October 12 in History

Old East is a residence hall located at the north part of campus in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Built in 1793 by slave labor, it became the first state university building in the United States. The Wren Building at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, was built in 1695, but William and Mary did not become a public university until 1906.

Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin was a French balloonist and parachutist. She was the first to ascend solo and the first woman to make a parachute descent, from an altitude of 900 metres (3,000 ft) on 12 October 1799.

Dom Pedro I, known in Brazil and in Portugal as "the Liberator" or "the Soldier King" in Portugal, was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil from 1822 to 1831 and King of Portugal in 1826.

The 1856 Heraklion earthquake, also known as the Crete earthquake or Rhodes earthquake, occurred on the morning of October 12 at 02:45 am local time. This extremely catastrophic earthquake had an estimated magnitude of 7.7 to 8.3 at a depth of approximately 61 to 100 km. The earthquake was felt over a very wide area extending from Sicily, Italy to the Levant and North Africa. On the Greek island of Crete, the effects of the earthquake were cataclysmic, over 500 bodies were recovered in the city of Heraklion. Shockwaves from the earthquake were felt intensely, covering all of the Ottoman Empire; present-day Turkey, Cyprus and the Middle East where damage and human losses were reported. In Malta, the Għajn Ħadid Tower—a coastal watchtower built around the year 1638—was severely damaged in the earthquake, when its upper floor collapsed. In Cairo, Egypt, the earthquake destroyed buildings, created seiches in canals, and killed several people. Off the Egyptian and Italian coasts, sailors reported feeling a seaquake.

The Uddevalla Suffrage Association was a late-19th-century political movement founded in Uddevalla, Sweden. Local historians and the Swedish Social Democratic Party consider it the first political predecessor of the Swedish labour movement in the province of Bohuslän. Its purpose was to bring about universal suffrage in Sweden: At the time, suffrage in the country was restricted to men and based on personal wealth, therefore excluding most of the urban and rural working class from the electoral process. The Uddevalla Suffrage Association was one of many groups throughout Sweden that helped bring democratic thought into the common discourse and make way for the political breakthrough of the labour movement.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt served as vice president under William McKinley for six months, and became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901. Upon assuming the office, he was 42 years old, making him the youngest person to serve as president. Roosevelt was popular as a driving force for antitrust legislation, which earned him the nickname "the Trust Buster".

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific. The war saw important developments in weaponry including tanks, aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and chemical weapons. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, it resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million military and civilian casualties and genocide. The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic.

The Cloquet Fire was an immense forest fire in northern Minnesota, United States, in October 1918, caused by sparks on the local railroads amid dry conditions. The fire left much of western Carlton County devastated, mostly affecting Moose Lake, Cloquet, and Kettle River. Cloquet was hardest hit by the fires; it was the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history in terms of the number of casualties in a single day. It is also the third-deadliest wildfire in recorded history, behind the Peshtigo fire of 1871 and a 1936 wildfire that occurred in Kursha-2.

Fort Alcatraz was a United States Army coastal fortification on Alcatraz Island near the mouth of San Francisco Bay in California, part of the Third System of fixed fortifications, although very different from most other Third System works. Initially completed in 1859, it was also used for mustering and training recruits and new units for the Civil War from 1861 and began secondary use as a long-term military prison in 1868.

Desmond Thomas Doss was a United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with an infantry company in World War II. Due to his religious beliefs, he refused to carry a weapon.

APRA Rebelde was formed in 1959 as a splinter group of the Peruvian APRA. It was founded by a group that was expelled from APRA at a National Congress on October 12. The leader of the APRA Rebelde started orienting itself towards the radical Marxist left. In 1962, the group was refounded as the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

The Columbus Day storm of 1962 was a Pacific Northwest windstorm that struck the West Coast of Canada and the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States on October 12, 1962. Typhoon Freda was the twenty-eighth tropical depression, the twenty-third tropical storm, and the eighteenth typhoon of the 1962 Pacific typhoon season. Freda originated from a tropical disturbance over the Northwest Pacific on September 28. On October 3, the system strengthened into a tropical storm and was given the name Freda, before becoming a typhoon later that day, while moving northeastward. The storm quickly intensified, reaching its peak as a Category 3-equivalent typhoon on October 5, with maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 948 millibars (28.0 inHg). Freda maintained its intensity for another day, before beginning to gradually weaken, later on October 6. On October 9, Freda weakened into a tropical storm, before transitioning into an extratropical cyclone on the next day. On October 11, Freda turned eastward and accelerated across the North Pacific, before striking the Pacific Northwest on the next day. On October 13, the cyclone made landfall on Washington and Vancouver Island, and then curved northwestward. Afterward, the system moved into Canada and weakened, before being absorbed by another developing storm to the south on October 17.

Voskhod 1 was the seventh crewed Soviet space flight. Flown by cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, and Boris Yegorov, it launched 12 October 1964, and returned on the 13th. Voskhod 1 was the first human spaceflight to carry more than one crewman into orbit, the first flight without the use of spacesuits, and the first to carry either an engineer or a physician into outer space. It also set a crewed spacecraft altitude record of 336 km (209 mi).

Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. It has an area of 28,000 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi). Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name refers to its location both near the Equator and in the African region of Guinea. As of 2025, the country has a population of 1,853,559, over 85% of whom are members of the Fang people, the country's dominant ethnic group. The Bubi people, indigenous to Bioko, are the second largest group at approximately 6.5% of the population. Its capital is Ciudad de la Paz, replacing former capital Malabo in 2026, while its largest city is Bata.

The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire, officially known as the 2,500-year celebration of the Empire of Iran, was hosted by the Pahlavi dynasty in the Imperial State of Iran in October 1971. Concentrated at Persepolis, it consisted of an elaborate set of grand festivities that sought to honour the legacy of the Achaemenid Empire, which was founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. The event was aimed at highlighting ancient Iranian history and also showcasing the country's contemporary advances under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been reigning as the Shah of Iran since 1941. The site brought sixty members of royalty and heads of state from abroad.

Indian Airlines Flight 171 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight that crashed while attempting an emergency landing at Bombay Airport on 12 October 1976 after suffering an uncontained engine failure, killing all 95 people on board. Metal fatigue in the No. 2 engine's 10th stage high-pressure compressor disk had caused it to disintegrate. The resulting fragments severed fuel lines, causing fuel to leak into the engine and ignite, producing an uncontrolled fire that eventually affected control surfaces, leading to a loss of control.

Typhoon Tip, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Warling, was the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded worldwide. The forty-third tropical depression, nineteenth tropical storm, twelfth typhoon, and third super typhoon of the 1979 Pacific typhoon season, Tip developed out of a disturbance within the monsoon trough on October 4 near Pohnpei in Micronesia. Initially, Tropical Storm Roger to the northwest hindered the development and motion of the system, although after the storm tracked farther north, Tip was able to intensify due to more favorable conditions within the region. After passing Guam, Tip rapidly intensified and reached peak sustained winds of 305 km/h (190 mph) and a worldwide record-low sea-level pressure of 870 hPa (25.69 inHg) on October 12. At its peak, Tip was the largest tropical cyclone on record, with a windfield diameter of 2,220 km (1,380 mi). The typhoon briefly entered the area of warning responsibility for PAGASA on October 13, which gave it the Filipino name Warling. Tip slowly weakened as it continued west-northwestward and later turned to the northeast, in response to an approaching trough. After its approach, Tip made landfall in southern Japan on October 19, and became an extratropical cyclone shortly after its landfall. The system's extratropical remnants continued moving east-northeastward, until they dissipated near the Aleutian Islands on October 24.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army, officially known as the Irish Republican Army and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argued that the all-island Irish Republic continued to exist, and it saw itself as that state's army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.

The 1992 Cairo earthquake, also known as the Dahshur earthquake, occurred at 15:09 local time on 12 October, with an epicenter in the Western Desert near Dahshur, Giza, 35 km (22 mi) south of Egypt's capital city, Cairo. The earthquake had a magnitude of either 5.8 or 5.9, but was unusually destructive for its size, causing 561 deaths and injuring 12,392 people. It also made "over half a million people homeless", destroying or significantly damaging "129,000 residential buildings and houses" in tens of cities and villages across 16 governorates, in Greater Cairo, the Delta, and northern Upper Egypt. It was the most damaging seismic event to affect Egypt since 1847.

Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 746 was a Fokker F-28 flight of Iran Aseman Airlines operating on the Isfahan–Tehran route in Iran. The flight crashed near the town of Natanz on October 12, 1994, killing all the passengers and crew members.

The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in Algeria. This is an incomplete list; the total number of massacres reported is far more numerous.

Abkhazia, officially the Republic of Abkhazia, is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus. It sits on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West Asia. It covers 8,665 square kilometres (3,346 sq mi) and has a population of around 245,000. Its capital and largest city is Sukhumi.

Terrorist attacks took place on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. Bombings killed 202 people—including 88 Australians and 38 local Indonesians—and injured a further 209, making it the worst terrorist act in Indonesia's history.

Yle TV2 is a Finnish television channel owned and operated by Yle. TV2 was launched in 1965 as the successor to the former television channels TES-TV (Tesvisio) and Tamvisio and broadcasts public service programming, sports, drama, children's, youth, and music programmes. With Yle TV1, it is one of the three main television channels of Yle.

The collapse of the Space Building occurred on the night of October 12, 2013, when Tower 6 of the Space Building, a residential apartment complex, collapsed in Medellín, Colombia, killing 12 people. Local authorities evacuated the rest of the building to avoid an imminent new collapse. The cost of the building was more than $40.6 billion.

Princess Eugenie, Mrs Jack Brooksbank, is a member of the British royal family. She is the younger daughter of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson, and a niece of King Charles III. At birth, Eugenie was sixth in the line of succession to the British throne and is 12th as of 2026.

1031 Canal was a partially collapsed 190-foot-tall (58 m) multi-use high-rise building in New Orleans, Louisiana, located at 1031 Canal Street in the Central Business District. If completed, the project would have been known as the Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans.