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October 22 in History

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Blind Reckoning in the Western Approaches

October 22, 1707

Blind Reckoning in the Western Approaches

On a pitch black October night in seventeen hundred and seven, Britain's most celebrated admiral steered twenty-one warships straight into jagged granite reefs within sight of home. How did a decorated naval hero and his fleet of sailing masters mistake the deadliest rocks in the Atlantic for the open waters of the English Channel?

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Also on this day

More that happened on October 22

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  1. 794Emperor Kanmu relocated the imperial capital of Japan from Nara to Heian-kyo, the city known today as Kyoto.
  2. 1797French aeronaut André-Jacques Garnerin completed the first successful parachute descent after leaping from a hydrogen balloon over Paris.
  3. 1836Sam Houston was officially inaugurated in Columbia as the first elected president of the independent Republic of Texas.
  4. 1907The collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Company sparked widespread bank runs across the United States during the Panic of 1907.
  5. 1938American inventor Chester Carlson successfully produced the first electrophotographic image in his Astoria laboratory, pioneering xerography.
  6. 1953The Kingdom of Laos attained full sovereign independence from France through the signing of the Franco-Lao Treaty.
  7. 1962President John F. Kennedy revealed Soviet nuclear missile installations in Cuba and announced a United States naval blockade.
  8. 1964French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre publicly declined the Nobel Prize in Literature, refusing to accept any official honors.
  9. 1978Pope John Paul II was formally inaugurated at Saint Peter's Square, becoming the first non-Italian pontiff in centuries.
  10. 1981The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority officially decertified PATCO following an unlawful nationwide air traffic controllers' strike.
  11. 2004Physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov announced the successful isolation of graphene using adhesive tape on graphite.

Chosen from the October 22 pages of HistoryNet and OnThisDay.com, retold in our own words.