October 19

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT6cP5cfeYk 1:17min


202 BC Battle of Zama: Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army are defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, ending 2nd Punic War

439 The Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, take Carthage in North Africa

615 St Deusdedit I begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1216 King John of England dies at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry

1298 Rindfleisch-140 Jews of Heilbron Germany are murdered

1453 French retake Bordeaux following the Battle of Castillon

1466 The Thirteen Years' War ends with the Second Peace of Thorn, Germany

1781 - As their band played The World Turned Upside Down, the British Army marched out in formation and surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown. More than 7,000 British and Hessian troops, led by British General Lord Cornwallis, surrendered to General George Washington. The war between Britain and its American colonies was effectively ended. The final peace treaty was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783.

1789 - New York statesman John Jay, a former president of the Continental Congress, is sworn in as the first chief justice of the United States, October 19, 1789. Jay and the Supreme Court's five other justices must "ride circuit"—travel to the lower district courts around the country—to hear cases. Their 1793 decision in Chisholm v. Georgia affirming federal judiciary authority over the states proves so unpopular, Congress enacts the 11th Amendment to overrule it.

October 19, 1914 - On this day near the Belgian city of Ypres, Allied and German forces begin the first of what would be three battles to control the city and its advantageous positions on the north coast of Belgium during the First World War. After the German advance through Belgium and eastern France was curtailed by a decisive Allied victory in the Battle of the Marne in late September 1914, the so-called “Race to the Sea” began, as each army attempted to outflank the other on their way northwards, hastily constructing trench fortifications as they went. The race ended in mid-October at Ypres, the ancient Flemish city with its fortifications guarding the ports of the English Channel and access to the North Sea beyond. After the Germans captured the Belgian city of Antwerp early in October, Antwerp’s remaining Belgian forces along with troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Sir John French, withdrew to Ypres, arriving at the city between October 8 and 19 to reinforce the Belgian and French defenses there. Meanwhile, the Germans prepared to launch the first phase of an offensive aimed at breaking the Allied lines and capturing Ypres and other channel ports, thus controlling the outlets to the North Sea. On October 19, a protracted period of fierce combat began, as the Germans opened their Flanders offensive and the Allies steadfastly resisted, while seeking their own chances to go on the attack wherever possible. Fighting continued, with heavy losses on both sides, until November 22, when the arrival of winter weather forced the battle to a halt. The area between the positions established by both sides during this period—from Ypres on the British side to Menin and Roulers on the German side—became known as the Ypres Salient, a region that over the course of the next several years would see some of the war’s bitterest and most brutal struggles.

1943 - On this day in 1943, local Chinese and native Suluks rise up against the Japanese occupation of North Borneo. The revolt, staged in the capital, Jesselton, resulted in the deaths of 40 Japanese soldiers. The Japanese had begun scooping up islands in the Dutch East Indies in late 1941. Kuching, on the northern coast of Borneo, was taken in December; January of ’42 saw the fall of Brunei Bay and Jesselton, also in North Borneo. The British and Dutch forces on the islands were dealt swift and severe blows. Attempts by the Allies to hold on to other islands in the region—Malaya, Sumatra, and Java—began shortly thereafter, with British General Archibald Wavell commanding a unified force of British, Dutch, and Australian soldiers. It was a disastrous failure. The treatment of Allied and civilian prisoners in the Japanese-controlled islands was horrendous, with hundreds dying of disease and starvation. The rebellion of Chinese settlers and native Suluks in the Borneo capital of Jesselton, although delivering a blow to the Japanese to the tune of 40 dead occupying soldiers, was dealt with quickly and brutally. The Japanese destroyed dozens of Suluk villages, rounded up and tortured thousands of civilians, and executed almost 200 without trial. In one extreme example of cruelty, several dozen Suluk women and children had their hands tied behind them and were hanged from their wrists from a pillar of a mosque. They were then shot down by machine-gun fire. North Borneo would not be liberated until 1945, mostly the work of Australian forces. The next year, it would be made a colony of Britain. That region of Borneo controlled by the Dutch was given sovereignty in 1949 after a rebellion by Indonesian forces.

1960 - The U.S. embargo of Cuba began as the State Department prohibited shipment of all goods except medicine and food.

1972 - Kissinger discusses draft Peace Treaty with President Thieu - Henry Kissinger and U.S. officials hold meetings in Saigon with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to discuss the proposed peace treaty drafted by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator in Paris. Thieu remained adamant in his opposition to the draft treaty provisions that permitted North Vietnamese troops to remain in place in the South. Kissinger tried to convince Thieu to agree to the provisions anyway, but Thieu still balked. This would be a major stumbling block in the continuing negotiations. In an attempt to further the peace process, President Nixon announced a halt in bombing of North Vietnam above the 20th parallel. He also sent a message to North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong confirming that the peace agreement was complete and pledging that it would be signed by the two foreign ministers on October 31. However, Thieu’s continued recalcitrance caused so much friction at the negotiating table that the North Vietnamese walked out. They returned only after Nixon ordered the resumption of the Linebacker II bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The peace treaty was eventually signed in January 1973 (after the United States threatened to sign it alone with the North Vietnamese if Thieu refused to participate) and the cease-fire went into effect at midnight on January 27, 1973. Under the terms of the treaty, all U.S. military forces departed two months later. As Thieu feared, the peace treaty left 160,000 troops in the South and the fighting in South Vietnam resumed after only a brief pause. As U.S. military aid, which had been promised by President Nixon, slowed and then ceased altogether, the South Vietnamese were left fighting for their very lives. They held out for two years, but succumbed to the North Vietnamese in 1975, when Saigon fell in just 55 days.

1977 - Concord makes its historic landing in New York city

1987 - "Black Monday" occurred on Wall Street as stocks plunged a record 508 points or 22.6 per cent, the 2nd largest one-day drop in stock market history. the one-day crash of Black Monday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6%, was worse in percentage terms than any single day of the 1929 crash (although the combined 25% decline of October 28-29, 1929 was larger than October 19, 1987, and remains the worst two day decline ever in the stock markets history).

1990 - Beset by a seriously eroding economy, Soviet Russia's President Mikhail Gorbachev won parliamentary approval to switch to a market economy.

2015 US scientists from University of California find evidence life on earth may have begun 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million earlier than previously thought