<\/p>
Celebrated marriage paves the way for a united Spain<\/em><\/p>\n It was October 1469, and in Valladolid the\u00a018-year-old Princess Isabella, heir to the Castilian throne, waited for the man with whom she would share her life. With Castilian politics a\u00a0maelstrom of\u00a0intrigue, the\u00a0negotiations had proceeded for months in secret. But on about 12\u00a0October, the teenage princess\u2019s second cousin, Ferdinand of Aragon, rode in secret into Valladolid \u2013 and for the first time, one of history\u2019s most celebrated couples laid eyes on one another.<\/p>\n Both Ferdinand and Isabella were delighted with what they saw. For his part, the young Aragonese was a model Renaissance prince, brave, courteous and dashing. Isabella, meanwhile, was famously beautiful: \u201cThe handsomest lady,\u201d one witness said, \u201cthat I ever beheld.\u201d No doubt some of this was propaganda. Even so, observers agreed that the first meeting was a great success, auguring well for the creation of a single Spanish monarchy.<\/p>\n On 19 October, roughly a week after they had met, the royal couple were married at Valladolid\u2019s Vivero Palace. Strapped for cash, they borrowed money from their aristocratic friends to pay for the ceremony, and some 2,000 people reportedly looked on as Ferdinand swore to uphold the laws of Castile. The royal couple even produced a papal bull, signed by Pope Pius II, to get around the awkward fact that they were so closely related. That it was a\u00a0complete forgery was beside the point. The\u00a0wedding was a triumph, and in that moment a united Spain was born. | Read more about <\/strong>Isabella of Castile<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Birth of Anglo-Irish statesman and military commander James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde. After fighting in Ireland, firstly against the Irish Catholic rebels and then against Cromwell\u2019s parliamentarians, he joined Charles II<\/a> in exile.<\/p>\n Surgeon and anatomist William Cheselden is born in Somerby, Leicestershire. In 1733 he will publish Osteographia or the Anatomy of Bones, the first full and accurate description of the human skeletal system.<\/p>\n Britain declared war on Spain. Although disputes over trading rights were the primary cause of the war, much of the anti-Spanish feeling in Britain had been created by Captain Robert Jenkins\u2019s claim that his ear had been cut off by Spanish coastguards in the West Indies a few years earlier. This incident gave the war its sobriquet, \u2018the War of Jenkins\u2019 Ear\u2019. The war, which was later subsumed into the War of the Austrian Succession, began well for Britain with Admiral Vernon\u2019s capture of Porto Bello but subsequent colonial campaigns were largely unsuccessful.<\/p>\n HMS Britannia was launched at Portsmouth. A 100-gun first-rate ship of the line, she saw service at the battle of Cape St Vincent and also at Trafalgar, where she was the flagship of Nelson\u2019s third-in-command, the Earl of Northesk.<\/p>\n Lieutenant William Berry RN is hanged for sodomy on board HMS Hazard.<\/p>\n At the Carlton Club in London, Conservative MPs vote to break up the coalition led by Lloyd George, throwing the Liberals out of office for the first time since 1906.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> \u00a0<\/p>\n British defeat in America\u2019s War of Independence <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n In October 1781, the last act of the American War of Independence<\/a> was played out in Virginia. For weeks some 9,000 British troops under Lord Cornwallis had been trapped in the port of Yorktown. Under relentless bombardment from French and American guns, and with the French and Spanish fleets cutting off any possible reinforcement from the Atlantic, Cornwallis knew that his situation was hopeless.<\/p>\n On the evening of 16 October, he and his commanders made the decision to surrender. The next day, a British officer waved a white handkerchief at the besiegers and two days after that, at 2pm, the British troops marched out of the town. Cornwallis himself was, conspicuously, not at their head; perhaps understandably, he claimed to be ill and told his deputy, General O\u2019Hara, to handle the surrender. The British had requested the traditional honours of war, which allowed them to march out with their flags waving. However, the Americans refused. So the British troops emerged with their flags furled and muskets reversed. Even hostile onlookers admitted that they presented a \u201cdecent and neat appearance\u201d; indeed, Cornwallis had given every soldier a fresh new uniform for the occasion. In a nicely appropriate touch, the British band was playing \u2018The World Turned Upside Down\u2019.<\/p>\n In Britain, the events at Yorktown were seen as a catastrophe. \u201cOh God! It is all over!\u201d gasped the prime minister, Lord North, who knew that the reversal had destroyed Britain\u2019s chances of forcibly subduing the insurgent American states. Yet few people blamed Cornwallis himself. Indeed, he later enjoyed a spectacular public career, becoming governor-general of India and British commander in Ireland. In the US, of course, the Yorktown surrender has entered local legend. But in Britain it was soon eclipsed by the great dramas of the Napoleonic Wars<\/a>, beside which it amounted to a mere sideshow.<\/p>\nJulian Humphrys rounds up smaller anniversaries\u2026<\/h4>\n
19 October 1610<\/h6>\n
19 October 1688<\/h6>\n
19 October 1739<\/h6>\n
19 October 1762<\/h6>\n
19 October 1807\u00a0<\/h6>\n
19 October 1922<\/h6>\n
19 October 1781: Surrender at Yorktown<\/h3>\n