October 12

1216 King John of England lost his treasure whilst fording the Crosskeys Wash in Lincolnshire on October 12, 1216. Among the items lost were his crown and baggage, 52 rings encrusted with rubies and sapphires, 132 silver cups, and plenty of swords and trinkets. King John died at Trent Castle, Newark a week later.

1492 Two months after he set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain to try to find a new route to the Orient, Christopher Columbus made his first first landfall. The Pinta, Niña, and Santa María landed on an island of The Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Columbus named the newly discovered island, "San Salvador" meaning, "Saint of Salvation", to express his thankfulness at landing safely. Today it is known as Watling Island.

1537 Edward VI was the son of Henry VIII of England and Jane Seymour. The birth of Edward on October 12, 1537 was difficult, and his mother died 12 days later. He became king aged nine when his father died on January 28, 1547. The first Protestant ruler of England, the realm was governed by a Regency Council. Edward's reign is mainly remembered for the changes made to the Church of England while he was king. He died of tuberculosis when he was 15.

1609 "Three Blind Mice" is thought to refer to a trio of Protestant bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley, and The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who were all burnt at the stake during Bloody Mary’s reign. Critics suggest that the blindness in the title refers to their religious beliefs.  The nursery rhyme was first published in London on October 12, 1609.

1773 America's first mental asylum opened for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' on October 12, 1773. Eastern State Hospital, located in Williamsburg, Virginia, was the first public facility in the United States constructed solely for the care and treatment of the mentally ill.

The Hospital's rebuilt original 1773 building as it stands today in Williamsburg, Virginia

1775 Lyman Beecher was born October 12, 1775. The most powerful puritan preacher of his generation in the USA, he devoted his later life to preaching to the pioneers in Cincinnati, where he held revival meetings preaching against drunkenness, Catholicism and religious tolerance. His daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the best-selling novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

1792 The first celebration of Columbus Day in the USA was held in New York on October 12, 1792, the 300th anniversary of Columbus's first landing in the Americas. The celebration was organized by the Society of St. Tammany, also known as Tammany Hall, a political and social organization that was influential in New York City at the time.

1799 When Jean Genevieve Labrosse jumped from a hot air balloon with a parachute on October 12, 1799, she became the first ever female parachutist to parachute from an altitude of 900 meters. Labrosse was a student of Andre-Jacques Garnerin who made the first jump from a balloon with a frameless parachute two years earlier. She later later became his wife.

Monsieur and Madame Garnerin (Christoph Haller von Hallerstein, c. 1803)

1810 The first Oktoberfest was held as a horse race celebrating the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Saxony-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. In the years that followed, the race was combined with the state agricultural fair, and food and drink were offered. Since that time the 16-day festival has become, above all else, a celebration of German beer, drawing more than five million attendees annually.

1822 Pedro I of Brazil was proclaimed the first emperor of the Empire of Brazil on October 12, 1822.
The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century nation that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II who reigned from 1831 until he was overthrown in 1889.

1823 Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh patented the waterproof cloth he used to make raincoats after experimenting with waste rubber products from Glasgow's new gas works. He was anxious to protect the secret of his new waterproof cloth so he chose Highland workers to work in his Glasgow factory as they only spoke Gaelic. He first began selling his Mackintosh coats on October 12, 1823.

1845 By 1843, the English Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry was no longer able to travel was no longer able to travel because of failing health, but she still kept in contact with prison officials to monitor improvements. Elizabeth Fry died after a stroke in Ramsgate, Kent on October 12, 1845. Over a thousand people stood in silence as she was buried at the Society of Friend's graveyard at Barking.

1847 Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske founded Siemens & Halske, on October 12, 1847. Werner von Siemens played a crucial role in the development of the telegraph industry. In 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe; 500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. The company has been known as Siemens since 1966.

1849 On October 12, 1849, Birmingham inventor Charles Rowley patented a safety pin in Britain, unaware that New Yorker Walter Hunt had registered a similar version in America six months earlier. Hunt’s is the one we use today.

1872 Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on October 12, 1872, in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, England, the son of a clergyman. The dominant English composer of the early 20th century, Vaughan Williams broke the ties with continental Europe that for two centuries - notably through Handel and Mendelssohn - that had made Britain virtually a musical province of Germany.

1901 Theodore Roosevelt officially renamed the home of the president of the US as The White House on October 12, 1901. It was known before as the  the “President's Palace,” the “President's House,” and the “Executive Mansion.”

The White House

1915 Edith Cavell was an English training nurse living in Belgium whose strong Anglican beliefs propelled her to help all those who needed help. She was arrested by the Germans and charged with harboring Allied soldiers. Cavell was executed by a German firing squad on October 12, 1915

1931 Construction on Rio's beloved statue of Jesus, which is perched atop mountain known as Corcovado, began in 1922. The statue officially opened on October 12, 1931. Weighing in at 635 long tons, the soapstone-and-concrete statue's welcoming arms stretch almost 97 feet across. The Christ the Redeemer is considered one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and can be seen in many Hollywood movies and music videos.

Aerial view of the statue. By Gustavo Facci from Argentina - Flickr.

1935 Italian operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti was born on October 12, 1935 in Modena in north-central Italy to Fernando Pavarotti, a baker and amateur tenor, and Adele Venturi, a cigar factory worker. During World War II they lived in the countryside on a farm. Pavarotti started to listen to his father’s recordings of famous tenors of the day such as Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa and Enrico Caruso. At around the age of nine he began singing with his father in a small local church choir.

1954 The Somalia flag was conceived as an ethnic flag for the Somali people and was first used by the State of Somaliland. It was adopted on October 12, 1954, and is now the official flag of the Federal Republic of Somalia.

Somalia flag

1955 The Chrysler Corporation launched high fidelity record players for their 1956 line-up of cars on October 12, 1955. Called the Highway Hi-Fi, it was one of the first pieces of technology that gave cars the ability to play vinyl. In 1961 they discontinued them.

1957 Marlon Brando's first wife was Anna Kashfi, an Indian actress from Darjeeling. India. Before their wedding on October 12, 1957, Brando was regarded as Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor. Brando and Kashfi had a son, Christian Brando, on May 11, 1958; they divorced in 1959.

1960 On October 12, 1960, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reportedly pounded his shoe on a desk during the Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in response to Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong's assertion of Soviet colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe.

1964 The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 on October 12, 1964, becoming the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew. It was also the first flight without the use of spacesuits, and the first to carry either an engineer or a physician into outer space. Voshkod 1 also set a manned spacecraft altitude record of 336 km (209 mi).

1969 Swedish ice skater Sonja Henie died of leukemia at the age of 57 on October 12, 1969 during a flight from Paris to Oslo. She is buried with Onstad in Oslo on the hilltop overlooking the Henie-Onstad Art Centre. Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies' figure skater. and later became a film star At the height of her acting career, she was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood.

1979 A 6-foot-5 (1.96 m) guard basketball player Chris Ford is credited with scoring the NBA's first three-point shot for the Boston Celtics on October 12, 1979 in a game against the Houston Rockets at Boston Garden. The three-point shot was a new addition to the NBA that season, and Ford was one of the first players to embrace it. He was a skilled perimeter shooter, and he quickly became one of the most prolific three-point shooters in the league.

1979 The lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure occurred in the Western Pacific during Typhoon Tip. After passing Guam, it reached peak winds of 190 mph and a worldwide record low sea-level pressure of 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg) on October 12, 1979. At its peak strength, Typhoon Tip was also the largest tropical cyclone on record with a diameter of 1,380 miles.

1984 On October 12, 1984, Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped injury from an IRA bomb at the conservative party conference in Brighton, which killed five people and injured 34. Thatcher's response to the attempt on her life helped to bolster her popularity halfway through a year-long miners' strike, which had split the nation.

1991 The director Steven Spielberg is married to the actress Kate Capshaw. She played the female lead, Willie Scott, in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which was directed by Spielberg. Their wedding took place on October 12, 1991.

1998 Joe DiMaggio was a heavy smoker for much of his adult life. He was admitted to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, on October 12, 1998, for lung cancer surgery, and remained there for three months. He returned to his Florida home on January 19, 1999, where he died on March 8th.

1999 The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world was born on October 12, 1999. Shortly after midnight in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Fatima Nevic gave birth to a historic 8-pound boy. The United Nations Population Fund designated this Bosnian baby was the special six billionth human.

By Bdm25

2009 On October 12, 2009, it was announced that the Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon was handing down the church to his sons, Moon Hyung-jin, Moon Kook-jin, and Moon Hyun-jin. Moon died three years later at the age of 92.

2010 On October 12, 2010, the numbers that rolled out on Israel's weekly state lottery were 36, 33, 32, 26, 14, 13, and the additional 'strong' number 2. They were exactly the same numbers as were drawn three weeks earlier – an event statisticians said was a one in four trillion chance.

2011 Medusa - the longest snake ever living in captivity - was measured and found to be 7.67 m (25 ft 2 in) long on October 12, 2011.The reticulated python is owned by Full Moon Productions Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Reticulated pythons are the longest snakes in the world, but adults normally grow an average of between 3-6 m (or, 10-20 ft). Medusa is truly exceptional.

2017 Grape-kun was a Humboldt penguin that lived in a zoo in Japan, He grew so attached to a cardboard cutout of an anime girl that he lived with it as his 'waifu' till his death on October 12, 2017. The zookeepers were initially concerned about Grape-kun's obsession with the cutout, but they soon realized that it was making him happy. They even started to bring him the cutout at night so he could sleep with it.

Humboldt penguin Grape-kun and his Hululu cutout. By Seibi hancho (aka. diagraph01)