Today:
1400: English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, dies.
1415: The English army, led by Henry V, defeats a larger French army at the Battle of Agincourt.
1760: George III begins his reign as King of Great Britain and Ireland.
1854: The Charge of the Light Brigade, a famous and disastrous cavalry charge, takes place during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.
1881: Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is born in Málaga, Spain.
1940: Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is promoted to brigadier general, becoming the first African-American general in the United States Army.
1962: During the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson confronts Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin at the UN, presenting photographic evidence of missile sites in Cuba.
1971: The United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 2758, admitting the People’s Republic of China and expelling the Republic of China (Taiwan).
1983: The United States and a coalition of six Caribbean nations invade the island of Grenada in an operation codenamed Operation Urgent Fury.
2001: Microsoft releases the Windows XP operating system.