POPnews - October 23rd

42 BCE - During Rome's Republican civil wars, following the Second Battle of Philippi, Brutus's army was decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian, following which Brutus committed suicide.

425 CE - Valentinian III became the Emperor of Rome at the age of 6.

1086 - During the Reconquista, at the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeated the forces of Castile's King Alfonso VI.

1157 - When Denmark's King Sweyn III was killed at the Battle of Grathe Heath his death ended the civil war in that country and enabled his rival to assume the throne as Valdemar I.

1295 - The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England was signed in Paris.

1641 - The Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out - an anniversary commemorated by Irish Protestants for the next 200 years.

1642 - The Battle of Edgehill, the first major battle of the First English Civil War, pitted King Charles I and Prince Rupert of the Rhine against the Earl of Essex.

1707 - The Parliament of Great Britain - that is, England and Scotland combined, under the terms of the Acts of Union - met for the first time at the Palace of Westminster at the behest of Queen Anne.

1739 - British Prime Minister Robert Walpole reluctantly declared the War of Jenkins' Ear against Spain.

1812 - Claude François de Malet, a French general, undertook a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russia and claiming he himself had been made the commandant of Paris. For his impertinence, De Malet would be executed on October 29th.

1935 - Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard 'Lulu' Rosencrantz were all fatally shot at about 10:15 pm in the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey. Charles 'The Bug' Workman and Emanuel 'Mendy' Weiss, two hitmen working for Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter's Murder, Inc. carried out the deed. Berman died first, some four hours after the shooting; Landau died four hours after that. Schultz lingered, delirious, for 22 hours, having his last words taken down by a stenographer, while Rosencrantz died 7 hours later. Workman eventually served 23 years in prison for his part in the killings, while Weiss was executed for another murder he committed in 1944.

1942 - All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner were killed when it was struck by a US Army Air Forces bomber over Palm Springs, California; amongst the victims was award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger, responsible for such songs as Thanks for the Memory, Love in Bloom, and Blue Hawaii.

1956 - Hungarians rose up in revolt against their Communist overlords; the Hungarian Revolution lasted until November 4th, at which time a large Soviet army arrived and occupied Budapest.

1958 - An underground earthquake - since dubbed The Springhill Mine Bump - trapped 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, which at the time was North America's deepest coal mine. This disaster was the third to occur at the location, following a fire in 1891 and an explosion in 1956. It took rescuers from around the world nine days to dig out 100 survivors, making the death toll 74.

1983 - The US Marines barracks in Beirut was hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 US Marines; a French army barracks in Lebanon was also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops, marking one of the bloodiest days in the Lebanese Civil War for the Multinational Force in Lebanon.

1989 - The Hungarian Republic was officially declared by president Mátyás Szűrös, replacing the communist Hungarian People's Republic; the day is celebrated in Hungary as a national holiday.

1992 - Emperor Akihito of Japan became the first head of state from that country to visit China.

2001 - Apple released the iPod.

2002 - Chechen terrorists seized a theatre in the Dubrovka neighbourhood of Moscow, holding more than 850 hostages; the event was handled as disastrously as a later one in Beslan in 2004, and remains a blot on the already heavily blotted leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As many as 200 people died, most from a mysterious gas meant to neutralize the Chechens - a gas which Putin's government still refuses to identify.
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