13. Oktober

Harold’s army mustered at “the hoary apple tree”, probably a landmark on Caldbec Hill, about 10 kilometres inland from Hastings. The Chronicle says William came upon him “before his army was drawn up”.

Word of the landing probably reached him at York around the start of October. He rode for London, gathered what men he could, and moved on into Sussex; John of Worcester says he went before half his army had arrived. Whether he meant to fight at once or to pen William in is still argued.

Henry III pulled down Edward the Confessor’s church to build a French-style one around a new shrine for him, under his master mason Henry of Reyns. It cost about £45,000. At the consecration on 13 October 1269 the Confessor’s body was moved to the shrine, where it still lies.

From three to six in the afternoon with Maria Theresa and Francis I. Leopold wrote home that “Wolferl jumped onto the Empress’s lap, put his arms round her neck and kissed her soundly.” Two days later the court sent round gala clothes for both children. The story that he slipped on the polished…

With the last pages of the Phenomenology of Spirit just posted to his publisher, Hegel watched the emperor ride through Jena the day before the battle, and wrote to a friend that he had seen “this world-soul” on horseback. The book, published in 1807, traces spirit coming to know itself through…

At a Liberal rally they unfurled a banner and asked Sir Edward Grey: “Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?” Thrown out and arrested, they chose prison over a fine: the start of militancy.

The name the British press gave the screaming, from a Sunday-night television show in October 1963 to the biggest crowd a band had ever drawn, at Shea Stadium. In between, police used water hoses on crowds outside British theatres, and America caught it too.

Top of the bill on Britain’s biggest variety show, live to about 15 million viewers while fans packed Argyll Street outside. Within days the papers were calling it Beatlemania.

Ameritech opened the first US cellular network in Chicago with a call from a car at Soldier Field. Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000X, the first handheld on sale, cost $3,995.

The first planetary probe launched from the Space Shuttle. From orbit its radar mapped 98 percent of Venus through the clouds. At the end it was flown down into the atmosphere to learn how it dragged.

The first use of the new fund: 37 billion pounds, leaving the state with a majority of Royal Bank of Scotland, a year after RBS had outbid Barclays for ABN AMRO.

At 3 p.m. Paulson handed the heads of the nine biggest banks a one-page term sheet: the Treasury would buy 125 billion dollars of their preferred shares, 25 billion each for the largest. Some balked; all nine had signed by evening.

With Europe’s bank rescues announced over the weekend, the Dow rose 936.42 points, 11 per cent: its largest point gain ever at the time and largest percentage gain since 1933.

The biggest deal in the industry’s history, at $69 billion: Call of Duty, Warcraft and Candy Crush under one roof with Xbox. Britain’s competition regulator blocked it in April 2023 and let it through only after Microsoft sold its cloud-gaming rights to Ubisoft.