ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 22

1633 The Ming dynasty defeats the Dutch East India Company.

1721 The Russian Empire is proclaimed by Tsar Peter I after the Swedish defeat in the Great Northern War.

1784 Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

1797 André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump, from 1 000m above Paris.

1859 Spain declares war on Morocco. 1877 The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners.

1878 The Bramall Lane stadium in Sheffield sees the first rugby match played under floodlights.

1879 Using a filament of carbonised thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb. It lasts 13½ hours before burning out.

1884 The Royal Observatory in Britain is adopted as the prime meridian of longitude.

1895 In Paris an express train derails after overrunning the buffer stop, crashing through a wall and falling 10m to the road below.

1923 The royalist Leonardopoulos-Gargalidis coup d’état attempt fails in Greece, discrediting the monarchy and paving the way for the Second Hellenic Republic.

1946 Operation Osoaviakhim takes place, recruiting thousands of military-related technical specialists from the Soviet occupation zone of post-World War II Germany for employment in the Soviet Union.

1947 The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan begins, having started just after the partition of India.

1957 The first US casualties suffered in what became the Vietnam war.

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F Kennedy announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the communist nation.

1964 French philospher Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but turns down the honour.

1966 The Supremes become the first allfemale music group to attain a No 1 selling album (The Supremes A’ Go-Go).

1966 The Soviet Union launches Luna 12. 1968 Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic after orbiting the Earth 163 times.

2001 Grand Theft Auto III is released, popularising a genre of open-world, actionadventure video games, as well as spurring controversy around violence in video games.