October 19
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1952
Alain Bombard’s shipwreck survival experiment launches
On this day in 1952, French doctor Alain Bombard set out from the Canary Islands to prove that if boats had equipment for catching fish and producing drinking water, shipwrecked sailors could hang on until they were rescued. Equipped with fishing and plankton nets, fishhooks, and tools for squeezing liquid out of fish (read on for more on that), Bombard launched in an inflatable raft and began what would be a 65-day journey to Barbados.
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© Charles Hewitt/Picture Post—Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Photo Illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Featured Event
Architect of the Capitol
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
On this day in 1781, Britain’s Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, handing a huge victory to American General George Washington and effectively ending the American Revolution and assuring America’s independence.
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London
Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift, considered the foremost prose satirist in English and known for his famed novel Gulliver’s Travels and shorter works such as A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal, died this day in 1745.
Famous Birthdays
More on October 19
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2025
Thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris and stole jewelry valued at an estimated €88 million (about $102 million). The burglary was among the costliest in the museum’s history. [What’s the most stolen work of art in history?]
Tim Graham—Hulton Archive/Getty Images
2003
Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa, who had won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her charity work. [How does someone become a saint?]
© Comstock Images/Jupiterimages
1987
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 23 percent, the largest one-day percentage drop in the index’s history, on what became known as Black Monday. [Watch: What caused the Black Monday stock market crash?]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1914
During World War I, the First Battle of Ypres began in western Flanders; the Allies and Germans settled into the trench warfare that would characterize the remainder of the war on the Western Front. [Sort fact from fiction in our World War I quiz.]
Brown Brothers
1897
Industrialist George M. Pullman, inventor of the Pullman sleeping car used on railroads, died in Chicago. [Take our quiz about American industry and innovation.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1864
Confederate soldiers based in Canada crossed into St. Albans, Vermont, and robbed three banks in order to agitate the Union during the American Civil War. [How much do you know about the American Civil War?]
Heritage Image Partnership Ltd./Alamy
1814
Austrian composer Franz Schubert set to music a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for the first time. The result was “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”), based on a passage from Goethe’s Faust. Although it was only Schubert’s 30th song, the masterpiece helped establish the German lied, or art song, as a major musical form.
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.15
1812
Napoleon began a disastrous retreat after his invasion of Russia. [Take our quiz about Napoleon Bonaparte.]
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-17681)
1789
John Jay, a Founding Father of the United States, was sworn in as the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. [Why are there nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court?]