October 9

Events
Up to 1800
768 - Carloman and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of the Franks.
1000 - Leif Ericson discovers Vinland, becoming the first known European to set foot in North America.
1238 - James I of Aragon conquers Valencia and founded the Kingdom of Valencia.
1264 - The Kingdom of Castile conquers the city of Jerez, under Islamic control since 711.
1446 - The Hangul alphabet is published in Korea.
1514 - Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor
1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1604 - Supernova 1604 is observed; It is the last supernova to-date to be observed in the Milky Way.
1635 - Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he spoke out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
1701 - The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
1708 - Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya.
1740 - Dutch colonists and others begin massacring Chinese people at Batavia (now Jakarta), eventually killing 10,000 people and leading to war.
1760 - Seven Years' War: Russian forces occupy Berlin.
1767 - Surveying of the Mason-Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland is completed, unofficially marking the boundary between Northern and Southern US States.
1771 - The Dutch merchant ship Vrouw Maria sinks near the coast of Finland.
1776 - Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.
1788 - The first bridge in Australia is built over the Tank Stream in Sydney.
1799 - Sinking of the ship HMS Lutine, killing 240 people.
1801 1900
1803 - Flooding on the Portuguese island of Madeira kills 600 people.
1804 - Hobart, Tasmania is founded.
1806 - Prussia declares war on France.
1812 - War of 1812: In a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces capture two British ships; the HMS Detroit and the HMS Caledonia.
1820 - Guayaquil declares independence from Spain.
1824 - Costa Rica gets rid of slavery.
1829 - A climbing expedition led by Friedrich Parrot reaches the summit of Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in Turkey.
1831 - Capo d'Istria is assassinated.
1834 - Opening of the Dublin to Kingstown railway, the first public railway in Ireland.
1854 - Start of the Siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War.
1861 - American Civil War: Battle of Santa Rita Island.
1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Tom's Brook - Union cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley defeat Confederate forces at Tom's Brook, Virginia.
1871 - The Great Chicago Fire is brought under control.
1874 - General Postal Union was created as a result of the Treaty of Berne.
1888 - The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public.
1900 - The Cook Islands become a territory of the United Kingdom.
1901 1950
1911 - An accidental bomb explosion in Hankou, Wuhan, China, leads to the ultimate fall of the Qing Dynasty.
1913 - Steamship SS Volturna catches fire in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean, killing 136 people. Over 300 lives are saved.
1914 - World War I: Siege of Antwerp - Antwerp, Belgium falls to German troops.
1919 - Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds "win" the World Series.
1934 - In Marseille, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and then-foreign minister of France Louis Barthou are assassinated.
1936 - Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to transmit electricity from the Colorado River 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.
1940 - World War II: Battle of Britain - During a nighttime air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul's Cathedral is pierced by a bomb.
1941 - A coup in Panama declares Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia to be the country's President.
1942 - Statute of Westminster Adoption Act formalizes Australian autonomy.
1944 - World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin begin a nine-day conference in Moscow to discuss the future of Europe.
1951 2000
1957 - Neil H. McElroy was sworn in as the 6th Secretary of Defense of United States.
1959 - The Conservatives under Harold Macmillan win the United Kingdom general election.
1962 - Uganda becomes a republic.
1963 - In northeast Italy, over 2,000 people are killed when a large landslide behind the Vajont Dam causes a giant wave of water to overtop it.
1967 - A day after being caught, Che Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
1969 - In Chicago, Illinois, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection to the trial of the "Chicago Eight" (trial started on September 24).
1969 - Students from the University of the Philippines formed the first Upsilonian Congress and established the Upsiloan Alpha Beta Grand Fraternity in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.
1970 - The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.
1980 - Pope John Paul II shakes hands with Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama in a private audience in Vatican City.
1981 - End of capital punishment in France.
1983 - Attempted killing of President of South Korea Chun Doo-hwan. He survives, though 17 people are killed.
1986 - United States District Court Judge Harry E. Claiborne becomes the fifth federal official to be removed from office through impeachment.
1989 - An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.
1989 - In Leipzig, East Germany, 70,000 protesters demand the legalization of opposition groups and democratic reforms.
1991 - Ecuador becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
1992 - A 13 kilogram (est.) meteorite lands in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu.
1995 - An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona.
From 2001
2002 - After losing a massive amount of ground during the summer of 2002, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 7,286.27, its lowest level in five years. The NASDAQ also hit a six-year low of 1,114.11.
2004 - The new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh is officially opened.
2004 - Jo Brauner resigns as the anchor of German Tagesschau news show after 30 years.
2004 - Democratic elections held for the first time in Afghanistan.
2004 - The tri-annual federal election is held in Australia and Liberal Party of Australia leader, John Howard, wins a fourth term as Prime Minister in a landslide victory over opponent, Mark Latham of the Australian Labor Party.
2005 - China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the new accurate height of Mount Everest is 8848.43 m.
2005 - 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in the state election in Burgenland, Austria.
2006 - North Korea carries out its first-reported bomb test.
2007 - Yoko Ono opens the John Lennon Imagine Peace tower on the island of Videy near Reykjavik, Iceland.
2009 - First Lunar impact of the Centaur & LCROSS spacecrafts, as part of NASA's Precursor Robotic Programme.
2009 - Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
2011 - Sebastian Vettel wins his second Formula One World title, as the youngest driver to win two Formula One World Championships in-a-row.
2012 - Members of the Pakistan Taliban attempt to kill education activist Malala Yousafzai, by shooting her in the head. She survives the attack after receiving medical treatment.
2014 - UKIP wins its first parliamentary seat in a UK by-election in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, through defected Conservative MP Douglas Carswell.
2017 - Iceland becomes the least-populated country to qualify for a FIFA World Cup, defeating Kosovo 2-0 in Reykjavik.
Births
Up to 1900
1201 Robert de Sorbonne, French theologian (d. 1274)
1261 King Denis of Portugal (d. 1325)
1328 King Peter I of Cyprus (d. 1369)
1581 Claude Gaspard Bachet de Meziriac, French mathematician, poet and scholar (d. 1638)
1585 Heinrich Schutz, German composer (d. 1672)
1586 Archduke Leopold of Austria (d. 1632)
1704 Johann Andreas Segner, German physician, physicist and mathematician (d. 1777)
1757 King Charles X of France (d. 1836)
1782 Lewis Cass, American politician (d. 1866)
1788 Jozsef Kossics, Slovenian writer (d. 1867)
1796 Joseph Bonomi the Younger, English Egyptologist (d. 1878)
1833 Eugen Langen, German entrepreneur, engineer and inventor (d. 1895)
1835 Camille Saint-Saens, French composer (d. 1921)
1840 Simeon Solomon, British artist (d. 1905)
1846 Julius Maggi, Swiss businessman (Maggi condiment) (d. 1912)
1848 Caroline Alice Elgar, English author (d. 1920)
1852 Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist (d. 1919)
1854 Myron T. Herrick, Governor of Ohio (d. 1929)
1858 Mihaijlo Idvorski Pupin, Serbian-American physicist (d. 1935)
1859 Alfred Dreyfus, French military officer (d. 1935)
1863 Alexander Siloti, Ukrainian pianist, composer and conductor (d. 1945)
1873 Karl Schwarzschild, German physicist and astronomer (d. 1946)
1874 Nicholas Roerich, Russian polymath (d. 1947)
1879 Max von Laue, German physicist (d. 1960)
1880 Charlie Faust, American baseball player (d. 1915)
1881 Victor Klemperer, German writer (d. 1960)
1886 Rube Marquard, American baseball player and manager (d. 1980)
1888 Nikolai Bukharin, Russian politician (d. 1938)
1888 Irving Cummings, American actor and director (d. 1959)
1892 Ivo Andric, Yugoslavian writer (d. 1975)
1892 Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian poet (d. 1941)
1893 Mario de Andrade, Brazilian writer (d. 1945)
1897 M. V. Bhaktavatsalam, Indian politician (d. 1987)
1900 Alastair Sim, Scottish actor (d. 1976)
1900 Joseph Friedman, American inventor (d. 1982)
1901 1950
1903 Walter O'Malley, American sports executive (d. 1979)
1906 Leopold Sedar Senghor, Senegalese poet and politician (d. 2001)
1906 Sayyid Qutb, Egyptian journalist and Islamist thinker (d. 1966)
1907 Jacques Tati, French director and producer (d. 1982)
1907 Quintin Hogg, Baron Halisham of St Marylebone, English politician (d. 2001)
1908 Werner Haeften, German officer and Resistance activist (d. 1944)
1909 Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 2000)
1909 V. Nalliah, Sri Lankan Tamil politician
1911 Joe Rosenthal, American photographer (d. 2006)
1915 Clifford M. Hardin, American politician (d. 2010)
1918 E. Howard Hunt, American spy (d. 2007)
1918 Lila Kedrova, Russian actress (d. 2000)
1920 Jason Wingreen, American actor (d. 2015)
1920 Yusef Lateef, American musician and composer (d. 2013)
1921 Tadeusz Rozewicz, Polish poet and playwright (d. 2014)
1922 Fyvush Finkel, American actor (d. 2016)
1923 Donald Sinden, English actor (d. 2014)
1925 Robert Docking, American politician, 38th Governor of Kansas (d. 1983)
1926 Daniele Delorme, French actress and producer (d. 2015)
1928 Einojuhani Rautavaara, Finnish composer (d. 2016)
1929 William M. Gray, American scientist (d. 2016)
1931 Antony Booth, British actor (d. 2017)
1933 Peter Mansfield, British physicist (d. 2017)
1934 Abdullah Ibrahim, South African pianist and composer
1935 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent
1936 Edmond Keosayan, Armenian-Soviet musician and movie director (d. 1994)
1936 Brian Blessed, British actor
1938 Heinz Fischer, Austrian politician, former President of Austria
1939 Nicholas Grimshaw, English architect
1940 John Lennon, English musician and songwriter (The Beatles) (d. December 8, 1980)
1940 Gordon J. Humphrey, American politician
1941 Chucho Valdes, Cuban pianist and composer
1941 Giancarlo Bercellino, Italian footballer
1942 Shukri Ghanem, Prime Minister of Libya (d. 2012)
1943 Renato Cappellini, Italian footballer
1944 John Entwistle, British musician (d. 2002)
1944 Nona Hendryx, American singer-songwriter, producer and actress
1944 Francis Girod, French movie director (d. 2006)
1946 Fernando Brant, Brazilian poet and journalist (d. 2015)
1947 France Gall, French singer (d. 2018)
1947 Joe Wark, Scottish footballer (d. 2015)
1947 Bob Moose, American baseball player (d. 1976)
1948 Paul LePage, American politician, Governor of Maine
1948 Jackson Browne, American musician
1949 Bob Leinbach, American singer-songwriter and musician (Orleans)
1949 Rod Temperton, English songwriter and producer (d. 2016)
1950 Reichi Nakaido, Japanese rock music guitarist
1950 Jody Williams, American teacher and aid worker, Nobel Peace Prize winner
1951 1975
1952 Sharon Osbourne, wife of Ozzy Osbourne
1952 Dennis Stratton, English guitarist (Iron Maiden)
1953 Tony Shalhoub, American actor
1954 Scott Bakula, American actor
1954 James Fearnley, British musician (The Pogues)
1955 Steve Ovett, British athlete
1958 Alan Nunnelee, American politician (d. 2015)
1959 Boris Nemtsov, Russian politician (d. 2015)
1960 Kenny Garrett, American jazz saxophonist
1961 Ellen Wheeler, American actress, director and producer
1962 Hugh Robertson, English politician
1962 Onokuni Yasushi, Japanese sumo wrestler
1962 Jorge Burruchaga, Argentine footballer
1964 Guillermo del Toro, Mexican movie director
1964 John Ralston, Canadian actor
1966 David Cameron, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1967 Eddie Guerrero, American professional wrestler (d. 2005)
1967 Artur Davis, American politician
1968 Troy Davis, American high-profile death row inmate (d. 2011)
1969 PJ Harvey, English musician
1969 Steve McQueen, English artist and director (12 Years a Slave)
1970 Steve Jablonsky, American movie and television composer
1970 Annika Sorenstam, Swedish golfer
1970 Kenny Anderson, American baseball player
1971 Jason Jones, American director, producer and actor
1973 Erin Daniels, American actress
1973 Fabio Lione, Italian singer-songwriter and keyboardist
1973 Carlos Pavon, Honduran footballer
1974 Shmuel Herzfeld, American rabbi and activist
1975 Sean Lennon, American musician, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono
1975 Mark Viduka, Australian footballer
From 1976
1976 Nick Swardson, American actor and comedian
1978 Nicky Byrne, Irish singer (Westlife)
1979 Gonzalo Sorondo, Uruguayan footballer
1979 Brandon Routh, American actor
1979 Chris O'Dowd, Irish actor
1979 DJ Rashad, American DJ and musician (d. 2014)
1979 Alex Greenwald, American musician, actor and record producer
1980 Henrik Zetterberg, Swedish ice hockey player
1981 Darius Miles, American basketball player
1982 Antonio Mendonca, Angolan footballer
1982 Shi Jun, Chinese footballer
1983 Stephen Gionta, American ice hockey player
1983 Andreas Zuber, Austrian racing driver
1983 Spencer Grammer, American actress
1983 Jang Mi-Ran, South Korean weightlifter
1983 Zeng Jinyan, Chinese blogger and human rights activist
1984 Djamel Mesbah, French-Algerian footballer
1986 Laure Manaudou, French swimmer
1987 Samantha Murray, English tennis player
1990 Marcus Willis, English tennis player
1992 Tyler James Williams, American actor and singer
1993 Lauren Davis, American tennis player
1993 Scotty McCreery, American singer
1994 Jodelle Ferland, Canadian actress
1996 Bella Hadid, American model
2008 Bo, dog of Barack Obama
Deaths
Up to 1900
1047 - Pope Clement II (b. 1005)
1253 - Robert Grosseteste, English statesman and bishop
1273 - Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of Germany
1390 - King John I of Castile (b. 1358)
1555 - Justus Jonas, German Protestant reformer (b. 1493)
1562 - Gabriele Falloppio, Italian anatomist (b. 1523)
1569 - Vladimir of Staritsa, Russian prince (b. 1533)
1581 - Louis Bertrand, Spanish missionary and saint (b. 1526)
1597 - Ashikaga Yoshiaki, Japanese shogun (b. 1537)
1691 - William Sacheverell, English statesman (b. 1638)
1709 - Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, English mistress of Charles II of England (b. 1640)
1729 - Richard Blackmore, English physician and writer (b. 1654)
1793 - Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, French missionary (b. 1718)
1806 - Benjamin Banneker, American astronomer (b. 1731)
1808 - John Claiborne, American politician (b. 1777)
1831 - John Capodistria, Governor of Greece (b. 1776)
1841 - Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Prussian architect and painter (b. 1781)
1857 - Josef Ressel, Austrian inventor (b. 1793)
1873 - George Ormerod, English historian and antiquarian (b. 1785)
1897 - Jan Heemskerk, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (b. 1818)
1900 - Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Austrian composer and conductor (b. 1843)
1901 2000
1924 - Valery Bryusov, Russian writer and critic (b. 1873)
1934 - King Alexander I of Yugoslavia (assassinated) (b. 1888)
1934 - Louis Barthou, Prime Minister of France (assassinated) (b. 1862)
1937 - Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse (b. 1868)
1941 - Helen Morgan, American singer and actress (b. 1900)
1943 - Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1865)
1950 - George Hainsworth, NHL goaltender (b. 1895)
1953 - Jimmy Finlayson, Scottish-American actor (b. 1887)
1955 - Theodor Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna (b. 1875)
1956 - Marie Doro, American actress (b. 1882)
1958 - Pope Pius XII (b. 1876)
1961 - Werner Jaeger, German mathematician (b. 1888)
1962 - Milan Vidmar, Slovenian electrical engineer and chess player (b. 1885)
1967 - Che Guevara, Argentine revolutionary and guerilla leader (executed) (b. 1928)
1967 - Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English chemist (b. 1897)
1967 - Andre Maurois, French writer (b. 1885)
1972 - Miriam Hopkins, American actress (b. 1902)
1974 - Oskar Schindler, German businessman (b. 1908)
1976 - Walter Warlimont, German general (b. 1894)
1976 - Bob Moose, American baseball player (b. 1947)
1978 - Jacques Brel, Belgian musician (b. 1929)
1985 - Emilio Garrastazu Medici, President of Brazil (b. 1905)
1987 - Clare Boothe Luce, American diplomat (b. 1903)
1987 - Guru Gopinath, Indian classical dancer (b. 1908)
1987 - William P. Murphy, American doctor, won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1892)
1988 - Felix Wankel, German engineer (b. 1902)
1989 - Penny Lernoux, American journalist and writer (b. 1940)
1991 - Dagmar Lange (Maria Lang), Swedish writer (b. 1914)
1995 - Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1903)
1995 - Kukrit Pramoj, Prime Minister of Thailand (b. 1911)
1996 - Walter Kerr, American theater critic (b. 1913)
2000 - David Dukes, American actor (b. 1945)
From 2001
2001 - Dagmar, American television personality (b. 1921)
2002 - Aileen Wuornos, American serial killer (b. 1956)
2005 - Louis Nye, American actor (b. 1913)
2006 - Paul Hunter, British snooker player (b. 1978)
2008 - Gidget Gein, American musician (b. 1969)
2009 - Horst Szymaniak, German footballer (b. 1934)
2010 - Maurice Allais, French economist (b. 1911)
2012 - Paddy Roy Bates, British founder of the Sealand micronation (b. 1921)
2013 - Chopper Read, Australian crime figure and author (b. 1954)
2013 - Wilfried Martens, former Prime Minister of Belgium (b. 1936)
2014 - Peter A. Peyser, American politician (b. 1921)
2014 - Jan Hooks, American actress and comedienne (b. 1957)
2015 - Ravindra Jain, Indian composer (b. 1944)
2015 - Tony Rafty, Australian caricaturist (b. 1915)
2015 - Du Runsheng, Chinese politician (b. 1913)
2015 - Jerry Parr, American secret service agent (b. 1930)
2015 - Geoffrey Howe, British politician (b. 1926)
2016 - Andrzej Wajda, Polish movie director (b. 1926)
2017 - Manuel Busto, French cyclist (b. 1932)
2017 - Allan Chumak, Russian faith healer (b. 1935)
2017 - Rafe Mair, Canadian lawyer, political commentator, journalist and politician (b. 1931)
2017 - Jean Rochefort, French actor (b. 1930)
2017 - Fernando de Szyszlo, Peruvian painter, printmaker and sculptor (b. 1925)
2017 - Michel Diefenbacher, French politician (b. 1947)
2017 - Hessie, Cuban textile artist (b. 1936)
2018 - Warner Saunders, American news anchor (b. 1935)
2018 - Thomas A. Steitz, American Nobel Prize-winning biochemist (b. 1940)
2018 - Carolyn Warner, American politician (b. 1930)
Observances
Independence Day (Uganda)
Leif Erikson Day
Hangul Day (South Korea)
October 09