THURSDAY, Oct. 22, 2026

1633-Battle of Liaoluo Bay: Dutch East India Company is defeated by Chinese Ming naval forces in the southern Fujian Sea

1721-Tsar Peter the Great titles himself "Emperor of All Russia"

1879-Thomas Edison perfects the carbonized cotton filament light bulb

1884-International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) worldwide and creates 24 international time zones with longitude zero at the Greenwich Meridian

1907-A run on Knickerbocker Trust Company stock leads to a nationwide run on US banks and the Panic of 1907

1962-U.S. President John F. Kennedy makes a live television address about Soviet missile bases in Cuba and imposes a naval blockade on Cuba, beginning the Cuban Missile Crisis

1964-French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre refuses the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying he doesn't want to be "institutionalized"

1999-Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity.