Explore 8 October

Explore 8 October: fire takes Chicago and, on the same night, kills far more people in the Wisconsin pinewoods; Che Guevara is captured in Bolivia; a boarding party in Canton starts a war. Meet Juan Perón, Sigourney Weaver and Frank Herbert, born on this date.

This day through time →8 verified events across 4 eras

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Catherine O’Leary’s cottage on DeKoven Street, photographed in 1871. The fire began in the barn behind it.

Image credit

A.H. Abbott, Photographer · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1871

The Great Chicago Fire

The fire started on the evening of 8 October 1871 on Chicago’s West Side, in the DeKoven Street barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. What happened in the barn has never been established; the story about the cow was invented by a reporter. The city was tinder-dry after months without rain, and a big fire the night before had worn out the fire brigade and damaged its equipment.

It burned until the morning of 10 October, when rain, the lake and some empty ground on the North Side finally stopped it. About 300 people died, 17,450 buildings were destroyed across almost 3.5 square miles, and roughly a third of the city’s people - close to 100,000 - had nowhere to live.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Chicago fire of 1871 ↗

Alberto Korda’s 1960 photograph of Che Guevara, taken in Havana seven years before Bolivia.

Image credit

Alberto Korda, restored by Adam Cuerden · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1967

Che Guevara is taken in the Bolivian hills

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara had gone to Bolivia in 1966 to start a guerrilla campaign that he hoped would spread across the continent. It found almost no local support. On 8 October 1967 his small column was cornered in the Quebrada del Yuro by a Bolivian ranger battalion trained and advised by the United States, and he was captured alive.

He was taken to the schoolhouse at La Higuera. Orders came from the Bolivian army headquarters the next day, and he was shot. Declassified American documents, released decades later, record a CIA officer present at his death.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Che Guevara, the Congo, Bolivia and death ↗

The capture of Commissioner Ye Mingchen by British forces in 1858, from The Illustrated Times.

Image credit

Illustrated times. [1] · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1856

A boarding party in Canton starts a war

On 8 October 1856 Chinese officials boarded the Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship registered in Hong Kong, at Canton. They arrested several of its crew on suspicion of piracy and smuggling, and were said to have hauled down the British flag. The men were released, but the insult was what mattered.

Britain had been looking for a reason to force further trading concessions out of the Qing government. The consul Harry Parkes sent a fleet up the Pearl River to attack Canton, and France joined in, using the killing of a missionary as its own pretext. The Arrow War ran until 1860 and ended in further treaties imposed on China.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Arrow War ↗

Nicholas I, prince and later king of Montenegro.

Image credit

Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1912

Montenegro opens the First Balkan War

Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 8 October 1912, opening the First Balkan War. Its partners in the Balkan League - Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece - followed ten days later. The league had been put together that spring, with Russian encouragement, to take Macedonia from a Turkey already at war with Italy.

The allies won quickly. Bulgarian troops reached the outskirts of Constantinople, and the Serbs took Skopje after their victory at Kumanovo. The Ottoman Empire lost almost all its remaining European territory - and the allies then fell out over the spoils, which brought a second Balkan war the following year.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Balkan Wars ↗

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