Following are some of the major events to have occurred on October 20:
1944 – In World War Two, Russian and Yugoslav forces captured Belgrade from German forces.
1960 – The trial started in London of Penguin Books, charged with contravening Britain’s Obscene Publications Act by publishing D.H. Lawrence’s novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”.
1964 – Herbert Hoover, who served as 31st president of the United States from 1929-33, died.
1968 – Jackie Kennedy married the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, ending nearly five years of widowhood since the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
1986 – Likud party leader Yitzhak Shamir took over as Israeli prime minister from Labour’s Shimon Peres under a 1984 power-sharing arrangement.
1995 – Willy Claes quit as NATO secretary-general, brought down by a Belgian corruption scandal after a year in the job.
2002 – Iraq began to release political prisoners under an unprecedented amnesty issued by Saddam Hussein to inmates and exiles to mark his 100 percent win in an election.
2004 – Former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s first directly elected president, took office.
2006 – Irene Galitzine, Italy’s “fashion princess” whose gowns clothed Jacqueline Kennedy, Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn, died at the age of 90.
2007 – Frenchman Loic Leferme sets world record for apnea diving at depth of 162m off the shores of Nice.
2011 – Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi killed in his hometown of Sirte.
(Reuters)
