Historical Events  -  October 12

1492 : Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas in the West Indies. He understood that we had reached India.

1823 : Charles McIntosh of Scotland sold the first raincoat.

1847 : Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske started Siemens AG Company.

1850 : America’s first women’s medical college opened.

1871 : In India, the British government criminalized 161 castes and tribes under the Criminal Tribes Act.

1901 : US President Theodore Roosevelt officially renamed the executive mansion the White House.

1960 : Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev knocked on the table to make his point while addressing the United Nations.

1964 : For the first time in the world, the Soviet Union sent astronauts into space on this day without wearing a spacesuit.

1968 : The 19th Olympic Games began in Mexico City, Mexico.

1983 : Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei was sentenced to four years in prison for accepting a bribe of 200, 000 US dollars from Lockheed Corporation.

1988 : Guerrillas attacked an Indian Peace Corps convoy at the University of Jaffna to capture an LTTE leader. The heavy loss of the Indian squad.

1998 : Pallavi Shah of Kolhapur, India, won the 33rd Chess Olympiad and gets the title of International Woman Master.

1999 : Pakistan’s military general Parvesh Musharraf took over power of the country by overthrowing then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

2000 : The Millennium World Food Prize was awarded to Indian plant geneticist Dr. Surinder K. Vasal and Mexican botanist Dr. Evangelina Villegas for developing a protein-rich maize variety.

2001 : Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2019 : Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya became the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:40 in Vienna. 

 

Famous Birthdays   – October  12

1537: Edward VI of England, King of England, Tudor dynasty.

1860: Elmer Ambrose Sperry, American inventor, the founder of Gyro Compass.

1866: Ramsay MacDonald, British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom.

1868: August Horch, founder of the Audi Motor Company.

1875: Aleister Crowley, English poet, mountaineer, and occultist.

1911: Vijay Merchant, Indian cricketer, cricket critic, businessman and social activist.

1918: MA Chidambaram, Indian Industrialist, cricket administrator, and BCCI President. 

1919: Vijaya Raje Scindia, Indian politician.

1921: Jayant Sridhar and Jayantrao Tilak, an Indian leader of the United Maharashtra Movement.

1922: Shanta Shelke, Indian poet and lyricist.

1938: Nida Fazli, a prominent Indian Hindi and Urdu poet, lyricist and dialogue writer.

1968: Hugh Jackman, Australian actor, and producer.

 

Death Anniversaries   – October 12

1967: Ram Manohar Lohia, Indian Socialist leader, eminent parliamentarian, and writer.

1979: Katharine Burr Blodgett, American physicist, and chemist.

1996: Rene Lacoste, French lawn tennis player, and father of polo t-shirts.

1997: John Denver, an American singer-songwriter, record producer, actor, activist, and humanitarian, whose greatest commercial success was as a solo singer.

2011: Dennis Ritchie, creator of C programming language.

2012: Sukhdev Singh Kang, Indian judge and politician.