Today in History, October 12th
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus's expedition sighted and landed on an island in the Bahamas. Plus the first Oktoberfest and the USS Cole attack.
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October 12 is best known for 1492, when Christopher Columbus’s expedition sighted an island in the Bahamas and went ashore, the first of his landings in the Americas. The date also saw the first Oktoberfest in Munich in 1810 and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
The big story: Columbus reaches the Americas (1492)
Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to fund Christopher Columbus’s plan to reach Asia by sailing west after they completed their conquest of Granada in January 1492. He sailed from Palos, Spain, on August 3 with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. His math was off. He believed the globe was smaller than it is and had no idea a whole ocean, the Pacific, lay beyond the land in his way. On October 12, 1492, his crew sighted an island in the Bahamas, probably the one later called Watling Island, and went ashore that day. Columbus claimed it for Spain. He sailed on to Cuba, which he took for mainland China, and in December to Hispaniola, which he hoped might be Japan. He returned to Spain in March 1493 and made four voyages in all, never finding the sea route to Asia he wanted. For the people already living in the Americas, his arrival opened centuries of brutal colonization, enslavement and death from violence and disease.
More events on October 12
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1810 | Munich held the first Oktoberfest, a horse race celebrating the wedding of Bavaria’s crown prince. |
| 1870 | Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee died at his home in Lexington, Virginia. |
| 1898 | A riot broke out at a coal mine in Virden, Illinois, when strikebreakers were brought in, a landmark moment in U.S. labor history. |
| 1915 | British nurse Edith Cavell was executed by a German firing squad in occupied Belgium for helping Allied soldiers escape. |
| 1945 | Desmond T. Doss received the Medal of Honor, the first conscientious objector to earn it. |
| 1960 | Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev protested a speech at the United Nations by pounding the table. Whether he also waved or banged his shoe has long been debated. |
| 1964 | The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, the first spacecraft to carry more than one person. |
| 1968 | Equatorial Guinea won independence from Spain. |
| 1986 | Arms talks between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, collapsed in a dispute over Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense plan. |
| 2000 | Suicide bombers linked to al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39. |
| 2002 | Three bombings in Kuta, on the Indonesian island of Bali, killed 202 people. |
| 2007 | Al Gore and a United Nations climate panel were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of climate change. |
Born on October 12
- 1866: Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour Party prime minister, born in Lossiemouth, Scotland.
- 1932: Dick Gregory, comedian and activist, born in St. Louis, Missouri.
- 1935: Luciano Pavarotti, Italian operatic tenor, born in Modena, Italy.
- 1968: Hugh Jackman, actor, born in Sydney, Australia.
Keep reading
Sources
- Columbus reaches the New World, History.com
- This Day in History: October 12, History.com
- On This Day: October 12, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Ramsay MacDonald, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Dick Gregory, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Luciano Pavarotti, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Hugh Jackman, Encyclopaedia Britannica
