Spooky Anniversaries: What Happened on This Fateful October 31

Today is Thursday, October 31, the 303rd day of 2024. There are 61 days until the end of the year.

1517 – The leader of the German Reformation, Martin Luther, drew at the door of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Wittenberg, 95 theses on the reform of the church, which started the Protestant religious reformation and a widespread popular movement against the authority of the Pope in the German countries .

1517 – The Italian painter Fra Bartolomeo, one of the last masters of the Florentine Renaissance, the forerunner of the Baroque, died. He painted mainly religious subjects, where he was particularly interested in the problems of composition. He gave up painting temporarily, going to a Dominican monastery in 1500, but four years later Raphael convinced him to continue painting.

1632 – The Dutch painter Jan van Delft Fermer, a master of light painting, was born, who is counted among the greatest artists in the history of painting, although he only made about 40 paintings. His compositions are characterized by harmony, spirituality and poetry, mathematical precision, bright noble color and light that envelops every object. Works: “Woman with a Letter”, “Merch à Chain”, “In the Studio”, “The Milkmaid”, “Music Lesson”, “Girl with a Turban”, “View of Delft”, “Alley in Delft” .

1795 – The English writer John Keats was born, one of the greatest poets in English literature, whose verses are characterized by exceptional melody and a very concise and expressive poetic idiom. He combined the worship of the ancient culture with the new sensibility of modern man and with fluid forms, although he mainly created symmetrical forms himself. His sonnets, the song “Endimion”, the poems “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode to a Greek Urn”, “Ode to Autumn” are among the most beautiful poetic works written in the English language, and “Letters” are and a significant contribution to the development of modern aesthetic thought.

1851 – The Serbian writer Petar Drugi Petrović Njegoš (pictured), Montenegrin ruler and bishop, died according to most literary critics the greatest Serbian poet, whose crown of creativity is in the unsurpassed song “Mountain Wreath” . Basically, he is a meditative-lyrical poet, which is also evident in his most important works, although they have an epic-dramatic form, and his concise style is colored by strong elements of quiet classical verse and the freshness of folk song. Rade Tomov Petrović – from a family that has provided bishops to Montenegro for more than a hundred years – received the monastic name after his uncle, the bishop and ruler of Montenegro Peter the First, who designated him as his successor. He was educated in Cetinje Monastery and in Topla near Herceg Novi, and his teacher was Sima Milutinović – Sarajevo, who introduced him to history, philosophy and literature. As a statesman, he laid the foundations of the modern Montenegrin state, established the executive power and the parliament, organized the courts, introduced taxes and got more help from Russia, but he did not realize his dream of liberating Bosnia and Herzegovina together with Serbia. He also built the first elementary school, and in 1834 he established a printing house. Other works: the philosophical epic “Luča mikrokosma”, the song “False Tsar Šćepan Mali”, mental and lyrical poems.

1871 – On the basis of the Constitution of 1869, the first law on the jury was passed in Serbia, which came into force on January 1, 1872, after which judicial functions began to be performed by people from the common people.

1887 – Born Chinese general Chiang Kai-shek, who, with the help of the West, especially the USA, ruled dictatorially for 47 years, first in China, then in Taiwan, where he fled with his supporters when he was defeated by the communists. After the death of the Kuomintang leader and President of China Sun Yat Sen (1925), he staged a military coup in Canton in March 1926 and began the struggle against the left wing of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. Despite massive material aid from the United States, his regime collapsed in an attempt to stamp out the revolution led by Communist leader Mao Zedong. In February 1950, with the rest of the troops, he moved to the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), where he founded the so-called Republic of China, which he ruled until his death in 1975.

1918 – Austria-Hungary, defeated in World War I in Pula, transfers all ships and equipment and defenses in Kotor, Šibenik, Rijeka, Pula and Trieste to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The new state received 300 ships, including 12 battleships, 11 battleships, 56 torpedo boats and 18 destroyers. The following night, Italian saboteurs sank the battleship “Viribus unitis”, where the first commander of the Yugoslav navy, Admiral Janko Vuković, and 350 sailors were killed.

1918 – The former Prime Minister of Hungary, Count Istvan Tisa, holder of the policy of oppression of non-Hungarian peoples in Austria-Hungary, was assassinated.

1918 – In Timisoara, the so-called Republic of Banat, a futile attempt by Hungary to retain northern Banat and prevent the commitment of Serbs and other inhabitants of Vojvodina to the South Slavic state.

1922 – Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk was born, who ascended the throne in 1941 and declared Cambodia’s independence from France in 1954. He founded the Sargkum party, which won the elections in 1955 and 1958, on the basis of which he became prime minister. After the death of his father, he returned to the throne in 1960, and in 1970 he was overthrown by General Lon Nol, in a coup d’état carried out at the behest of the USA. He was elected president of Kampuchea, as Cambodia was renamed the “Khmer Rouge”, in 1975, but his relationship with that Maoist faction – whose reign of terror between 1975 and 1978 led to the killing of one and two million people – ended quickly and left in. 1976. countryman eg. The “Khmer Rouge” were overthrown by the military intervention of Vietnam at the end of 1978, and in 1982 he became the president of the anti-Vietnam coalition government. After a series of turbulent political changes, he became king of Cambodia again in 1993.

1925 – Reza Shah took the throne of Iran and founded the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled the country until the Islamic revolution in 1979.

1926 – Harry Houdini, an American magician of Hungarian Jewish origin, the most famous magician of the 20th century, died. He was born Erich Weiss, and changed his name in honor of the French magician Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin.

1944 – In the Second World War, after the loss of Belgrade, the Germans built six defense lines about a hundred kilometers deep between the Danube, Bosut forests and the Sava River and formed the Srem front. After bloody battles, the front was broken on April 12, 1945, which began the final operations for the liberation of Yugoslavia, but the price was terrible: at least 30,000 young Serbian men died, sent to fight practically without training , in the “Srem Slaughterhouse”.

1952 – The USA conducted the first test of a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Marshall Islands.

1961 – The body of Soviet dictator Yosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin) was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square and buried next to the Kremlin walls.

1972 – Death of Beta Vukanović, Serbian painter of German origin, who painted an impressive number of oils, watercolors and drawings during almost 80 years and influenced generations of Serbian artists as a pedagogue. While studying painting in Munich, she met her future husband, Risto Vukanović, who is also a painter. She came with him to Belgrade in 1898, and was devoted to him until the end of her life and participated with great dedication in the artistic life of patriarchal Serbia. Thanks to that artistic couple, Belgrade had a painting school, which grew into an art school. He is one of the founders of “Lada” and “Cvijeta Zuzorić” – associations of Serbian artists, painters and sculptors, and a relatively daring caricature initiator for that time. At first, he painted in the style of impressionists, but later he came closer to a more robust realistic form.

1984 – The Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was killed in front of her residence in New Delhi by Sikh extremists, members of the personal guard. She studied in Switzerland and Oxford, but gained her main political and life experiences with her father, the first Prime Minister of India and one of the founders of the Non-Partisan Movement, Jawaharlal Nehru. She became a member of the Executive Committee of the ruling Congress Party in 1955, was elected party president in 1959, and joined the government after her father’s death in 1964 as Minister of Information. She held the office of prime minister, with a break of three years, from 1966 until the end of her life.

1991 – In the first multi-party elections in Zambia, the leader of the struggle for independence and the first president, Kenneth Kaunda, was defeated by Frederick Chiluba.

1993 – Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini, one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century, died. After the Second World War, at the start of his career he was one of the most prominent representatives of the neorealist film movement, but he soon developed his own unique style, creating autobiographical films of unique charm where people are often shown the most often strange situations, so the term “Fellinian” was coined to describe his method of creating cinematic dreams and hallucinations in otherwise ordinary circumstances. Films: “Light variety”, “Dangube”, “Ulica” (Oscar award), “Probysworld”, “Kabrijine noci” (“Oscar”), “Sladak život” (first prize in Cannes), “Eight and a half ( Award Oscar), Juliet and the Ghosts (Golden Globe Award) Clowns, Satyricon, Amarkord, Casanova, City of Women, The Ship Sails, Ginger and Fred”.

1995 – A six-member delegation from Republika Srpska and FR Yugoslavia traveled from Belgrade to the USA for talks on reaching a peace agreement for the former BiH, held at the “Wright Peterson” Air Force Base in Dayton. The three-member delegation of Republika Srpska included Vice-President of Srpska Nikola Koljević, Speaker of the National Assembly Momčilo Krajišnik and Minister of Foreign Affairs Aleksa Buha. The Yugoslav negotiating team included the presidents of Serbia and Montenegro, Slobodan Milošević and Momir Bulatović, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the FR Yugoslavia, Milan Milutinović.

1996 – French film director Marcel Carne, who stamped the epoch of “black realism”, died. His films are characterized by poetic realism, the skillful creation of atmosphere and the plastic value of the image. Films: “Coast in the Mist”, “Hotel `North'”, “The Day is Born”, “Evening Guests”, “Children of Paradise”, “Imposters”, “Teresa Raken”.

1996 – A Brazilian Fokker 100 plane crashed near Sao Paulo shortly after take-off, killing all 96 people on board and five others on the ground.

1999 – Terrorists from Šiptar attempted to kill the president of the Executive Committee of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, Momčilo Trajković, with firearms. Shooting through the door of his apartment in the center of Pristina, they wounded him.

1999 – During the 113th football derby between “Partizan” and “Crvena zvezda”, student Aleksandar Radović was killed by a flare rocket, the first case of violent death in football matches in Yugoslavia.

2007 – A Spanish court found 21 people guilty of taking part in the train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800.

2015 – An Airbus A321 from the Russian company “Metrojet”, with 224 passengers and crew members, crashed on the way from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg 23 minutes after take off. No one survived. Russian investigators found evidence that there was a bomb on the plane.

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