Human Saga

On October 13

No pivotal events are recorded on exactly October 13 in the Human Saga — here is the surrounding week in history.

This week in history (Oct 10 – Oct 16)

12 October 1492Columbus's first voyage reaches the AmericasExploration & colonisation

On 12 October 1492 an expedition led by the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus, financed by the Crown of Castile, made landfall on an island in the Bahamas that its Lucayan inhabitants called Guanahani and that Columbus renamed San…

1911–1912 (Wuchang Uprising 10 October 1911; abdication 12 February 1912)The Xinhai Revolution and the fall of the QingPolitics & governance

The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and ended more than two thousand years of imperial rule in China.

16–28 October 1962Cuban Missile CrisisMilitary & conflict

For thirteen days in October 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union came closer to nuclear war than at any other point in the Cold War. After U.S.

10 October 680 CEBattle of Karbala and the Sunni–Shia divideReligion & ideology

On 10 October 680 CE, near Karbala in present-day Iraq, a small band of relatives and supporters of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad, was surrounded and massacred by the far larger army of the Umayyad caliph Yazid I.

On 16 October 690 CE, Wu Zetian formally declared herself huangdi (emperor), supplanting the Tang dynasty with her own short-lived Zhou dynasty and becoming the only woman in the history of China to rule as emperor in her own right rather…

14 October 1066The Norman Conquest of England (Battle of Hastings)Military & conflict

The death of the childless King Edward the Confessor in January 1066 triggered a contested succession to the English throne.

16–19 October 1813Battle of Leipzig (Battle of the Nations)Military & conflict

Fought from 16 to 19 October 1813 around Leipzig in Saxony, the Battle of the Nations was the largest engagement of the Napoleonic Wars and one of the largest in European history before the twentieth century, involving more than half a…

11 October 1962 – 8 December 1965The Second Vatican CouncilReligion & ideology

The Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII and continued under Pope Paul VI, met in St. Peter's Basilica in four sessions from 11 October 1962 to 8 December 1965.

12 October 2002The Bali bombingsMilitary & conflict

On 12 October 2002 militants linked to the Southeast Asian jihadist network Jemaah Islamiyah detonated bombs in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali.

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