Shimla, Oct. 12 Keekli Bureau
2001
The centennial Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to the United Nations and the organization’s secretary-general, Kofi Annan.
2000
While preparing to refuel in the Yemeni port of Aden, the USS Cole, a U.S. naval destroyer, was attacked by suicide bombers associated with al-Qaeda; 17 sailors were killed and 39 wounded.
1999
American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, who was considered one of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game, died at age 63.
1998
American college student Matthew Shepard died in Fort Collins, Colorado, several days after being beaten by two men and left in the cold in Laramie, Wyoming; Shepard’s homosexuality was believed to have motivated the attack, and his death contributed to the expansion of federal hate-crime legislation.
1968
Equatorial Guinea gained its independence from Spain.
1915
During World War I, English nurse Edith Cavell was executed for assisting Allied soldiers in escaping from German-occupied Belgium.
1901
President Theodore Roosevelt officially changed the name of the president’s residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. from Executive Mansion to the White House.
1898
A landmark in labour union history, a coal-mine riot took place in Virden, Illinois, when strikebreakers were brought in.
1896
Eugenio Montale, Italian poet, prose writer, editor, and translator who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975, was born in Genoa.
1866
Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Party prime minister of the United Kingdom—in the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929–31 and in the national coalition government of 1931–35—was born.
1810
The first Oktoberfest was celebrated in Munich, in the form of a horse race held in honour of the marriage of the crown prince of Bavaria (who later became King Louis I) to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
