HISTORY & TIMELINE

9 October

A journey through
9 October in history

From a new star in the sky in 1604 to a nuclear test in 2006, 9 October has been a day of beginnings and endings. This timeline follows the date across four centuries.

Begin the Timeline ↓ ← Back to Explore This Day

III

A CHANGING WORLD

Early Modern Era

Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.

1604

The remnant of the 1604 supernova, a composite of X-ray, optical and infrared images from the Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer observatories.Image: NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair · Public domain

science · Europe

A new star appears, and it was the last

On 9 October 1604 the Italian astronomer Lodovico delle Colombe saw a star in Ophiuchus that had not been there before. Johannes Kepler began watching it on 17 October and followed it for more than a year; because he published such careful observations in 1606, it carries his name. At its brightest it outshone Jupiter and could be seen in daylight for several weeks. Nobody had a telescope - it had not been invented - so it was watched by eye, in Europe, Korea, China and the Arab world. It remains the last supernova observed inside our own galaxy, and the last visible to the naked eye until 1987.

Source: NASA: 420 years ago, astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova ↗

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The 1800s

Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.

1820

The lighthouse on Cerro Santa Ana, above the old quarter of Guayaquil.Image: Padaguan · CC BY-SA 3.0

politics · Americas

Guayaquil declares itself free of Spain

On 9 October 1820 the port of Guayaquil declared its independence from Spain, and the date is still kept as the city’s independence day. The declaration did not settle matters: Ecuador’s independence was only secured by Antonio José de Sucre’s victory at Pichincha on 24 May 1822, after which the territory joined Gran Colombia. It became a separate republic in 1830, when regional rivalries broke the union apart.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Guayaquil ↗

1874

Heinrich von Stephan, the German postal official whose plan became the General Postal Union.Image: Georg Barlösius · Public domain

world · Global

Twenty-two countries agree to carry each other’s post

Before 1874, sending a letter abroad meant a tangle of separate bilateral treaties, different rates and repeated charges along the way. Heinrich von Stephan, a senior postal official in the North German Confederation, drew up a plan to replace all of it with a single arrangement, and the Swiss government called a conference in Bern on 15 September 1874. On 9 October delegates from twenty-two countries signed the Treaty of Bern, creating the General Postal Union and making the signatories, for postal purposes, one territory. It grew so quickly that the name was changed to the Universal Postal Union in 1878. It is now a United Nations agency with 192 members, and 9 October is kept as World Post Day.

Source: Universal Postal Union: History ↗

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1934

Alexander I, king of Yugoslavia from 1921 until 1934.Image: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA:Djordjes · Public domain

politics · Europe

A king and a foreign minister are killed in Marseille

King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was shot dead on 9 October 1934 during a state visit to France, as his car drove through Marseille. The French foreign minister Louis Barthou, who was with him, was also fatally wounded. The gunman acted for the Ustaše, the Croatian fascist organisation built up by Ante Pavelić after Alexander took dictatorial powers in 1929. Alexander’s eleven-year-old son became King Peter II, with Prince Paul as regent.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Alexander I, king of Yugoslavia ↗

1962

Milton Obote, who led Uganda to independence and became its first prime minister.Image: Warren K. Leffler · Public domain

politics · Africa

Uganda becomes independent

Uganda became independent of Britain on 9 October 1962, with Milton Obote as prime minister. Obote led the Uganda People’s Congress and had displaced the first prime minister after elections that April. The new country was divided along regional and ethnic lines from the start. Obote held it together by accepting a constitution that gave the kingdom of Buganda something close to federal status, an unlikely alliance between his party and the Buganda establishment. It did not last; within a decade Uganda had been through a coup and the rise of Idi Amin.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: History of Uganda ↗

1967

Alberto Korda’s 1960 photograph of Che Guevara, taken in Havana.Image: Alberto Korda, restored by Adam Cuerden · Public domain

politics · Americas

Che Guevara is shot at La Higuera

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was captured in the Bolivian hills on 8 October 1967 and held overnight in the schoolhouse at the village of La Higuera. On 9 October orders arrived from the Bolivian army headquarters that he was to be killed, and he was shot there. He was thirty-nine. American documents declassified long afterwards record that a CIA officer, Félix Rodríguez, spoke with him for about two hours beforehand and was present at his death. The Bolivian campaign had failed almost completely - the local peasantry never joined it - but the photograph Alberto Korda had taken of Guevara in Havana in 1960 went on to become one of the most reproduced images of the century.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Che Guevara ↗

1981

François Mitterrand, president of France from 1981 to 1995.Image: Comet Photo AG (Zürich) · CC BY-SA 4.0

politics · Europe

France abolishes the death penalty

Law number 81-908, dated 9 October 1981, abolished capital punishment in France. President François Mitterrand had asked his justice minister, Robert Badinter, to draft it; Badinter, who had defended men sent to the guillotine, argued the case in the National Assembly and won over enough deputies from the centre and the right to carry it. Badinter then set about making abolition difficult to reverse, and four years later France ratified the sixth protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. The ban was written into the French constitution in 2007.

Source: Légifrance (French government): Loi n° 81-908 du 9 octobre 1981 portant abolition de la peine de mort ↗

2000 TO TODAY

Modern Day

The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.

2006

The Punggye-ri test site, from a United States Geological Survey record of the later 2013 test at the same place.Image: USGS · Public domain

world · Asia

North Korea’s first nuclear test

North Korea announced on 9 October 2006 that it had tested a nuclear device, six days after saying it intended to. The explosion, at the Punggye-ri site in the north-east, yielded less than two kilotons. The international monitoring system built for the nuclear test-ban treaty picked it up even though it was then only about sixty per cent complete, with more than twenty seismic stations recording the signal; traces of xenon-133 detected at Yellowknife in Canada, 7,500 km away, confirmed a fortnight later that it had been nuclear. The UN Security Council unanimously condemned the test and imposed sanctions under resolution 1718.

Source: CTBTO Preparatory Commission: 9 October 2006, first DPRK nuclear test ↗

RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 9 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.

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