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Today in History, October 14th

On October 14, 1066, William of Normandy beat King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings. Plus Yeager breaks the sound barrier.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published October 14, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

October 14 is best known for the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when William of Normandy defeated King Harold II and set the Normans on course to rule England. The date also saw Chuck Yeager fly faster than sound in 1947 and Theodore Roosevelt shot in Milwaukee in 1912.

The big story: The Battle of Hastings (1066)

England had three kings in 1066, and October 14 settled which line would stick. When Edward the Confessor died in January, Harold Godwinson was proclaimed King Harold II. William, Duke of Normandy, insisted the crown had been promised to him. He crossed the Channel, came ashore at Pevensey in late September with roughly 7,000 men and cavalry, and set up near Hastings. Harold arrived on October 13. William attacked the next morning at Senlac Hill, about seven miles from the town. The fight lasted all day. By its end Harold was dead (legend says an arrow struck him in the eye) and his army was broken. William marched on London, took its surrender and was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day. The Anglo-Saxon era was over. French became the language of the court and slowly blended into Old English, which helps explain why English has two words for so many things. William’s Domesday Book later took stock of the kingdom he had won.

More events on October 14

Year	What happened
1806	Napoleon routed the Prussian army at Jena while Marshal Davout broke the main Prussian force at nearby Auerstädt, a double victory that left Prussia at France’s mercy.
1892	The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first collection of Holmes stories, was published.
1912	Former President Theodore Roosevelt, running for the White House again, was shot in Milwaukee and survived.
1926	A.A. Milne published Winnie-the-Pooh.
1943	About 300 Jewish prisoners at the Nazi death camp at Sobibor, in occupied Poland, staged a revolt and breakout. Only about 50 Sobibor prisoners survived the war.
1944	German field marshal Erwin Rommel, linked to the plot against Hitler, took his own life rather than face trial.
1947	Test pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane faster than the speed of sound over Rogers Dry Lake in California, the first person to do so.
1962	A U-2 spy plane photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, the images that set off the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1964	Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At 35, he was the youngest person to receive it up to that time.
1964	Nikita Khrushchev was forced out as Soviet premier and Communist Party leader.
1994	Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction opened in theaters.

Born on October 14

1890: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied commander in Europe in World War II and the 34th U.S. president, born in Denison, Texas.
1894: E.E. Cummings, poet famous for playing with punctuation and lowercase letters.
1906: Hannah Arendt, German-born political philosopher who wrote about totalitarianism.
1939: Ralph Lauren, fashion designer whose name became a worldwide clothing label.