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On this day in history - October 22

What Happened On This Day – October 22

  • 2008 India Launches its First Lunar Mission

    The unmanned space probe called Chandrayaan-1 was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation. The probe successfully landed on the Moon on November 14, 2008, making India the 5th country to land a spacecraft on the Moon.

  • 1957 François Duvalier takes office

    François Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, became the President of Haiti.

  • 1936 End of the Long March in China

    The Long March, a 6000-mile journey made by members of the Red Army led by Mao Zedong came to an end. The March was undertaken as a way to escape the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek. The end of the March is also known in China as the “union of the three armies”.

  • 1884 International Meridian Conference Adopts Greenwich, England as initial longitudinal meridian

    26 countries participated in the conference which was held in Washington, D.C. In addition to making the meridian passing through the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude or 0 degree longitude, the conference also defined a universal day which would “begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight at the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian; and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours”.

  • 1797 First Person to Jump With a Parachute

    French balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin jumped out of a balloon over Parc Monceau in Paris using a silk parachute that he made himself.

Illustration of stork, signifying birth

Births On This Day,
October 22

  • 1973 Ichiro Suzuki

    Japanese baseball player

  • 1949 Arsène Wenger

    French footballer, manager

  • 1870 Ivan Bunin

    Russian author, poet, Nobel Prize laureate

  • 1844 Louis Riel

    Canadian politician

  • 1811 Franz Liszt

    Hungarian pianist, composer

Illustration of tombstone, signifying death

Deaths On This Day,
October 22

  • 2002 Richard Helms

    American diplomat, 8th Director of Central Intelligence

  • 1995 Kingsley Amis

    English author, poet, critic

  • 1954 Jibanananda Das

    Bengali poet

  • 1906 Paul Cézanne

    French painter

  • 741 Charles Martel

    Frankish military leader, politician