THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― OCTOBER 19

October 19 is the 292nd day of the year (293rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 73 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56).

NATIONAL SEAFOOD BISQUE DAY  

202 BC – Second Punic War: At the Battle of Zama, Roman legions under Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus defeat Hannibal Barca, leader of the army defending Carthage.

1469 – Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.

1789 – Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.

1812 – Napoleon Bonaparte retreats from Moscow.

1900 – German theoretical physicist Max Planck discovers the law of black-body radiation (Planck's law).

1912 – Italy takes possession of Tripoli, Libya from the Ottoman Empire.

1933 – Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

1943 – Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.

1950 – The People's Republic of China joins the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu River to fight United Nations forces.

1960 – Cold War: The United States government imposes a near-total trade embargo against Cuba.

1973 – President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes. He eventually surrenders the recordings with an 18 1-2 minute gap in them.

1984 – Roman Catholic priest from Poland, Jerzy Popiełuszko, associated with the Solidarity Union, is murdered by three agents of the Polish Communist internal intelligence agency.

1987 – Black Monday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 22%, 508 points.

2003 – Mother Teresa is beatified by Pope John Paul II.


2005 – Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

2012 – A bomb explosion kills eight people and injures 110 people in Beirut, Lebanon.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1810 – Cassius Marcellus Clay, American journalist, lawyer, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Russia(d. 1903)

1876 – Mordecai Brown, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 1945)

1923 – Ruth Carter Stevenson, American art collector, founded the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX (d. 2013)

1931 – John le Carré, English intelligence officer and author

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.