Explore 26 October

Sunset over the Erie Canal at North Tonawanda, New York.

Image credit

Joshua Karn · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

The Erie Canal opens

The Erie Canal opened on 26 October 1825, eight years and four months after work began. Governor DeWitt Clinton boarded the packet boat Seneca Chief at Buffalo with two barrels of Lake Erie water and set off along the 363-mile cut to the Hudson.

Eight days later he poured the water into the Atlantic at New York in a ceremony called the Wedding of the Waters. The canal linked the Great Lakes to the sea, made New York the leading American port, and pulled settlement and trade westwards. Albany, Utica, Syracuse and Buffalo all grew along its banks.

Tombstone, Arizona Territory, photographed probably in 1881.

Image credit

C. S. Fly · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Thirty seconds at the O.K. Corral

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, on 26 October 1881, and lasted about half a minute. On one side were the town’s lawmen — Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp — with their friend John ‘Doc’ Holliday; on the other, members of the loose outlaw grouping known as the Cowboys.

It is still unclear who fired first. When it stopped, Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury were dead and Ike Clanton had run. The feud went on into 1882 and killed Morgan Earp before Wyatt and Virgil left Arizona.

Thirty seconds of shooting in a mining town became the best-known episode of the American West, retold in film for more than a century.

Oscar II, king of Sweden and, until 1905, of Norway.

Image credit

Lars Larsson · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Sweden lets Norway go

On 26 October 1905 Sweden formally recognised Norwegian independence, and King Oscar II gave up his claim to the Norwegian throne. The union of the two crowns, in place since 1814, was over.

The break had begun as a quarrel about consulates: the Storting wanted Norway’s own consular service, Oscar II refused to sanction it, the Norwegian government resigned and the king could not appoint another. On 7 June the Storting declared the union dissolved.

It ended without a shot. Norway then offered the crown to a Danish prince, who took the name Haakon VII.

Park Chung Hee.

Image credit

Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

The killing of Park Chung Hee

Park Chung Hee, who had ruled South Korea since taking power in 1961, was shot dead on 26 October 1979 at a private dinner by Kim Jae Kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and a long-standing friend. Park’s chief bodyguard, Cha Chi Chol, was killed too.

Kim said at his trial that he had acted to prevent a massacre of Park’s opponents and to restore democracy; the investigation, run by General Chun Doo Hwan, concluded that he had acted to save his own position. Kim was executed.

Park’s eighteen years had transformed the South Korean economy and suppressed political opposition. His death did not bring democracy: Chun seized power within months.

Yitzhak Rabin, who signed for Israel.

Image credit

Yaakov Saar · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Israel and Jordan make peace

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty on 26 October 1994 at a ceremony in the Arava valley, near the border crossing north of Eilat. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed for Israel and Prime Minister Abdul-Salam Majali for Jordan.

Jordan became the second Arab state, after Egypt, to make peace with Israel. The treaty runs to thirty articles and five annexes, settling the international boundary, sharing the waters of the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers and the Arava groundwater, and providing for open border crossings.