What happened on 26 October?

15 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1962 Khrushchev's secret offer to withdraw from Cuba A long, emotional private letter from Khrushchev reaches Washington through the evening: he offers to withdraw the Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for a pledge not to invade
2. 1979 Assassination of Park Chung-hee KCIA director Kim Jae-gyu shoots President Park Chung-hee at a dinner in Seoul, ending 18 years of authoritarian rule and opening the turbulent path to Korean democratisation.
3. 1860 The handshake at Teano On a road north of Naples, Garibaldi meets Victor Emmanuel, hails him as King of Italy, and hands over everything the Thousand conquered — half the peninsula, surrendered by a revo
4. 1916 Born: François Mitterrand First socialist president of the Fifth Republic; in office 1981-1995.
5. 1597 Battle of Myeongnyang Restored to command after disgrace, Yi holds a narrow strait with thirteen ships against over a hundred Japanese vessels and wins.
6. 1759 Born: Georges Danton Thunderous orator of the Cordeliers and Minister of Justice after the fall of the monarchy; he helped create the Revolutionary Tribunal, then pleaded for clemency and was guillotin
7. 1825 Erie Canal opens 584 km canal linked the Great Lakes to the Atlantic; transformed US trade.
8. 1951 Winston Churchill's second premiership Churchill returns at seventy-six, keeps most of the Attlee settlement and hands over after a stroke.
9. 1947 Kashmir's maharaja signs the Instrument of Accession With Pashtun raiders from Pakistan driving on Srinagar, Hari Singh — Hindu ruler of a Muslim-majority state who had hoped to join neither dominion — accedes to India in exchange fo
10. 1937 Picasso's The Weeping Woman Made in the months after Guernica, Picasso's fractured portrait of Dora Maar in tears distils the painting's grief into a single face.
11. 2017 Premiership of Jacinda Ardern The Christchurch mosque attacks and gun-law reform, the elimination strategy against Covid, and resignation citing an empty tank.
12. 1962 US Navy boards the freighter Marucla The destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. — named for the president's brother — stops and searches the Soviet-chartered freighter Marucla, the Cuba quarantine's first and only boardi
13. 1899 Chekhov's Uncle Vanya On a decaying estate, Vanya discovers he has wasted his life serving a pompous professor — Chekhov's quiet tragedy of provincial despair, premiered by the Moscow Art Theatre.
14. 1863 Football Association founded Clubs meeting at the Freemasons' Tavern in London agree common rules for football, splitting from the handling game that became rugby — the founding document of the world's most po
15. 2017 Ardern becomes New Zealand's prime minister Ardern takes office at 37 after less than three months as Labour leader, and becomes the second elected leader to give birth in office.