A potpourri of historical events on this autumn day.
1081 Battle of Dyrrhachium
Normans under Robert Guiscard defeat a Byzantine army under Alexios I Komnenos near modern-day Durrës, Albania. Guiscard, a mercenary and bandit, had made himself powerful in southern Italy and had carved himself a duchy out of lands won from Lombards, Byzantines and Muslims. His ambition of placing a son on the throne of Constantinople received a boost when his lance-wielding cavalry smashed the larger Byzantine force
1405 Birth of Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II
Pius II served as pope from 1458 to 1464. Before his election he was noted for his dissolute life and humanist scholarship but he underwent a moral conversion. His reign was marked by a call for a renewed crusade against the Turks, a letter to the Sultan refuting Islamic doctrine, and quarrels with the French.
1646 Martyrdom of Isaac Jogues
A Jesuit missionary to the natives of America, Jogues was captured by the Iroquois and mutilated before being rescued by Dutch merchants. He returned to France to recover and was granted a dispensation to continue administering the Eucharist despite his wounded hands. When he went back to Quebec continue his work he was captured again by the Mohawks and murdered. He and seven fellow Jesuit martyrs were canonized in 1930.
1977 Mysterious deaths of Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin
Baader and Ensslin were lovers and German leftist terrorists, leaders of the Red Army Faction which tormented West Germany with a series of arson attacks, murders, kidnappings and hijackings. After their capture and conviction they were placed in strict isolation and confinement but somehow they and two other RAF militants managed (according to authorities) to kill themselves the same night in different prisons. The suspicion that they were murdered to prevent yet more attempts by their comrades to free them does not seem unlikely.
2007 Karachi bombing
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan from exile threatened the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf, so when a suicide bomber attacked a Bhutto rally, killing 180 and wounding 500 more, it was natural to blame the ruling junta. Later investigations pinned the blame on al-Qaeda. Bhutto would be assassinated by a similar attack two months later.