Interesting Facts

31st October 1984 - Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, was killed by two assassins believed to be her own bodyguards. Booh - It's Halloween!

29th October 1986 - Margaret Thatcher officially opened the M25 motorway.

23rd October 1958 - Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced Smurfs to the world.

21st October 1966 at 09:15 - 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a tip of coal waste slid onto the village of Aberfan in South Wales. At the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Aberfan Disaster, the NCB was found responsible for the disaster, due to "ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communication". No NCB employee was fired, demoted or even disciplined.

20th October 1781 - British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered to a Franco-American force led by George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War. 2015 - English radio launched online.

18th October 1922 - The BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) was established.

15th October 1901 - Walt Disney was born. 2013 - The Royal Mail was privatised.

14th October 1066 - The Battle of Hastings, Duke William of Normandy and Norman army defeated the English forces of Harold II. 1773 - The first recorded Ministry of Education, the Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Commission of National Education), was formed in Poland.

4th October 1957: The Russian satellite, Sputnik was launched into space. Becoming the first man-made object ever to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

4th October 1924 - Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared in the children's verse book, "When We Were Very Young".

3rd October 1990 - Germany officially reunified when the six re-established federal states (Bundesländer) of East Germany–Brandenburg, Berlin (formed by uniting the two halves of the formerly divided city), Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia–formally joined the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).