📜 This Day in History
October 20
1740Under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction, Maria Theresa ascended the Habsburg throne.- 1944World War II: Fulfilling a promise he made two years previously, General Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte to begin the recapture of the Philippines.
- 1969Experimental results from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center were published showing that protons were composed of smaller particles, the first evidence of quarks.
- 1984The Spanish trawler Sonia sank in British waters after a five-hour chase by the Irish Naval Service patrol vessel Aisling, during which almost 600 shots were fired.
- 1991An earthquake struck the Indian state of Uttarakhand, killing at least 768 people and destroying thousands of homes.
- 2024Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka were sworn in as president and vice president of Indonesia, becoming the oldest and the youngest person to assume respective offices.
