From a battle in eleventh-century Spain to an earthquake in eastern Turkey, 23 October has been a day of turning points. This timeline follows the date from 1086 to 2011.
Kingdoms, conflict, faith, power and the changing medieval world.
The battle of Zallaqa as imagined by the Portuguese illustrator Roque Gameiro.Image: Roque Gameiro · Public domainThe Almoravid emir Yūsuf ibn Tāshufīn defeated Alfonso VI of León and Castile at al-Zallāqah, near Badajoz, on 23 October 1086, checking the Christian advance and establishing an Almoravid foothold in Spain.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of al-Zallāqah ↗War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.
A Kittyhawk of No. 250 Squadron RAF in Egypt, 1942.Image: Royal Air Force official photographer · Public domainThe Second Battle of El Alamein opened at 9.40pm on 23 October 1942 with a four-hour bombardment by Montgomery’s Eighth Army. The battle ran until 4 November and proved the turning point of the war in North Africa.
Source: Imperial War Museums: A five-minute history of the Second Battle of El Alamein ↗
The Japanese battleship Musashi and a destroyer under air attack in the Sibuyan Sea on 24 October 1944, the day after the battle opened.Image: Unknown · Public domainThe largest naval battle of the Second World War opened on 23 October 1944, when the American submarines Darter and Dace attacked a Japanese fleet moving through the Palawan Passage towards Leyte and sank the heavy cruisers Atago and Maya. Over the next three days nearly 200,000 men and 282 ships fought four separate engagements across 100,000 square miles of sea. The battle crippled the Japanese Combined Fleet and secured the American landings in the Philippines.
Source: Naval History and Heritage Command: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ↗
The Corvin Passage in Budapest, the centre of the fighting in 1956.Image: FOTO:Fortepan — ID 24782: Adományozó/Donor: Nagy Gyula. archive copy at the Wayback Machine · CC BY-SA 3.0A student procession in Budapest on 23 October 1956 grew into a national uprising after the security police fired on the crowd outside the radio building. The army joined the rebels and Soviet troops intervened the following day.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hungarian Revolution, 1956 ↗
Marines, chaplains and families observe a moment of silence at a memorial service for those killed in Beirut.Image: Gunnery Sgt. R.D. Lucas · Public domainTwo lorry bombs struck the American and French contingents of the multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut on the morning of 23 October 1983, killing 241 United States service personnel, 58 French paratroopers and six Lebanese civilians.
Source: United States Marine Corps University: The Beirut bombing, thirty years later ↗The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.
A third-generation iPod of 2003 in its dock; no freely licensed photograph of the original 2001 model exists.Image: Unknown · CC BY-SA 3.0Apple introduced the iPod on 23 October 2001: a 6.5-ounce music player with a five-gigabyte hard drive that held about a thousand CD-quality songs. Steve Jobs summed it up in five words — ‘a thousand songs in your pocket’. It went on sale on 10 November at $399. Apple claimed it had invented a new category of digital music player; within a few years the iPod had reshaped the recording industry and set the company on the path to the iPhone.
Source: Apple Newsroom: Apple presents iPod, 23 October 2001 ↗
The town of Erciş, on the shore of Lake Van, photographed after the rebuilding.Image: Medeni65 · CC BY-SA 4.0A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck about 27 kilometres north-north-east of the city of Van, in eastern Turkey, on the afternoon of 23 October 2011. More than 570 people were killed and thousands of buildings were destroyed or made uninhabitable, worst of all in the town of Erciş. Around twenty strong aftershocks followed, and a second earthquake on 9 November raised the total death toll further.
Source: United States Geological Survey: M 7.1 — 27 km NNE of Van, Turkey ↗Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.
This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 23 October, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.
Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.
Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.