POPnews - October 9th

[It was Norway's Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Ingstad who
first posited that Leif Ericson's settlement in Vinland had been at
L'Anse aux Meadows in north-western Newfoundland;
today they are the subjects of a statue at the site.]
768 CE - Carloman I and Charlemagne - the sons of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon - were crowned Kings of The Franks, co-ruling until Carloman's death in December 771.

1000 - This is the date traditionally given for Leif Ericson's arrival at L'Anse aux Meadows, in Vinland, and thus the date of the Viking's 'discovery' of North America.

1238 - James I of Aragon conquered Valencia and founded the Kingdom of Valencia, itself an important milestone both in the Reconquista and the formation of the modern-day Kingdom of Spain.

1446 - The hangul alphabet was published in Korea.

1514 - France's King Louis XII married Mary Tudor, sister of England's King Henry VIII.

1558 - The Venezuelan city of Mérida - currently capital of the Venezuelan state of Mérida - was founded by Juan Rodríguez Suárez, who named the settlement after his hometown of Mérida, in Spain.

1604 - Supernova 1604 - the most recent such phenomenon to be observed in the Milky Way - occurred in the constellation Ophiuchus; although first observed on this day in 1604 it was Johannes Kepler's observation of it eleven days later that is considered the official discovery.

1804 - Hobart, Tasmania - originally founded as a penal colony the year before - was moved to a more amenable location and named Hobarton after Lord Hobart, the Colonial Secretary.

1820 - The Ecuadoran city of Guayaquil declared its independence from Spain.

1824 - Slavery was abolished in Costa Rica, apparently.

1831 - Ioannis Kapodistrias - the father of modern Greece, who'd fought the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire and became the new country's first President - was assassinated in retaliation for his imprisonment of Maniot leader Petrobey Mavromichalis by his captive's brother Konstantis and son Georgios on the steps of Saint Spyridon church in Nafplion.

1845 - The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, was received into the Roman Catholic Church; from a young age Newman was involved in the Oxford Movement, which sought to make England a Catholic country again.

1941 - A coup in Panama declared Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango the new president.

1959 - Britain's Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan handily won a third consecutive term, defeating Hugh Gaitskell and the Labour Party at the polls, following which he was invited by Elizabeth II to form her next government.

1962 - Uganda gained its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming a Commonwealth realm.

1967 - A day after his capture, Che Guevara was executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.

1983 - An assassination attempt was made against South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during an official visit to the Burmese capital of Rangoon to lay a wreath at the Martyr’s Mausoleum in honour of Aung San; Chun survived the blast but 17 of his entourage (including foreign minister Lee Bum Suk among four cabinet ministers) were killed and 17 others were injured. Four Burmese officials also died in the blast, which were carried out by three North Korean agents within the Burmese military, Kang Min-chul among them.

1986 - Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera - itself based on Gaston Leroux's novel of the same name - had its first performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, starring Michael Crawford as the title character and the composer's wife Sarah Brightman as the object of the phantom's obsession.

1991 - The first ever sumo wrestling tournament to be held off of Japanese soil in that sport's 1500-year history was held at London's Royal Albert Hall.
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