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October 19 in History

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Thirty Minutes Over Paris

October 19, 1901

Thirty Minutes Over Paris

In October 1901, an eccentric Brazilian heir dared to fly a petrol powered airship through the heart of Paris and around the Eiffel Tower. Could anyone truly steer through the open air within half an hour, or would the clock and the wind defeat him?

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Also on this day

More that happened on October 19

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  1. 202 BCERoman forces commanded by Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army at Zama, ending the Second Punic War.
  2. 439Vandal forces commanded by King Gaiseric seized the Roman city of Carthage, establishing a powerful kingdom in North Africa.
  3. 1469Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile, setting the foundation for the eventual unification of the kingdoms of Spain.
  4. 1781British forces under General Cornwallis formally surrendered to American and French troops at Yorktown, effectively securing American independence.
  5. 1812French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte initiated his disastrous retreat from Moscow after failing to force a Russian surrender.
  6. 1813Coalition armies of Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Sweden decisively defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at Leipzig in the Battle of the Nations.
  7. 1847English author Charlotte Brontë released her celebrated Victorian novel Jane Eyre under the masculine pseudonym Currer Bell.
  8. 1950United Nations forces captured the North Korean capital of Pyongyang as communist troops retreated northward toward the Chinese border.
  9. 1954Britain agreed to withdraw all military personnel from Egypt, concluding decades of imperial military occupation around the Suez Canal.
  10. 1987Global financial markets suffered severe losses on Black Monday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by twenty-two percent.
  11. 1989The British Court of Appeal quashed the wrongful convictions of four individuals imprisoned over the Guildford pub bombings.

Chosen from the October 19 pages of HISTORY, HistoryNet and OnThisDay.com, retold in our own words.