Council, is promulgated by Pope Paul VI; it absolves the Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus, reversing Innocent III's 760 year-old declaration.
1965 – Construction on the St. Louis Arch is completed.
1971 – Britain launches the satellite Prospero into low Earth orbit atop a Black Arrow carrier rocket, the only British satellite to date launched by a British rocket.
1982 – Spanish Socialist Workers' Party wins elections, leading to first Socialist government in Spain after death of Franco. Felipe Gonzalez becomes Prime Minister-elect.
1995 – 289 people are killed and 265 injured in Baku Metro fire, the deadliest subway disaster.
1998 – An Air China jetliner is hijacked by disgruntled pilot Yuan Bin and flown to Taiwan.
2005 – Plame affair: Lewis Libby, Vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is indicted in the Valerie Plame case. Libby resigns later that day.
2006 – Funeral service takes place for those executed at Bykivnia forest, outside Kiev, Ukraine. 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s – early 1940s are reburied.
2007 – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first woman elected President of Argentina.
2009 – The 28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing kills 117 and wounds 213.
2009 – NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X mission, the only rocket launch for its later-cancelled Constellation program.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 29

539 BC – Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon, detained Nabonidus and ended the Babylonian captivity. He gave the Jews permission to return to Yehud province and to rebuild the Temple; but most Jews chose to remain in Babylon.
312 – Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, he stages a grand adventus in the city, and is met with popular jubilation. Maxentius' body is fished out the Tiber and beheaded.
437 – Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople unifying the two branches of the House of Theodosius.
969 – Byzantine troops occupy Antioch Syria.
1268 – Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily, a political rival and ally to the hostile Roman Catholic church.
1390 – First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.
1422 – Charles VII of France becomes king in succession to his father Charles VI of France.
1467 – Battle of Brustem: Charles the Bold defeats Liege.
1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
1658 – Action of 29 October 1658 (Naval battle).
1665 – Battle of Ambuila, where Portuguese forces defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitated king Antonio I of Kongo, also called Nvita a Nkanga.
1675 – Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
1787 – Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.
1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.
1863 – Eighteen countries meeting in Geneva agree to form the International Red Cross.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie – Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant repel a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1886 – The first ticker-tape parade takes place in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
1901 – In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
1901 – Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
1918 – The German High Seas Fleet is incapacitated when sailors mutiny on the night of the 29th-30th, an action which would trigger the German Revolution of 1918–1919.
1921 – The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.
1921 – Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States of America.
1921 – The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.
1922 – The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.
1923 – Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday", ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.
1941 – Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".
1942 – Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.
1944 – The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.
1945 – Getulio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns.
1948 – Safsaf massacre.
1953 – BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco, California. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.
1955 – The Soviet battleship Novorossiisk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.
1956 – Suez Crisis begins: Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
1956 – Tangier Protocol is signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco.
1957 – Israel's prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a hand grenade is tossed into Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
1960 – In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
1961 – Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.
1964 – The United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar is renamed the United Republic of Tanzania.
1964 – A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat (113 g) Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves (among them is "Murph the surf") from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
1967 – London criminal Jack McVitie is murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.
1967 – Montreal's World Fair, Expo 67, closes with over 50 million visitors.
1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
1971 – In Macon, Georgia, Guitarist Duane Allman is killed in a Motorcycle Accident.
1980 – Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.
1980 – Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's murderer, leaves for New York from his home in Hawaii.
1983 – Over 500,000 people demonstrate against cruise missiles in The Hague, Netherlands.
1985 – Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multi-party election in Liberia.
1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.
1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
1994 – Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).
1998 – Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.
1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.
1998 – ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.
1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he is landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.
1998 – Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, makes landfall in Honduras.
1998 – The Gothenburg nightclub fire in Sweden claims 63 lives and injures 200.
1999 – A large cyclone devastates Orissa, India.
2002 – Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people are shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
2004 – The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
2004 – In Rome, European heads of state sign the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution which, however, failed to be ratified by all signatory countries and therefore never entered into force.
2005 – 29 October 2005 Delhi bombings kill more than 60.
2008 – Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to 5.
2008 – The Philadelphia Phillies claim the world series title over the Tampa Bay Rays 4-3. This was the first major sports title in Philadelphia for 25 years and was 28 years since the Phillies last World Series title in 1980.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 30

758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
1137 – Battle of Rignano between Ranulf of Apulia and Roger II of Sicily.
1226 – Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forces Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.
1270 – The Eighth Crusade and siege of Tunis end by an agreement between Charles I of Sicily (brother to King Louis IX of France, who had died months earlier) and the sultan of Tunis.
1340 – Battle of Rio Salado.
1470 – Henry VI of England returns to the English throne after Earl of Warwick defeats the Yorkists in battle.
1485 – King Henry VII of England is crowned.
1501 – Ballet of Chestnuts – a banquet held by Cesare Borgia in the Papal Palace where fifty prostitutes or courtesans are in attendance for the entertainment of the guests.
1831 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.
1863 – Danish Prince Wilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes.
1864 – Second war of Schleswig ends. Denmark renounces all claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which come under Prussian and Austrian administration.
1864 – Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at "Last Chance Gulch".
1894 – Domenico Melegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.
1905 – Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia's first constitution, creating a legislative assembly.
1918 – The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East.
1920 – The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney.
1922 – Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.
1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter.
1929 – The Stuttgart Cable Car is constructed in Stuttgart, Germany.
1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.
1941 – World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
1941 – 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp.
1942 – Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board U-559, retrieving material which would lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code.
1944 – Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.
1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.
1950 – Pope Pius XII witnesses "The Miracle of the Sun" while at the Vatican.
1953 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
1960 – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
1961 – Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.
1961 – Because of "violations of Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead.
1965 – Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions is found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.
1970 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
1972 – A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332.
1973 – The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time.
1974 – The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire.
1975 – Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain's acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.
1980 – El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice.
1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held.
1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
1987 – In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the PC Engine, which was later sold in other markets under the name TurboGrafx-16.
1991 – The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens.
1993 – Greysteel massacre: The Ulster Freedom Fighters, a loyalist terrorist group, open fire on a crowded bar in Greysteel, Northern Ireland. Eight civilians are killed and thirteen wounded.
1995 – Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote is 50.6% to 49.4%).
2000 – The last Multics machine is shut down.
2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.
[center]---------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

STS-61-A (also known as D-1) was the 22nd mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program. It was a scientific Spacelab mission, funded and directed by West Germany – hence the non-NASA designation of D-1 (for Deutschland-1). STS-61-A was the last successful mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which was destroyed during STS-51-L in 1986. STS-61-A currently holds the record for the largest crew, eight people, aboard any single spacecraft for the entire period from launch to landing.

The mission carried the NASA/ESA Spacelab module into orbit with 76 scientific experiments on board, and was declared a success. Payload operations were controlled from the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, West Germany, instead of from the regular NASA control centers.

Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Pad A of Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 12:00 EST on 30 October 1985. This was the first Space Shuttle mission largely financed and operated by another nation, West Germany. It was also the only shuttle flight to launch with a crew of eight. The crew members included Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr., commander; Steven R. Nagel, pilot; Bonnie J. Dunbar, James F. Buchli and Guion S. Bluford, mission specialists; and Ernst Messerschmid and Reinhard Furrer of West Germany, along with Wubbo Ockels of the European Space Agency (ESA), all payload specialists.

The primary task of STS-61-A was to conduct a series of experiments, almost all related to functions in microgravity, in Spacelab D-1, the fourth flight of a Spacelab orbital laboratory module. Two other mission assignments were to deploy the Global Low Orbiting Message Relay Satellite (GLOMR) out of a Getaway Special canister in the cargo bay, and to operate five materials processing experiments, which were mounted in the orbiter's payload bay on a separate device called the German Unique Support Structure. The experiments included investigations into fluid physics, with experiments in capillarity, Marangoni convection, diffusion phenomena, and critical points; solidification experiments; single crystal growth; composites; biological studies, including cell functions, developmental processes, and the ability of plants to perceive gravity; medical experiments, including the gravitational perceptions of humans, and their adaptation processes in space; and speed-time interaction studies of people working in space.

One equipment item of unusual interest was the Vestibular Sled, an ESA contribution consisting of a seat for a test subject that could be moved backward and forward with precisely controlled accelerations and stops, along rails fixed to the floor of the Spacelab aisle. By taking detailed measurements on a human strapped into the seat, scientists gained data on the functional organization of the human vestibular and orientation systems, and the vestibular adaptation processes under microgravity. The acceleration experiments by the sled riders were combined with thermal stimulations of the inner ear and optokinetic stimulations of the eye.

NASA operated the shuttle, and was responsible for overall safety and control functions throughout the flight. West Germany was responsible for the scientific research carried out during the seven-day mission. To fulfill this function, German scientific controllers on the ground worked closely with the personnel in orbit, operating out of the German Space Operations Center at Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, West Germany. The orbiting crew was divided into two teams, working in shifts to ensure laboratory work was performed 24 hours a day. Communications were optimal throughout the mission and the ground and orbital crews were able to interact regularly. The overall system of one control center controlling spacecraft operations and a second controlling experiment functions worked smoothly in practice.

The GLOMR satellite was successfully deployed during the mission, and the five experiments mounted on the separate structure behind the Spacelab module obtained useful data. Challenger landed, for what was to be the last time, on Runway 17 at Edwards Air Force Base on 6 November 1985. The wheels stopped rolling at 12:45 pm EST, after a mission duration of 7 days and 45 minutes.

STS-61-A marked the final successful mission of Space Shuttle Challenger, which was destroyed with all hands on board during the launch of the STS-51-L mission on 28 January 1986.
[center][/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

475 – Romulus Augustulus is proclaimed Western Roman Emperor.
1517 – Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther posts his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
1587 – Leiden University Library opens its doors after its founding in 1575.
1822 – Emperor Agustín de Iturbide attempts to dissolve the Mexican Empire.
1861 – American Civil War: Citing failing health, Union General Winfield Scott resigns as Commander of the United States Army.
1863 – The Maori Wars resumes as British forces in New Zealand led by General Duncan Cameron begin their Invasion of the Waikato.
1864 – Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state.
1876 – A monster cyclone ravages India, resulting in over 200,000 deaths.
1913 – Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across United States.
1913 – The Indianapolis Street Car Strike and subsequent riot begins.
1917 – World War I: Battle of Beersheba – "last successful cavalry charge in history".
1918 – Banat Republic is founded
1923 – The first of 160 consecutive days of 100 degrees at Marble Bar, Australia.
1924 – World Savings Day is announced in Milan, Italy by the Members of the Association at the 1st International Savings Bank Congress (World Society of Savings Banks).
1926 – Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured.
1938 – Great Depression: In an effort to restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public.
1940 – World War II: The Battle of Britain ends – the United Kingdom prevents a possible German invasion.
1941 – After 14 years of work, Mount Rushmore is completed.
1941 – World War II: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors. It is the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII.
1941 – A fire in a clothing factory in Huddersfield, England kills 49.
1943 – World War II: An F4U Corsair accomplishes the first successful radar-guided interception.
1944 – Dr. jur. Erich Göstl, a member of the Waffen SS, is awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, to recognise extreme battlefield bravery, after losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy.
1954 – Algerian War of Independence: The Algerian National Liberation Front begins a revolt against French rule.
1956 – Suez Crisis: The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal.
1959 – Lee Harvey Oswald attempts to renounce his American citizenship at the US Embassy in Moscow, USSR.
1961 – In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb.
1963 – An explosion at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum (now Pepsi Coliseum) in Indianapolis kills 74 people during an ice skating show. The explosion also injures 400. A faulty propane tank connection in a concession stand is blamed.
1968 – Vietnam War October surprise: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.
1973 – Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape. Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escape from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, Republic of Ireland aboard a hijacked helicopter that lands in the exercise yard.
1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two security guards. Riots soon break out in New Delhi and nearly 10,000 Sikhs are killed.
1994 – An American Eagle ATR-72 crashes in Roselawn, Indiana, after circling in icy weather, killing 68 passengers and crew.
1996 – A Fokker F100 operating as TAM Transportes Aéreos Regionais Flight 402 crashes into several houses in São Paulo, Brazil killing 98 including 2 on the ground.
1997 – 19-year-old British au pair Louise Woodward, convicted by a Cambridge, Massachusetts, jury of second-degree murder the day before, is sentenced to life in prison.
1998 – Iraq disarmament crisis begins: Iraq announces it would no longer cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.
1999 – EgyptAir Flight 990 traveling from New York City to Cairo crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on-board.
1999 – Yachtsman Jesse Martin returns to Melbourne after 11 months of circumnavigating the world, solo, non-stop and unassisted.
2000 – A Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 operating as Flight 006 collides with construction equipment upon takeoff in Taipei, Taiwan killing 79 passengers and four crew members.
2000 – A chartered Antonov An-26 explodes after takeoff in Northern Angola killing 50.
2000 – Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been continuously crewed since.
2002 – A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas indicts former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to the collapse of his ex-employer.
2003 – A bankruptcy court approves MCI's reorganization plans, essentially clearing the telecommunications company to exit bankruptcy.
2003 – Mahathir bin Mohamad resigns as Prime Minister of Malaysia and is replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, marking an end to Mahathir's 22 years in power.
2003 – Bethany Hamilton is attacked by a tiger shark and loses her left arm and three liters of blood.
[center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Hindi: इंदिरा प्रियदर्शिनी गांधी Indirā Priyadarśinī Gāndhī About this sound listen (help·info); 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician who served as prime minister of India for three consecutive terms (1966–77) and a fourth term (1980–84). She was assassinated by her bodyguards. Gandhi was the second female to hold the office of prime minister (after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka) and she remained as the world's second longest serving female Prime Minister as of 2011.

Noted for her charismatic authority and political astuteness, Gandhi adhered to the quasi-socialist policies of industrial development that were begun by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was also the only Indian Prime Minister to have declared a state of emergency in order to 'rule by decree' and the only Indian Prime Minister to have been imprisoned after holding that office.

Indira Gandhi was born on 19 November 1917 into the politically influential Nehru Family. Indira Gandhi's father was Jawaharlal Nehru and her mother was Kamala Nehru. Her grandfather, Motilal Nehru, was a prominent Indian nationalist leader. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a pivotal figure in the Indian independence moveer of Independent India.

In 1934–35, after finishing school, Indira joined Shantiniketan, a school set up by Rabindranath Tagore. Subsequently, she went to England and sat for the University of Oxford entrance examination, but she failed, and spent a few months at Badminton School in Bristol, before passing the exam in 1937 and enrolling at Somerville College, Oxford. During this time, she frequently met Feroz Gandhi, whom she knew from Allahabad, and who was studying at the London School of Economics. Indira married Feroz in 1942 and took his surname. She had no relation to Mohandas K. Gandhi, either by blood or marriage.

She returned to India in 1941. In the 1950s, she served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India. After her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

The then Congress Party President K. Kamaraj was instrumental in making Indira Gandhi the Prime Minister after the sudden demise of Shastri. Gandhi soon showed an ability to win elections and outmaneuver opponents. She introduced more left-wing economic policies and promoted agricultural productivity. She led India as Prime Minister during the decisive victory of East Pakistan over Pakistan in 1971 war and creation of an independent Bangladesh. She imposed a state of emergency in 1975. Congress Party and Indira Gandhi herself lost the next general election for the first time in 1977. Indira Gandhi led the Congress back to victory in 1980 elections and Gandhi resumed the office of the Prime Minister. In June 1984, under Gandhi's order, the Indian army forcefully entered the Golden Temple, the most sacred Sikh Gurdwara, to remove armed insurgents present inside the temple. She was killed on 31 October 1984 in retaliation for this operation by her bodyguards.
[center]
[/center]
[center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion in 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. At the end of 2001, it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known as the "Enron scandal". Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations throughout the United States and was a factor in the creation of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the wider business world by causing the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm.

Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It emerged from bankruptcy in November 2004, pursuant to a court-approved plan of reorganization, after one of the biggest and most complex bankruptcy cases in U.S. history. A new board of directors changed the name of Enron to Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., and focused on reorganizing and liquidating certain operations and assets of the pre-bankruptcy Enron. On September 7, 2006, Enron sold Prisma Energy International Inc., its last remaining business, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd. (now AEI).

Enron traces its roots to the Northern Natural Gas Company, which was formed in 1932, in Omaha, Nebraska. It was reorganized in 1979 as the leading subsidiary of a holding company, InterNorth which was a highly diversified energy and energy related products company. Internorth was a leader in natural gas production, transmission and marketing as well as natural gas liquids and an innovator in the plastics industry. It owned Peak Antifreeze and developed EVAL resins for food packaging. In 1985, it bought the smaller and less diversified Houston Natural Gas.

The separate company initially named itself "HNG/InterNorth Inc.", even though InterNorth was the nominal survivor. It built a large and lavish headquarters complex with pink marble in Omaha (dubbed locally as the "Pink Palace"), that was later sold to Physicians Mutual. However, the departure of ex-InterNorth and first CEO of Enron Corp Samuel Segnar six months after the merger allowed former HNG CEO Kenneth Lay to become the next CEO of the newly merged company. Lay soon moved the company's headquarters to Houston after swearing to keep it in Omaha and began to thoroughly re-brand the business. Lay and his secretary, Nancy McNeil, originally selected the name "Enteron" (possibly spelled in camelcase as "EnterOn"), but, when it was pointed out that the term approximated a Greek word referring to the intestines, it was quickly shortened to "Enron". The final name was decided upon only after business cards, stationery, and other items had been printed reading Enteron. Enron's "crooked E" logo was designed in the mid-1990s by the late American graphic designer Paul Rand. Rand's original design included one of the elements of the E in yellow which disappeared when copied or faxed. This was quickly replaced by a green element. Almost immediately after the move to Houston, Enron began selling off key assets such as Northern PetroChemicals and took on silent partners in Enron CoGeneration, Northern Border Pipeline and Transwestern Pipeline and became a less diversified company. Early financial analysts said Enron was swimming in debt and the sale of key operations would not solve the problems.

In 1990, Enron Finance CEO Jeff Skilling hired Andrew Fastow, who was well acquainted with the burgeoning deregulated energy market Skilling wanted to exploit. In 1993, Fastow set to work establishing numerous limited liability special purpose entities (common business practice); however, it also allowed Enron to place liability so that it would not appear in its accounts, allowing it to maintain a robust and generally growing stock price and thus keeping its critical investment grade credit ratings.

Enron was originally involved in transmitting and distributing electricity and natural gas throughout the United States. The company developed, built, and operated power plants and pipelines while dealing with rules of law and other infrastructures worldwide. Enron owned a large network of natural gas pipelines, which stretched ocean to ocean and border to border including Northern Natural Gas, Florida Gas Transmission, Transwestern Pipeline company and a partnership in Northern Border Pipeline from Canada. The states of California, New Hampshire and Rhode Island had already passed power deregulation laws by July 1996, the time of Enron's proposal to acquire Portland General Electric. In 1998, Enron moved into the water sector, creating the Azurix Corporation, which it part-floated on the New York Stock Exchange in June 1999. Azurix failed to break into the water utility market, and one of its major concessions, in Buenos Aires, was a large-scale money-loser. After the move to Houston, many analysts criticized the Enron management as swimming in debt. The Enron management pursued aggressive retribution against its critics, setting the pattern for dealing with accountants, lawyers, and the financial media.

Enron grew wealthy due largely to marketing, promoting power, and its high stock price. Enron was named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune for six consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001. It was on the Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" list in 2000, and had offices that were stunning in their opulence. Enron was hailed by many, including labor and the workforce, as an overall great company, praised for its large long-term pensions, benefits for its workers and extremely effective management until its exposure in corporate fraud. The first analyst to publicly disclose Enron's financial flaws was Daniel Scotto, who in August 2001 issued a report entitled "All Stressed up and no place to go", which encouraged investors to sell Enron stocks and bonds at any and all costs.

As was later discovered, many of Enron's recorded assets and profits were inflated or even wholly fraudulent and nonexistent. Debts and losses were put into entities formed "offshore" that were not included in the firm's financial statements, and other sophisticated and arcane financial transactions between Enron and related companies were used to take unprofitable entities off the company's books.

Its most valuable asset and the largest source of honest income, the 1930s-era Northern Natural Gas, was eventually purchased back by a group of Omaha investors, who moved its headquarters back to Omaha, and is now a unit of Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Corp. NNG was put up as collateral for a $2.5 billion capital infusion by Dynegy Corporation when Dynegy was planning to buy Enron. When Dynegy looked closely at Enron's books, they backed out of the deal and fired their CEO, Chuck Watson. The new chairman and head CEO, the late Daniel Dienstbier, had been president of NNG and an Enron executive at one time and was forced out of Enron by Ken Lay. Dienstbier was an acquaintance of Warren Buffett. NNG continues to be profitable today.
[center][/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

365 – The Alamanni cross the Rhine and invade Gaul. Emperor Valentinian I moves to Paris to command the army and defend the Gallic cities.
996 – Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk, Bishop of Freising, which is the oldest known document using the name Ostarrîchi (Austria in Old High German).
1179 – Philip II is crowned King of France.
1348 – The anti-royalist Union of Valencia attacks the Jews of Murviedro on the pretext that they are serfs of the King of Valencia and thus "royalists."
1512 – The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time.
1520 – The Strait of Magellan is discovered, the passage immediately south of mainland South America, connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first navigated by Ferdinand Magellan during the first global circumnavigation voyage.
1604 – William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello is presented for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
1611 – William Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
1612 – (22 October O.S.) Time of Troubles in Russia: Moscow, Kitai-gorod, is captured by Russian troops under command of Dmitry Pozharsky
1683 – The British crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties.
1688 – William III of Orange sets a second time from Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands to liberate England, Scotland and Ireland from the tyrannical King James II of England during the Glorious Revolution.
1755 – Lisbon earthquake: In Portugal, Lisbon is destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty thousand and ninety thousand people.
1765 – The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the 13 colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.
1790 – Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he predicts that the French Revolution will end in a disaster.
1800 – US President John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House).
1805 – Napoleon Bonaparte invades Austria during the War of the Third Coalition.
1814 – Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France, in the Napoleonic Wars.
1848 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opens.
1859 – The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse is lit for the first time. Its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for about 19 miles (30 kilometers), in good conditions.
1861 – American Civil War: US President Abraham Lincoln appoints George B. McClellan as the commander of the Union Army, replacing General Winfield Scott.
1870 – In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast.
1876 – New Zealand's provincial government system is dissolved.
1884 – The Gaelic Athletic Association is set up in Hayes's Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary.
1886 – Ananda College, a leading Buddhist school in Sri Lanka is established with 37 students.
1894 – Nicholas II becomes the new Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies.
1896 – A picture showing the unclad (bare) breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.
1897 – The first Library of Congress building opened its doors to the public. The Library had been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.
1901 – Sigma Phi Epsilon, the largest national male collegiate fraternity is established at Richmond College, in Richmond, VA.
1911 – The first dropping of a bomb from an aeroplane in combat, during the Italo-Turkish War.
1914 – World War I: the first British Royal Navy defeat of the war with Germany, the Battle of Coronel, is fought off of the western coast of Chile, in the Pacific, with the loss of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth.
1915 – Parris Island is officially designated a US Marine Corps Recruit Depot.
1916 – Paul Miliukov delivers in the State Duma the famous "stupidity or treason" speech, precipitating the downfall of the Boris Stürmer government.
1918 – Malbone Street Wreck: the worst rapid transit accident in US history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 93 deaths.
1918 – Western Ukraine gains its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1920 – American Fishing Schooner Esperanto defeats the Canadian Fishing Schooner Delawana in the First International Fishing Schooner Championship Races in Halifax.
1922 – The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, abdicates.
1928 – The Law on the Adoption and Implementation of the Turkish Alphabet, replacing the version of the Arabic alphabet previously used, comes into force in Turkey.
1937 – Stalinists execute Pastor Paul Hamberg and seven members of Azerbaijan's Lutheran community.
1938 – Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral in an upset victory during a match race deemed "the match of the century" in horse racing.
1939 – The first rabbit born after artificial insemination is exhibited to the world.
1941 – American photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography.
1942 – Matanikau Offensive begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on November 4.
1943 – World War II: Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, United States Marines, the 3rd Marine Division, land on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.
1943 – World War II: In support of the landings on Bougainville, U.S. aircraft carrier forces attack the huge Japanese base at Rabaul.
1944 – World War II: Units of the British Army land at Walcheren in the Netherlands.
1945 – The official North Korean newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, is first published under the name Chongro.
1945 – Australia joins the United Nations.
1946 – The New York Knicks played against the Toronto Huskies at the Maple Leaf Gardens, in the first Basketball Association of America game. The Knicks would win 68-66.
1948 – Off southern Manchuria, 6,000 people are killed as a Chinese merchant ship explodes and sinks.
1948 – Athenagoras I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is enthroned.
1950 – Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman at Blair House.
1950 – Pope Pius XII claims Papal Infallibility when he formally defines the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.
1951 – Operation Buster-Jangle: 6,500 American soldiers are exposed to 'Desert Rock' atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada. Participation is not voluntary.
1952 – Operation Ivy – The United States successfully detonates the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike" ["M" for megaton], in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The explosion had a yield of 10 megatons.
1953 – Andhra Pradesh attained statehood on 1 November 1953, with Kurnool as its capital.
1954 – The Front de Libération Nationale fires the first shots of the Algerian War of Independence.
1955 – The bombing of United Airlines Flight 629 occurs near Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members aboard the Douglas DC-6B airliner.
1956 – The Indian states Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Mysore state are formally created under the States Reorganisation Act.
1956 – In India, Kanyakumari district was joined to Tamilnadu state from Kerala.
1957 – The Mackinac Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages at the time, opens to traffic connecting Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas.
1959 – Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante wears a protective mask for the first time in an NHL game.
1959 – In Rwanda, Hutu politician Dominique Mbonyumutwa is beaten up by Tutsi forces, leading to a period of violence known as the wind of destruction.
1960 – While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.
1961 – 50,000 women in 60 cities participate in the inaugural Women Strike for Peace (WSP) against nuclear proliferation.
1963 – The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens.
1966 – The New Orleans Saints football team is founded.
1968 – The Motion Picture Association of America's film rating system is officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.
1970 – Club Cinq-Sept fire in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France kills 146 young people.
1973 – Watergate Scandal: Leon Jaworski is appointed as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
1973 – The Indian state of Mysore is renamed as Karnataka to represent all the regions within Karunadu.
1981 – Antigua and Barbuda gain independence from the United Kingdom.
1982 – Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of their factory in Marysville, Ohio. The Honda Accord is the first car produced there.
1993 – The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union.
2000 – Serbia joins the United Nations.
[center]----------------------------------------------------[/center]

Sistine Chapel (Latin: Sacellum Sixtinum; Italian: Cappella Sistina) is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio and others. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 1,100 m2 (12,000 sq ft) of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. He resented the commission, and believed his work only served the Pope's need for grandeur. However, today the ceiling, and especially The Last Judgement (1535–1541), is widely believed to be Michelangelo's crowning achievement in painting.

The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored the old Cappella Magna between 1477 and 1480. During this period a team of painters that included Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio created a series of frescoed panels depicting the life of Moses and the life of Christ, offset by papal portraits above and trompe l’oeil drapery below. These paintings were completed in 1482, and on the 15 August 1483, Sixtus IV celebrated the first mass in the Sistine Chapel for the Feast of the Assumption, at which ceremony the chapel was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Since the time of Sixtus IV, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected.

The Sistine Chapel is best known for being the location of Papal conclaves; it is, however, the chapel of the Papal Chapel (Cappella Pontificia), one of the two bodies of the Papal household, called until 1968 the Papal Court (Pontificalis Aula). At the time of Pope Sixtus IV in the late 15th century, the Papal Chapel comprised about 200 people, including clerics, officials of the Vatican and distinguished laity. There were 50 occasions during the year on which it was prescribed by the Papal Calendar that the whole Papal Chapel should meet. Of these 50 occasions, 35 were masses, of which 8 were held in Basilicas, in general St. Peter's, and were attended by large congregations. These included the Christmas Day and Easter masses, at which the Pope himself was the celebrant. The other 27 masses could be held in a smaller, less public space, for which the Cappella Maggiore was used before it was rebuilt on the same site as the Sistine Chapel.

The Cappella Maggiore derived its name, the Greater Chapel, from the fact that there was another chapel also in use by the Pope and his retinue for daily worship. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV, this was the Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, which had been decorated by Fra Angelico. The Cappella Maggiore is recorded as existing in 1368. According to a communication from Andreas of Trebizond to Pope Sixtus IV, by the time of its demolition to make way for the present chapel, the Cappella Maggiore was in a ruinous state with its walls leaning.

The present chapel, on the site of the Cappella Maggiore, was designed by Baccio Pontelli for Pope Sixtus IV, for whom it is named, and built under the supervision of Giovannino de Dolci between 1473 and 1481. The proportions of the present chapel appear to closely follow those of the original. After its completion, the chapel was decorated with frescoes by a number of the most famous artists of the High Renaissance, including Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and Michelangelo.

The first mass in the Sistine Chapel was celebrated on August 9, 1483, the Feast of the Assumption, at which ceremony the chapel was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The Sistine Chapel has maintained its function to the present day, and continues to host the important services of the Papal Calendar, unless the Pope is travelling. There is a permanent choir, the Sistine Chapel Choir, for whom much original music has been written, the most famous piece being Gregorio Allegri's Miserere.


[center]----------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope near the city of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. It is operated by SRI International under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The observatory is also called the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, although "NAIC" refers to both the observatory and the staff that operate it.

The observatory's 305 m (1,000 ft) radio telescope is the largest single-aperture telescope (cf. multiple aperture telescope) ever constructed. It carries out three major areas of research: radio astronomy, aeronomy (using both the 305 m telescope and the observatory's lidar facility), and radar astronomy observations of solar system objects. Scientists who want to use the telescope submit proposals, which are evaluated by an independent board.

Visually distinctive, the telescope makes frequent appearances in motion picture and television productions. The telescope received additional international recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project.

The center was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 2008. It was the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of October 3, 2008. The center was named an IEEE Milestone in 2001.

Opened in 1997, the Ángel Ramos Foundation Visitor Center features interactive exhibits and displays about the operations of the radio telescope, astronomy, and atmospheric science. The center is named after the foundation created by Ángel Ramos, the founder of Telemundo, which provided half of the money to build it, with the rest coming from private donations and Cornell University. The admission fee is $6.

The main collecting dish is 305 m (1,000 ft) in diameter, constructed inside the depression left by a karst sinkhole.[6] It contains the largest curved focusing dish on Earth, giving Arecibo the largest electromagnetic-wave-gathering capacity. The dish surface is made of 38,778 perforated aluminum panels, each measuring about 3 by 6 feet (1 by 2 m), supported by a mesh of steel cables.

The telescope has three radar transmitters, with effective isotropic radiated powers of 20 TW at 2380 MHz, 2.5 TW (pulse peak) at 430 MHz, and 300 MW at 47 MHz.

The telescope is a spherical reflector, not a parabolic reflector. To aim the telescope, the receiver is moved to intercept signals reflected from different directions by the spherical dish surface. A parabolic mirror would induce a varying astigmatism when the receiver is in different positions off the focal point, but the error of a spherical mirror is the same in every direction.

The receiver is located on a 900-ton platform which is suspended 150 m (500 ft) in the air above the dish by 18 cables running from three reinforced concrete towers, one of which is 110 m (365 ft) high and the other two of which are 80 m (265 ft) high (the tops of the three towers are at the same elevation). The platform has a 93-meter-long rotating bow-shaped track called the azimuth arm on which receiving antennas, secondary and tertiary reflectors are mounted. This allows the telescope to observe any region of the sky within a forty-degree cone of visibility about the local zenith (between -1 and 38 degrees of declination). Puerto Rico's location near the equator allows Arecibo to view all of the planets in the solar system, though the round trip light time to objects beyond Saturn is longer than the time the telescope can track it, preventing radar observations of more distant objects.


_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

1410 – The Peace of Bicêtre between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions is signed.
1570 – A tsunami in the North Sea devastates the coast from Holland to Jutland, killing more than 1,000 people.
1675 – King Philip's War: A combined effort by the Plymouth, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut colonies attacks the Great Swamp Fort, owned by the Narragansetts.
1769 – Don Gaspar de Portolà leads the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.
1772 – American Revolutionary War: Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren form the first Committee of Correspondence.
1783 – In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army".
1795 – The French Directory succeeds the French National Convention as the government of Revolutionary France.
1861 – American Civil War: Western Department Union General John C. Fremont is relieved of command and replaced by David Hunter.
1868 – Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally
1882 – Oulu, Finland is decimated by the Great Oulu Fire of 1882
1889 – North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
1895 – The first gasoline-powered race in the United States. First prize: $2,000
1898 – Cheerleading is started at the University of Minnesota with Johnny Campbell leading the crowd in cheering on the football team.
1899 – The Boers begin their 118 day siege of British held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War.
1909 – Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity is founded at Boston University.
1914 – Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the clear understanding "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities".
1920 – In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the U.S. presidential election, 1920.
1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
1936 – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established.
1936 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaims the Rome-Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis Powers.
1936 – The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
1940 – World War II: First day of Battle of Elaia–Kalamas between the Greeks and the Italians.
1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose or H-4 The Hercules; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
1949 – The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ends with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia.
1953 – The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan names the country The Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
1957 – The Levelland UFO Case in Levelland, Texas, generates national publicity.
1959 – Quiz show scandals: Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
1959 – The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorway and M45 motorway
1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case
1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Ðình Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.
1964 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother King Faisal.
1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.
1966 – The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
1967 – Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and "The Wise Men" conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.
1973 – The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India form a 'United Front' in the state of Tripura.
1974 – 78 die when the Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burns down. Six of the victims jumped to their deaths from the seventh floor after a club official barred the doors after the fire started.
1983 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
1984 – Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
1988 – The Morris worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.
2000 – The first resident crew to the ISS docked in November 2nd on the Soyuz TM-31.
[center]----------------------------------------------[/center]

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution. It was later renamed BBC tv until the launch of sister channel BBC2 in 1964, whereupon it was known as BBC1, with the current spelling adopted in 1997.

The channel's annual budget for 2011/12 is £1,166.6 million. Along with the BBC's other domestic television stations, and many European broadcasters (and some in Asia), it is funded principally by the television licence fee, and therefore shows uninterrupted programming with no commercial advertising at any time. It is currently the most watched television channel in the United Kingdom, ahead of its traditional rival for ratings leadership, ITV1.

The current channel controller for BBC One is Danny Cohen, formerly controller of BBC Three. Cohen replaced Jay Hunt following her departure from the BBC in late 2010 to join Channel 4, where she took up her position in January 2011. Jana Bennett, head of BBC Vision, took temporary control of BBC One between Hunt's departure and Cohen's appointment. Cohen briefly held controller positions of both BBC One and BBC Three until former ITV digital channels head Zai Bennett was confirmed as the new controller of BBC Three.

BBC One HD, a simulcast of BBC One in high-definition (HD), launched on 3 November 2010 at 19:00. The channel simulcasts a network version of BBC One in High Definition, with HD versions of programmes including Holby City, The One Show, Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice, The Weakest Link, Doctor Who and QI. EastEnders was also made available in HD as from Christmas Day 2010. All programmes still made in standard-definition are upscaled on the channel and it is intended that by 2012 the vast majority of the channel's output will be in high-definition.

BBC One HD, however, does not offer regional variations, and therefore the channel cannot broadcast during regional programming slots, most noticeably the local news programmes. The BBC Trust admitted that this is due to technical and financial constraints, but the BBC announced on 6 June 2011 that the national variations of BBC One Northern Ireland, BBC One Scotland and BBC One Wales, would become available in 2012.

BBC One HD is available on all digital television platforms offering HD channels – Freesat, Freeview HD, Sky (excluding the ROI), UPC Ireland and Virgin Media. It is available in addition to the existing BBC HD channel, which continues to broadcast HD programmes from the BBC's other television channels.

[center]----------------------------------------------[/center]

Expedition 1, or Expedition One, was the first long-duration stay on the International Space Station (ISS). The three-person crew stayed aboard the station for 136 days, from November 2000 to March 2001. It was the beginning of an uninterrupted human presence on the station which still continues, as of July 2011. Expedition 2, which also had three crew members, immediately followed Expedition 1.

The official start of the expedition occurred when the crew docked to the station on 2 November 2000, aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-31, which had launched two days earlier. During their mission, the Expedition 1 crew activated various systems on board the station, unpacked equipment that had been delivered, and hosted three visiting Space Shuttle crews and two unmanned Russian Progress resupply vehicles. The crew was very busy throughout the mission, which was declared a success.

The three visiting Space Shuttles brought equipment, supplies, and key components of the space station. The first of these, STS-97, docked in early December 2000, and brought the first pair of large U.S. photovoltaic arrays, which increased the station's power capabilities fivefold. The second visiting shuttle mission was STS-98, which was docked in mid-February 2001, delivered the US$1.4 billion research module Destiny, which increased the mass of the station beyond that of Mir for the first time. Mid-March 2001 saw the final shuttle visit of the expedition, STS-102, whose main purpose was to exchange the Expedition 1 crew with the next three person long-duration crew, Expedition 2. The expedition ended when Discovery undocked from the station on 18 March 2001.

The Expedition 1 crew consisted of an American commander and two Russians. The commander, Bill Shepherd, had been in space three times before, all on shuttle missions which lasted at most a week. The Russians, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev, both had previous long-duration spaceflights on Mir, with Krikalev having spent over a full year in space.

The commander, Bill Shepherd, was a former Navy SEAL, whose only spaceflights were on shuttle missions, and at the beginning of the mission his total time in space was about two weeks. Questions had been raised by the Russian space agency about the choice of Shepherd as mission commander due to his lack of experience. Flight engineer Sergei Krikalev had spent over a year in orbit, mostly on Mir, and would become the first person to visit the ISS twice. He had felt excitement to have been one of the first people to enter to Zarya module (the first component of the space station) in 1998, during STS-88, and was looking forward to returning. Yuri Gidzenko was designated commander and pilot of the two-day Soyuz mission to the station, had one previous spaceflight, which was a 180 day stay aboard Mir.

Shepherd was only the second U.S. astronaut to be launched in a Russian spacecraft, the first being Norman Thagard, who launched on Soyuz TM-21 to visit Mir in 1995. Shepherd expected one of the biggest challenges for the ISS would be the compatibility of technologies, such as that between Russian and U.S. technologies.


_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[[KWSN] Colleen]

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

Collen I am very sorry to only know Yosemite by pictures and for others informations. In fact this is one of the places I would like to know better.
I know many countries and many people but unfortunatly I have never been in Yosemite. In the USA only NY and for work. I envy you.

Duke what pitty I have so little life and money for such a big world.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

Thanks Jose. I am thinking of posting Today in History only in Musketeers Forum. Afterall they can read the thread without entering the site. It is not so difficult. All my fight about freedoom is in danger, in BOINC and in the WORLD. Is only to come to http://dantmorris.com/simple/index.php and Go to "English Pub" is the thread "On This Day"

November 3

361 – Emperor Constantius II dies of a fever at Mopsuestia in Cilicia, on his deathbed he is baptised and declares his cousin Julian rightful successor.
644 – Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim caliph, is assassinated by a Persian slave in Medina.
1468 – Liège is sacked by Charles I of Burgundy's troops.
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea.
1783 – John Austin, a highwayman, is the last person to be publicly hanged at London's Tyburn gallows.
1783 – The American Continental Army is disbanded.
1793 – French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined.
1812 – Napoleon's armies are defeated at the Battle of Vyazma
1817 – The Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest chartered bank, opens in Montreal, Quebec.
1838 – The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper is founded as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce.
1848 – A greatly revised Dutch constitution, drafted by Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, severely limiting the powers of the Dutch monarchy, and strengthening the powers of parliament and ministers, is proclaimed.
1867 – Garibaldi and his followers are defeated in the Battle of Mentana and fail to end the Pope's Temporal power in Rome (it would be achieved three years later).
1883 – American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the poet" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves a clue that eventually leads to his capture.
1898 – France withdraws its troops from Fashoda (now in Sudan), ending the Fashoda Incident.
1903 – With the encouragement of the United States, Panama separates from Colombia.
1911 – Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T.
1913 – The United States introduces an income tax.
1918 – Austria-Hungary enters into an armistice with the Allies, and the Habsburg-ruled empire dissolves.
1918 – Poland declares its independence from Russia.
1930 – Getúlio Dornelles Vargas becomes Head of the Provisional Government in Brazil after a bloodless coup on October 24.
1932 – Panagis Tsaldaris becomes the 142nd Prime Minister of Greece.
1935 – George II of Greece regains his throne through a popular plebiscite.
1942 – World War II: The Koli Point action begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on November 12.
1943 – World War II: 500 aircraft of the U.S. 8th Air Force devastate Wilhelmshafen harbor in Germany.
1944 – World War II: Two supreme commanders of the Slovak National Uprising, Generals Ján Golian and Rudolf Viest are captured, tortured and later executed by German forces.
1957 – Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.
1964 – Washington D.C. residents are able to vote in a presidential election for the first time.
1967 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Dak To begins.
1969 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies.
1973 – Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.
1975 – Syed Nazrul Islam, A. H. M. Qamaruzzaman, Tajuddin Ahmad, and Muhammad Mansur Ali, Bangladeshi politicians and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman loyalists, murdered in the Dhaka Central Jail.
1978 – Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
1979 – Greensboro massacre: Five members of the Communist Workers Party are shot dead and seven are wounded by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis during a "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States.
1982 – The Salang tunnel fire in Afghanistan kills up to 2,000 people.
1986 – Iran-Contra Affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.
1986 – The Federated States of Micronesia gain independence from the United States of America.
1988 – Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries try to overthrow the Maldivian government. At President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's request, the Indian military suppresses the coup attempt within 24 hours.
1996 – Death of Abdullah Çatlı, leader of the Turkish ultra-nationalist organisation Grey Wolves in the Susurluk car-crash, which leads to the resignation of the Turkish Interior Minister, Mehmet Ağar (a leader of the True Path Party, DYP).
1997 – The United States of America imposes economic sanctions against Sudan in response to its human rights abuses of its own citizens and its material and political assistance to Islamic extremist groups across the Middle East and Eastern Africa.
[center]------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Mariner 10 was an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. It was launched approximately two years after Mariner 9 and was the last spacecraft in the Mariner program (Mariner 11 and 12 were allocated to the Voyager program and redesignated Voyager 1 and Voyager 2). The mission objectives were to measure Mercury's environment, atmosphere, surface, and body characteristics and to make similar investigations of Venus. Secondary objectives were to perform experiments in the interplanetary medium and to obtain experience with a dual-planet gravity assist mission.

Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft to make use of an interplanetary gravitational slingshot maneuver, using Venus to bend its flight path and bring its perihelion down to the level of Mercury's orbit. This maneuver, inspired by the orbital mechanics calculations of the Italian scientist Giuseppe Colombo, put the spacecraft into an orbit that repeatedly brought it back to Mercury. Mariner 10 used the solar radiation pressure on its solar panels and its high-gain antenna as a means of attitude control during flight, the first spacecraft to use active solar pressure control.

Mariner 10 instruments included:

Twin telescope/cameras with digital tape recorder
Ultraviolet spectrometer
Infrared radiometer
Solar plasma
Charged particles
Magnetic fields
Radio occultation
Celestial mechanics


The imaging system, the Television Photography Experiment, consisted of two 15 cm (5.9″) Cassegrain telescopes feeding vidicon tubes. The main telescope could be bypassed to a smaller wide angle optic, but using the same tube. It had a 8-position filter wheel, with one position occupied by a mirror for the wide-angle bypass. They system returned about 7000 photographs of Mercury and Venus during Mariner 10's flybys.

During its first week of flight, Mariner 10 tested its camera system by returning five photographic mosaics of Earth and six of the Moon. It also obtained photographs of the north polar region of the moon where prior coverage was poor. These provided a basis for cartographers to update lunar maps and improve the lunar control net.

A trajectory correction maneuver was made on November 13, 1973. Immediately afterwards, the star-tracker locked onto a bright flake of paint which had come off the spacecraft and lost tracking on the guide star Canopus. An automated safety protocol recovered Canopus, but the problem of flaking paint recurred throughout the mission. The on-board computer also experienced unscheduled resets occasionally, which necessitated reconfiguring the clock sequence and subsystems. Periodic problems with the high-gain antenna also occurred during the cruise. In January 1974, Mariner 10 made ultraviolet observations of Comet Kohoutek. Another mid-course correction was made on January 21, 1974.

The spacecraft passed Venus on February 5, 1974, the closest approach being 5,768 km at 17:01 UT. Using a near-ultraviolet filter, it photographed the Cytherean chevron clouds and performed other atmospheric studies. It was discovered that extensive cloud detail could be seen through Mariner's ultraviolet camera filters. Venus's cloud cover is nearly featureless in visible light. Earth-based ultra-violet observation did reveal some indistinct blotching even before Mariner 10, but the detail seen by Mariner was a surprise to most researchers.

The first Mercury encounter took place at 20:47 UT on March 29, 1974, at a range of 703 kilometres (437 mi), passing on the shadow side.

After looping once around the Sun while Mercury completed two orbits, Mariner 10 flew by Mercury again on September 21, 1974, at a more distant range of 48,069 km (29,869 mi) below the southern hemisphere.

After losing roll control in October 1974, a third and final encounter, the closest to Mercury, took place on March 16, 1975, at a range of 327 km (203 mi), passing almost over the north pole.

With its maneuvering gas just about exhausted, Mariner 10 started another orbit of the Sun. Engineering tests were continued until March 24, 1975, when final depletion of the nitrogen supply was signaled by the onset of an un-programmed pitch turn. Commands were sent immediately to the spacecraft to turn off its transmitter, and radio signals to Earth ceased.

Mariner 10 is still orbiting the Sun, although its electronics have probably been damaged by the Sun's radiation. Dave Williams of NASA's National Space Science Data Center said in 2005: "[Mariner 10] has not been tracked or spotted from Earth since it stopped transmitting. We can only assume it's still orbiting [The Sun], but the only way it would not be orbiting would be if it had been hit by an asteroid or gravitationally perturbed by a close encounter with a large body, the odds of that happening are extremely small so it is assumed to still be in orbit."

During its flyby of Venus, Mariner 10 discovered evidence of rotating clouds and a very weak magnetic field.

The spacecraft flew past Mercury three times. Owing to the geometry of its orbit – its orbital period was almost exactly twice Mercury's – the same side of Mercury was sunlit each time, so it was only able to map 40–45% of Mercury’s surface, taking over 2,800 photos. It revealed a more or less moon-like surface. It thus contributed enormously to our understanding of the planet, whose surface had not been successfully resolved through telescopic observation. The regions mapped included most or all of the Shakespeare, Beethoven, Kuiper, Michelangelo, Tolstoj, and Discovery quadrangles, half of Bach and Victoria, and small portions of Solitudo Persephones, Liguria, and Borealis.

Mariner 10 also discovered that Mercury has a tenuous atmosphere consisting primarily of helium, as well as a magnetic field and a large iron-rich core. Its radiometer readings suggested that Mercury has a night time temperature of −183 °C (−297 °F) and maximum daytime temperatures of 187 °C (369 °F).

On February 10, 1975, the US Post Office issued a commemorative stamp featuring the Mariner 10 space probe. The 10-cent Mariner 10 commemorative stamp was issued on April 4, 1975, at Pasadena, California.
[center]
[/center]
[center]------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Greensboro massacre occurred on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Five protest marchers were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The protest was the culmination of attempts by the Communist Workers Party to organize mostly black industrial workers in the area.

The marchers killed were: Sandi Smith, a nurse and civil rights activist; Dr. James Waller, president of a local textile workers union who ceased medical practice to organize workers; Bill Sampson, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School; Cesar Cauce, a Cuban immigrant who graduated magna cum laude from Duke University; and Dr. Michael Nathan, chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Community Health Center in Durham, North Carolina, a clinic that helped children from low-income families.

In 2005, Greensboro residents, inspired by post-apartheid South Africa, initiated a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to take public testimony and examine the causes and consequences of the massacre; the efforts of the Commission were officially opposed by the Greensboro City Council.

The Commission determined that Klan members went to the rally intending to provoke a violent confrontation, and that they fired on demonstrators. In addition, the Commission found that the violent rhetoric of the Communist Workers Party and the Klan contributed in varying degrees to the violence, and that the protesters had not fully secured the community support of the Morningside Homes residents, many of whom did not approve of the protest because of its potential for violent confrontation.

The Commission also found that the Greensboro Police Department had infiltrated the Klan and, through a paid informant, knew of the white supremacists’ plans and the strong potential for violence. The informant had formerly been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's payroll but had maintained contact with his agent supervisor. Consequently, the FBI was also aware of the impending armed confrontation.

The Commission further established that some activists in the crowd fired back after they were attacked. Filmmaker Adam Zucker's 2007 documentary, Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, examines the work of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
[center][/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

November 4:
1956: Soviets put brutal end to Hungarian revolution

A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on this day in 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.

The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. In response, Communist Party officials appointed Imre Nagy, a former premier who had been dismissed from the party for his criticisms of Stalinist policies, as the new premier. Nagy tried to restore peace and asked the Soviets to withdraw their troops. The Soviets did so, but Nagy then tried to push the Hungarian revolt forward by abolishing one-party rule. He also announced that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet bloc's equivalent of NATO).

On November 4, 1956, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, the national uprising. Vicious street fighting broke out, but the Soviets' great power ensured victory. At 5:20 a.m., Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy announced the invasion to the nation in a grim, 35-second broadcast, declaring: "Our troops are fighting. The Government is in place." Within hours, though, Nagy sought asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest. He was captured shortly thereafter and executed two years later. Nagy's former colleague and imminent replacement, János Kádár, who had been flown secretly from Moscow to the city of Szolnok, 60 miles southeast of the capital, prepared to take power with Moscow's backing.

The Soviet action stunned many people in the West. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had pledged a retreat from the Stalinist policies and repression of the past, but the violent actions in Budapest suggested otherwise. An estimated 2,500 Hungarians died and 200,000 more fled as refugees. Sporadic armed resistance, strikes and mass arrests continued for months thereafter, causing substantial economic disruption. Inaction on the part of the United States angered and frustrated many Hungarians. Voice of America radio broadcasts and speeches by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had recently suggested that the United States supported the "liberation" of "captive peoples" in communist nations. Yet, as Soviet tanks bore down on the protesters, the United States did nothing beyond issuing public statements of sympathy for their plight

Forget History and History will repeat
Forget Love and Hate will prevail

Ricardo Ferreira
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

November 5th

1138 – Ly Anh Tong is enthroned as emperor of Vietnam at the age of two, starting a 37-year reign.
1499 – Publication of the Catholicon in Tréguier (Brittany). This Breton-French-Latin dictionary was written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc. It is the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary.
1530 – The St. Felix's Flood destroys the city of Reimerswaal in the Netherlands.
1605 – Gunpowder Plot: A conspiracy led by Robert Catesby to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is thwarted when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the House of Lords.
1688 – The Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Brixham.
1743 – Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.
1757 – Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.
1768 – Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
1780 – French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1811 – Salvadoran priest José Matías Delgado, rang the bells of La Merced church in San Salvador, calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement
1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
1838 – The Federal Republic of Central America begins to disintegrate when Nicaragua separates from the Federation.
1854 – Crimean War: The Battle of Inkerman.
1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.
1862 – Indian Wars: In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites and are sentenced to hang. 38 are ultimately executed and the others reprieved.
1872 – Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.
1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
1911 – After declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica.
1913 – King Otto of Bavaria is deposed by his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, who assumes the title Ludwig III.
1916 – The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by the Act of November 5th of the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
1916 – The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.
1917 – October Revolution: In Tallinn, Estonia, Communist leader Jaan Anvelt leads revolutionaries in overthrowing the Provisional Government (As Estonia and Russia are still using the Julian Calendar, subsequent period references show an October 23 date).
1917 – St. Tikhon of Moscow is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
1937 – Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
1945 – Colombia joins the United Nations.
1950 – Korean War: British and Australian forces from the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade successfully halted the advancing Chinese 117th Division during the Battle of Pakchon.
1967 – The Hither Green rail crash in the United Kingdom kills 49 people. Survivors include Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.
1970 – Vietnam War: The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).
1983 – Byford Dolphin diving bell accident kills five and leaves one severely injured.
1986 – USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China – the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.
1987 – Govan Mbeki is released from custody after serving 24 years of a life sentence for terrorism and treason.
1990 – Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel.
1995 – André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister's wife locks the door.
1996 – President of Pakistan Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari dismisses the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolves the National Assembly of Pakistan.
2003 – Green River Killer Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of murder.
2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi'as in 1982.
2007 – China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon.
2009 – US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in the largest mass shooting at a US military installation.
[center]-------------------------------------------------[/center]

Chang’e 1 (pronounced roughly chang-uh, [tʂɑ̌ŋ.ɤ̌]; simplified Chinese: 嫦娥一号; traditional Chinese: 嫦娥一號; pinyin: Cháng'é yī hào) was an unmanned Chinese lunar-orbiting spacecraft, part of the first phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. The spacecraft was named after the Chinese Moon goddess, Chang'e.

Chang'e 1 was launched on 24 October 2007 at 10:05:04 UTC from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. It left lunar transfer orbit on 31 October and entered lunar orbit on 5 November. The first picture of the Moon was relayed on 26 November 2007. On 12 November 2008, a map of the entire lunar surface was released, produced from data collected by Chang'e 1 between November 2007 and July 2008.

The mission was scheduled to continue for a year, but was later extended and the spacecraft operated until 1 March 2009, when it was taken out of orbit. It impacted the surface of the Moon at 08:13 UTC. Data gathered by Chang'e 1 was able to create the most accurate and highest resolution 3-D map ever created of the lunar surface. Its sister orbital probe Chang'e 2 was launched on the first of October 2010.

According to the schedule, detailed design of the first program milestone was completed by September 2004. Research and development of a prototype probe and relevant testing of the probe were finished before the end of 2005. Design, manufacture, general assembly, test and ground experiments of the lunar orbiter were finished before December 2006.

Originally scheduled for April 2007, the launch was postponed until October as this was "a better time for sending a satellite into the Moon's orbit". Chang'e 1 was launched by a Long March 3A rocket at 10:05 GMT on October 24, 2007 from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province.

After liftoff, Chang'e 1 made three orbits around the Earth, a burn at perigee extending the orbit's apogee further each time, until a final translunar injection burn placed it on course for the Moon on October 31, 2007. Another burn placed it in a polar orbit around the Moon, with burns at the perilune of the first three orbits decreasing the apolune until it entered a final circular orbit. Lunar orbit insertion was achieved on the November 5, 2007. To mark this occasion, the probe transmitted 30 classical Chinese songs and musical pieces, including "My Motherland", "The Song of the Yangtze River", and "High Mountains and Flowing Water".

The probe was remotely controlled from stations at Qingdao and Kashgar, as the first use of the Chinese Deep Space Network. The ESA Maspalomas Tracking Station was also used to transmit signals to and from the probe.

The first pictures of the Moon were relayed on November 26, 2007. The probe was designed to orbit the Moon for one year, but operations were later extended, and it remained in lunar orbit until March 1, 2009.

On 1 March 2009, at 08:13:10 UTC, Chang'e 1 crashed onto the surface of the Moon, ending its mission. According to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (China), this was a planned and controlled impact. Impact point was 1.50°S 52.36°E. During its orbital mission the probe transmitted 1,400 gigabits or 175 gigabytes (GB) of data.
[center]

[center]-------------------------------------------------[/center][/center]

The Fort Hood shooting was a mass shooting that took place on November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, the most populous U.S. military installation in the world, located just outside Killeen, Texas.[1] In the course of the shooting, a single gunman killed 13 people and wounded 29 others. It is the worst shooting ever to take place on an American military base.

The sole suspect is Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army Major serving as a psychiatrist. He was shot and taken into custody by Department of the Army Civilian Police officers, and is now paralyzed from the chest down. Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice; he may face additional charges at court-martial. If he is convicted, there is a chance he could be given the death penalty.

Hasan is an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent. Internal Army reports indicate officers within the Army had discussed what they characterized as Hasan's tendencies toward radical Islam since 2005. Additionally, investigations before and after the shooting discovered e-mail communications between Hasan and Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who quickly declared Hasan a hero, as "fighting against the U.S. army is an Islamic duty". After communications between the two were forwarded to FBI terrorism task forces in 2008, they determined that Hasan was not a threat prior to the shooting and that his questions to al-Awlaki were consistent with medical research.

In November 2009, after examining the e-mails and previous terrorism investigations, the FBI had found no information to indicate Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot. The U.S. later classified Anwar al-Awlaki as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and the UN considered Awlaki to be associated with al-Qaeda; Awlaki was killed by a U.S. predator drone missile attack in 2011. However, one year after the Fort Hood shooting, questions still lingered as to whether the incident was caused by mental health issues, and government agencies still had not officially linked Hasan to any radical terrorist groups.

There were 43 casualties in the shooting. Among the 13 killed were 12 soldiers (one of whom was pregnant) and one Army civilian employee. Thirty others, including the shooter, were wounded and required hospitalization. Hasan, the alleged gunman, was taken to Scott & White hospital, a trauma center in Temple, Texas, and later moved to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio ,Texas, where he was held under heavy guard. Hasan was hit by at least four shots, and is said to be quadriplegic. He is currently being held at the Bell County jail in Belton, Texas.

Ten of the injured were treated at a trauma center in Temple, Texas. Seven more wounded victims were taken to Metroplex Adventist Hospital in Killeen. Eight others received hospital treatment for shock. Of those wounded at least 17 were service-members, and at least seven were civilians. On November 20, it was announced that eight of the wounded service members will still deploy overseas.
[center]
[/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[PhastPhred]

Born 05 Nov 1963: Tatum O'Neal, Academy Award-winning actress,
"Paper Moon," "The Bad News Bears," "Nickelodeon," "Little Darlings."
Daughter of Ryan O'Neal and Joanna Moore.
< Then, And grown up now... V

_________________

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

Thanks PhastPhred this is something everyone should do saying the important things (or not) that happened everyday of someone important to us or to our City and Country.

November 6th

355 – Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.
1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.
1632 – Thirty years war: Battle of Lützen is fought, the Swedes are victorious but the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus dies in the battle.
1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.
1844 – The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels.
1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.
1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917 – World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
1918 – The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed in Poland.
1934 – Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority.
1935 – Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
1935 – First flight of the Hawker Hurricane.
1935 – Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie.
1939 – World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place.
1941 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.
1942 – World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.
1943 – World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.
1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1947 – Meet the Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
1948 – Deputy commander-in-chief of the Eastern China Field Army General Su Yu launched a massive offensive toward Xuzhou, defended by seven different armies under the Suppression General Headquarter of Xuzhou Garrison, the Huaihai Campaign, the largest operational campaign of the Chinese Civil War begins.
1962 – Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1963 – Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
1965 – Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program.
1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
1975 – Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
1977 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39.
1985 – In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the April 19 Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
1986 – Sumburgh disaster – A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 2.5 miles east of Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people. It is the deadliest civilian helicopter crash on record.
1995 – The Rova of Antananarivo, home of the sovereigns of Madagascar from the 16th to 19th centuries, is destroyed by fire.
1999 – Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
2004 – An express train collides with a stationary car near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing 7 and injuring 150.
2005 – The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 kills 25 in Northwestern Kentucky and Southwestern Indiana.
[center]--------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી; (Devnagari मोहनदास करमचंद गांधी), pronounced [moːɦənəd̪aːsə kərəmətɕənd̪ə ɡaːnd̪ʱi] ( listen). 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement. A pioneer of satyagraha, or resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience—a philosophy firmly founded upon ahimsa, or total nonviolence—Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is often referred to as Mahatma ([məɦaːt̪maː]; Sanskrit: महात्मा mahātmā or "Great Soul," an honorific first applied to him by Rabindranath Tagore). In India, he is also called Bapu (Gujarati: બાપુ, bāpu or "Father") and officially honoured as the Father of the Nation. His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on many occasions, in both South Africa and India.

Gandhi strove to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.

In South Africa, Gandhi faced the discrimination directed at Indians. He was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to move from the first-class to a third-class coach while holding a valid first-class ticket. Travelling farther on by stagecoach, he was beaten by a driver for refusing to move to make room for a European passenger. He suffered other hardships on the journey as well, including being barred from several hotels. In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do. These events were a turning point in Gandhi's life: they shaped his social activism and awakened him to social injustice. After witnessing racism, prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa, Gandhi began to question his place in society and his people's standing in the British Empire.

Gandhi extended his original period of stay in South Africa to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to vote. Though unable to halt the bill's passage, his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894,[6][18] and through this organisation, he moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent. He, however, refused to press charges against any member of the mob, stating it was one of his principles not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law.[6]

In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time. He urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. The community adopted this plan, and during the ensuing seven-year struggle, thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot for striking, refusing to register, for burning their registration cards or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. The government successfully repressed the Indian protesters, but the public outcry over the harsh treatment of peaceful Indian protesters by the South African government forced South African General Jan Christiaan Smuts to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi's ideas took shape, and the concept of satyagraha matured during this struggle.

In 1915, Gandhi returned from South Africa to live in India. He spoke at the conventions of the Indian National Congress, but was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a respected leader of the Congress Party at the time.
[center]
[/center]
[center]--------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Kelly Barnes Dam was an earthen embankment dam once located in Stephens County, Georgia, just outside of the city of Toccoa. It collapsed on November 6, 1977 after a period of heavy rainfall, and the resulting flood killed 39 people and caused $2.8 million in damages. The dam was never rebuilt, and the Toccoa Falls downstream of the dam site is now a memorial and tourist attraction on the campus of Toccoa Falls College.

In 1899, the original rock crib dam was completed by Mr. E. P. Simpson in order to create a reservoir for a small hydroelectric power plant which began operating that same year. The plant, now a historical site on the Toccoa Falls College campus and called The Old Toccoa Falls Power Plant produced 200 KW (0.2 MW) for the town of Toccoa, Georgia. After receiving the power plant in 1933, the Toccoa Falls Institute wanted to develop a more stable electric power source and built an earthen embankment dam over the original rock crib dam between 1939 and 1940. After the Second World War, the dam was again raised. Barnes Lake, a 40-acre (16 ha) reservoir was created by the dam. The modifications provided power for Toccoa Falls Institute until 1957, when the power production was stopped, and the lake was only used for recreational purposes.

The dam was modified several times, and before the flood, the final dam was 38 feet (12 m) high, 400 feet (120 m) long and 20 feet (6.1 m) wide at its crest. The dam had two uncontrolled earthen spillways. The main spillway was 380 feet (120 m) long, 60–11 feet (18–3.4 m) wide and located on the left side of the structure. A low point on the right side and away from the dam could also be used as a secondary spillway in case the reservoir levels became too high.

The embankment dam was located about 2,000 feet (610 m) upstream from the Toccoa Falls and mostly consisted of residual soils and silt. The dam sat on a foundation of silt and stable biotite gneiss (rock).

Within the dam embankment was two masonry structures that helped support a pipe that was used as a low-level spillway and in the other, a penstock (pipe) for the hydroelectricity power plant. Both were not being used at the time of the flood.

On November 6, 1977, at 1:30 am, the Kelly Barnes Dam failed after a period of heavy rain; seven inches had fallen from 2–5 November. In particular, 3½ inches fell between 6 pm and midnight, November 5. A total of 200 feet (61 m) of the dam had failed, causing a peak of 24,000 cubic feet per second (680 m3) maximum discharge to burst downstream. Barnes Lake at the time held an estimated 27,442,800 cubic feet (777,090 m3) of water compared to a normal volume of 17,859,600 cubic feet (505,730 m3).

The flood caused 39 fatalities along with destroying nine houses, 18 house trailers, two college buildings and many motor vehicles. Five houses and five college buildings were also damaged. Two bridges on Toccoa Falls Drive and a culvert at County Farm Road were completely destroyed. The embankments at Georgia Highway 17 were destroyed on either side of the bridge, and one of the bridge abutments at Highview Road was destroyed. The water-supply pipe for the city of Toccoa was damaged and the city's water supply was contaminated for several days.

After the flood, Georgia's Governor George Busbee called for an immediate investigation, which was carried out by a Federal Investigative Board of the United States Geological Survey. Their report was released December 21, 1977, with no specific cause(s) cited for the failure. The investigators had no engineering plans for the dam and records of construction on the dam were based on witnesses, pictures and newspaper articles.

The investigation did, however, cite several possible or probable causes. The failure of the dam's slope may have contributed to weakness in the structure, particularly in the heavy rain. A collapse of the low-level spillway could have also exacerbated this problem. A 1973 photo showed a 12-foot-high (3.7 m), 30-foot-wide (9.1 m) slide had occurred on the downstream face of the dam, which may have also contributed or foreshadowed the dam failure. Overall, the dam itself was in poor condition and lacked a sufficient design.
[center]
[/center]
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.