14 October It Happened Today

1066  English King Harold is killed at the Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror becomes King William I.

1644  Birth of English Quaker leader William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania.

1882 Birth of American born Irish politician Eamon de Valera.

1912  President Theodore Roosevelt is shot in an attempted assassination.

1913  An explosion at the Universal Colliery in South Wales kills 439 miners.

1939 The Royal Navy battleship Royal Oak is sunk after being torpedoed, killing over 800 crew.

1944 German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel commits suicide after being implicated in the plot to kill Hitler.

1947  US pilot Major Charles Yeager becomes the first pilot to fly faster than sound in the Bell X-1 jet aircraft.

1977  Death of American singer Bing Crosby.

2010 Death of French born mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.