John Ehrlichman (left) and H. R. Haldeman in 1973

Operation Sandwedge was a proposed surveillance campaign that would have targeted people that U.S. president Richard Nixon considered his political enemies. The operation, intended to help Nixon's re-election campaign in the 1972 election, would have used illegal black bag operations to get information on the financial status and sexual activities of Nixon's opponents. It was also designed to target the Democratic Party and the anti–Vietnam War movement, as well as rivals within Nixon's own Republican Party. The proposals were put together in 1971 by Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, domestic affairs assistant John Ehrlichman (both pictured), and Jack Caulfield, a staffer. Control of the operation was passed to G. Gordon Liddy, who abandoned it in favor of a strategy of his own, Operation Gemstone, which included a plan to break into Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex. Liddy's plan eventually led to the downfall of Nixon's presidency. (Full article...)

Cathie Dunsford

• ... that Cathie Dunsford (pictured) was unable to find many books about lesbianism in the 1970s, but by the 1980s had herself become a writer and anthologist of lesbian literature?
• ... that in 1816, a copy of the long-lost Institutes by the Roman jurist Gaius was discovered, hidden underneath writings by Saint Jerome?
• ... that Ruth M. Anderson recorded a "timeless" Spain in her photographs of the 1920s?
• ... that Queen Elizabeth II wanted the King George VI Memorial Chapel to hold the remains of three British monarchs and their consorts?
• ... that Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Nasafi was the first theologian to introduce concepts from Neoplatonism into Isma'ili doctrine?
• ... that a Nebraska radio station's plans to broadcast college sports were met with "audible gasps"?
• ... that Dave Barrow quit municipal politics to work at his family's insurance brokerage before becoming mayor of Richmond Hill?
• ... that there are no NIMBYs in NIMBY Rails?

Max Verstappen

• Hurricane Julia leaves more than 70 people dead across South and Central America.
• After an explosion damages the Crimean Bridge, Russia attacks many Ukrainian cities with missiles.
• In motor racing, Max Verstappen (pictured) wins the Formula One World Championship.
• Annie Ernaux is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

October 12: National Day in Spain (1492)

After the First Battle of Passchendaele

• 1406 – Chen Yanxiang, the only person from Indonesia known to have visited dynastic Korea, reached Seoul after having set out from Java four months before.
• 1492 – Believing he had reached the East Indies, Christopher Columbus made landfall on an island in the Caribbean, sparking a series of events that led to the European colonization of the Americas.
• 1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States was first used in public schools to coincide with the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
• 1917 – First World War: New Zealand troops suffered more than 2,000 casualties, including more than 800 deaths, in the First Battle of Passchendaele (pictured), making it the nation's largest loss of life in one day.
• 1979 – Typhoon Tip, the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, reached a worldwide record-low sea-level pressure of 870 mbar (25.69 inHg) in the western Pacific Ocean.