22 October 1797
Andre-Jacques Garnerin jumps from a balloon above Paris to make the world’s first recorded parachute jump.
22 October 1811
Birth of Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor Franz Liszt. Considered one of the greatest pianists of all time, his circle of friends included Chopin, Berlioz, Wagner, the painter Eugène Delacroix and the poet Heinrich Heine.
22 October 1878
In the first recorded rugby match under floodlights, held at the Yew Street Ground in Salford, Broughton beat local rivals Swinton.
22 October 1909
The 23-year-old Elise Deroche made her first solo flight, in a Voisin biplane at Chalons, France. Five months later she became the first woman to hold a pilot’s licence.
22 October 1910
Dr Hawley Crippen was found guilty of murdering his wife and sentenced to death. Four days later his lover, Ethel le Neve, was tried and found not guilty as an accessory after the fact.
22 October 1957
The first episode of Captain Pugwash aired on this day. The animation was written, illustrated and produced by John Ryan. The bumbling sailor was brought to life by Peter Hawkins, who provided all the voices. Captain Horatio Pugwash was skipper of the Black Pig. His crew were Tom the cabin boy, pirates Barnabas and Willy, and Master Mate. His arch-enemy was Cut-Throat Jake. Pugwash’s greed and cowardice were forever getting him in trouble, but Tom always rescued him.
In 1991 Ryan successfully sued The Guardian and Sunday Correspondent, which had repeated the unfounded myth that the names of the crew contained sexual innuendoes, and that the programme had been taken off the air for that reason.
Captain Pugwash ran from 1957 to 1966, and was revived in both 1974 and 1997. Ryan, who also created Mary, Mungo and Midge and Sir Prancelot, died in 2009.
22 October 1962
President John F Kennedy appeared on American television to inform the world of the presence of Soviet missiles on Cuba and to publicly demand their withdrawal. | Read more about the Cuban Missile Crisis
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