Some notable facts about this date, for more, visit http://www.onthisday.com
facts
1571 Battle of Lepanto: Holy League of southern European nations destroy Ottoman fleet in significant loss off Western Greece
1737 40 foot waves sink 20,000 small craft and kill 300,000 near Bengal, India
1763 George III of Great Britain issues Proclamation of 1763, closing lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement
1919 KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, established (oldest existing airline)
2001 The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan starts with an air assault and covert operations on the ground
Deaths
290 [Christian] Sergius, roman soldier/martyred saint, decapitated
929 Charles III, the Plain, King of France (893-929), dies
1792 George Mason, American statesman (advocated for the Bill of Rights), dies of natural causes at 66
1849 Edgar Allan Poe, American writer, poet and critic (The Pit and the Pendulum), dies in Baltimore at 40
1950 Willis Carrier, American engineer (developed modern air conditioning), dies at 73
1988 Billy Daniels, African-American singer (Billy Daniels Show), dies of cancer at 73
1991 Leo Durocher, baseball player and manager (Dodgers, Giants), dies at 86
2004 Ken Bigley, British civil engineer, kidnapped and murdered in Iraq (b. 1942)