This is a list of selected October 20 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
| ← October 19 | October 21 → |
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Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Douglas MacArthur and staff arrive at Leyte -
Maria Theresa of Austria -
Maria Theresa -
Monument to the R-13 missile -
Naval Battle of Navarino by Garneray -
Sydney Opera House -
Muammar Gaddafi
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 1097 – Forces of the First Crusade arrived at Antioch, beginning an eight-month siege of the city. | unreferenced material |
| 1572 – Eighty Years' War: Soldiers of the Spanish Tercios waded across the river Scheldt at its mouth, walking overnight in water to chest height, to relieve the siege of Goes in the Spanish Netherlands. | needs more footnotes |
| 1818 – The United Kingdom and the United States signed the Treaty of 1818, which settled the Canada–United States border on the 49th parallel between the Rocky Mountains and Lake of the Woods. | refimprove section |
| 1827 – An allied British, French, and Russian naval force destroyed a combined Ottoman and Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino, a decisive moment in the Greek War of Independence. | refimprove section |
| 1883 – Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, ending Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific. | War featured on March 23; Treaty is a stub |
| 1961 – The Soviet Union performed the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf-class submarine. | refimprove section |
| 1973 – Elizabeth II, in her capacity as Queen of Australia, formally opened the Sydney Opera House on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour. | refimprove section |
| 1991 – An urban fire killed 25 people, injured 150 others, and destroyed over 3,000 homes in the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, California. | refimprove section |
Eligible
- 1740 – Under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction, Maria Theresa (pictured) ascended the Habsburg throne.
- 1936 – British woman Mabel Freer was refused entry to Australia after failing a dictation test given in Italian, leading to a debate over Australia's immigration policy.
- 1944 – World War II: Fulfilling a promise he made two years previously, General Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte to begin the recapture of the Philippines.
- 1969 – Experimental results from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center were published showing that protons were composed of smaller particles, the first evidence of quarks.
- 1973 – Watergate scandal: Both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than obey Richard Nixon's order to have Archibald Cox fired.
- 1977 – Three members of the American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd died when their chartered plane crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi.
- 1982 – During a UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, a large number of attendees trying to leave the Central Lenin Stadium resulted in a stampede that caused 66 deaths.
- 1986 – Aeroflot Flight 6502 crashed on approach to Kurumoch Airport in Samara (then Kuibyshev in the Soviet Union), killing 70 people on board.
- 2011 – First Libyan Civil War: Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed Libyan leader, was captured by rebel forces during the Battle of Sirte, and was killed shortly thereafter.
- Born/died: | Ralph d'Escures |d|1122| Catherine Gordon, Duchess of Gordon |b|1718| Pauline Bonaparte |b|1780| Otto Julius Zobel |b|1887| James Chadwick |b|1891| James Anthony Froude |d|1894|Chen Liting |b|1910| Janet Jagan |b|1920| Jean Keene |b|1923| Tom Petty |b|1950| Kamala Harris |b|1964| Francis Chan |d|1967| Paige Bueckers |b|2001| Farooq Leghari |d|2010
Notes
- Estadio Doroteo Guamuch Flores (site of another human stampede) appears on October 16, so Luzhniki disaster should not appear in the same year
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- 1939 – Pope Pius XII (pictured) published his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, which critiqued ideologies such as racism, cultural superiority and totalitarianism.
- 1951 – African-American college football player Johnny Bright was the victim of an on-field assault, eventually leading to changes in NCAA football rules that mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.
- 1967 – Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin filmed an unidentified subject, which they claimed was Bigfoot, at Six Rivers National Forest in California.
- 1984 – The Spanish trawler Sonia sank in British waters after a five-hour chase by the Irish Naval Service patrol vessel Aisling, during which almost 600 shots were fired.
- 1991 – An earthquake struck the Indian state of Uttarakhand, killing at least 768 people and destroying thousands of homes.
- Sennacherib (d. 681 BC)
- Bálint Balassi (b. 1554)
- Simon de Vos (b. 1603)
- Stéphane Hessel (b. 1917)