^B{^#!16!12 October^N! Columbus Day in the US. Feast day of St Maximilian of Lorch, Saints Felix and Cyprian, St Edwin, St Wilfrid of York, and St Ethelburga of Barking.
^B{1492^B} Columbus sighted his first land in discovering the New World, calling it San Salvador. ^B{1901^B} US President Theodore Roosevelt renamed the Executive Mansion 'The White House'. ^B{1928^B} The first iron lung was used, at Boston Children's Hospital, Massachusetts. ^B{1948^B} The first Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis, was produced at Cowley, Oxfordshire, UK. ^B{1949^B} The German Democratic Republic was declared in the Soviet sector of Berlin. ^B{1968^B} The 19th Olympic Games opened in Mexico City. ^B{1984^B} During the Tory Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, an IRA bomb exploded in the hotel in an attempt to murder the British Cabinet. ^B{1986^B} Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to visit China.
^B{^I{^#!14!Born ^N}King Edward VI, ^B{1537^B}; Elmer Ambrose Sperry, US inventor, ^B{1860^B}; James Ramsay McDonald, British statesman, ^B{1866^B}; Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer, ^B{1872^B}; Aleister Crowley, British occultist, ^B{1875^B}; Luciano Pavarotti, Italian operatic tenor, ^B{1935^B}.
^B{^I{^#!14!Died ^N}Piero della Francesca, Italian painter, ^B{1492^B}; Elizabeth Fry, English prison reformer, ^B{1845^B}; Robert Stephenson, English civil engineer, ^B{1859^B}; Robert E Lee, US Confederate general, ^B{1870^B}; Anatole France, French author, ^B{1924^B}; Tom Mix, US western film actor, ^B{1940^B}; Leon Ames, US film actor, ^B{1993^B}.
