These are just some of the events that happened on October 26th.
1764, English artist William Hogarth died.
1775, King George III went before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.
1776, Benjamin Franklin left for France on a mission seeking support for the American Revolution.
1825, The Erie Canal opened.
1863, The English Football Association was formed in London.
1881, The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place outside Tombstone, Arizona.
1905, Sweden and Norway ended their union and Oscar II, the Norwegian king, abdicated.
1912, The Woolwich Tunnel under London's River Thames was opened.
1936, The first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation.
1951, Boxer Joe Louis came out of retirement to fight Rocky Marciano. Marciano won the fight in eight rounds.
1955, The influential underground newspaper Village Voice was first published.
1956, The International Atomic Energy Agency was formed.
1967, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowned himself Emperor of Iran.
1984, "Baby Fae" received a heart transplant from a baboon.
1986, Jeffrey Archer resigned as Deputy Chairman of Britain's Conservative Party after allegations that he had made a payment to a prostitute to make her leave the country and avoid a scandal.
1993, Actor Vincent Price died at the age of 82 in Los Angeles, California.
1998, Hurricane Mitch hit central America with winds up to 215 miles per hour, killing an estimated 10,000 people and causing an "ecological disaster" in the forests and mangrove swamps of Nicaragua.
2001, The Patriot Act was signed into law.
2002, A hostage siege by Chechen rebels at a Moscow theater ended with 129 of the 800-plus captives dead, most from a knockout gas used by Russian special forces who stormed the theater.
Copyright WENN.com. Wikipedia contributed to this report.
