October 20: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1781 - Patent of Toleration, providing limited freedom of worship, is approved in Habsburg Monarchy.
2. 1818 - The Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada - United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
3. 1873 - Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers universities draft the first code of American football rules.
4. 1910 - The hull of the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the ill-fated RMS Titanic, is launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard inBelfast, Northern Ireland.
5. 1947 - The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
6. 1951 - The "Johnny Bright Incident" occurs in Stillwater, Oklahoma
7. 1961 - The Soviet Union performs the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf class submarine.
8. 1973 - "Saturday Night Massacre": President Richard Nixon fires U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Robert Bork.
9. 1973 - The Sydney Opera House opens.
10. 2011 - The former leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, and his son Mutassim Gaddafi are killed shortly after the Battle of Sirte while in the custody of NTC fighters.
11. Famous Birthdays: David M. Evans (American screenwriter and film director), Thomas Newman (American composer), Elfriede Jelinek (Austrian writer, Nobel Prize laureate), Tracy Hall (American inventor), John Dewey (American philosopher)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: October 19

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: October 21

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.