Today in History in 1767 the surveying of the Mason–Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland is completed, unofficially marking the boundary between Northern and Southern US States.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

October 9 is the 282nd day of the year (283rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 83 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

768 - Carloman and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of the Franks.

1000 – Leif Ericson discovers Vinland, becoming the first known European to set foot in North America.

1238 – James I of Aragon conquers Valencia and founded the Kingdom of Valencia.

1264 - The Kingdom of Castile conquers the city of Jerez, under Islamic control since 711.

1446 – The Hangul alphabet is published in Korea.

1514 – Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor

1582 – Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1604 - Supernova 1604 is observed; It is the last supernova to-date to be observed in the Milky Way.

1635 – Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he spoke out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.

1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

1708 - Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya.

1740 - Dutch colonists and others begin massacring Chinese people at Batavia (now Jakarta), eventually killing 10,000 people and leading to war.

1760 - Seven Years' War: Russian forces occupy Berlin.

1767 - Surveying of the Mason–Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland is completed, unofficially marking the boundary between Northern and Southern US States.

1771 – The Dutch merchant ship Vrouw Maria sinks near the coast of Finland.

1776 – Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.

1788 – The first bridge in Australia is built over the Tank Stream in Sydney.

1799 - Sinking of the ship HMS Lutine, killing 240 people.

1803 - Flooding on the Portuguese island of Madeira kills 600 people.

1804 – Hobart, Tasmania is founded.

1806 - Prussia declares war on France.

1812 – War of 1812: In a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces capture two British ships; the HMS Detroit and the HMS Caledonia.

1820 – Guayaquil declares independence from Spain.

1824 - Costa Rica gets rid of slavery.

1829 - A climbing expedition led by Friedrich Parrot reaches the summit of Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in Turkey.

1831 – Capo d'Istria is assassinated.

1834 - Opening of the Dublin to Kingstown railway, the first public railway in Ireland.

1854 - Start of the Siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War.

1861 - American Civil War: Battle of Santa Rita Island.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Tom's Brook – Union cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley defeat Confederate forces at Tom's Brook, Virginia.

1871 – The Great Chicago Fire is brought under control.

1874 – General Postal Union was created as a result of the Treaty of Berne.

1888 – The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public.

1900 - The Cook Islands become a territory of the United Kingdom.

1911 - An accidental bomb explosion in Hankou, Wuhan, China, leads to the ultimate fall of the Qing Dynasty.

1913 - Steamship SS Volturna catches fire in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean, killing 136 people. Over 300 lives are saved.

1914 – World War I: Siege of Antwerp – Antwerp, Belgium falls to German troops.

1919 – Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds "win" the World Series.

1934 - In Marseille, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and then-foreign minister of France Louis Barthou are assassinated.

1936 – Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to transmit electricity from the Colorado River 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.

1940 – World War II: Battle of Britain – During a nighttime air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul's Cathedral is pierced by a bomb.

1941 - A coup in Panama declares Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia to be the country's President.

1942 – Statute of Westminster Adoption Act formalizes Australian autonomy.

1944 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin begin a nine-day conference in Moscow to discuss the future of Europe.

1957 – Neil H. McElroy was sworn in as the 6th Secretary of Defense of United States.

1959 - The Conservatives under Harold Macmillan win the United Kingdom general election.

1962 – Uganda becomes a republic.

1963 – In northeast Italy, over 2,000 people are killed when a large landslide behind the Vajont Dam causes a giant wave of water to overtop it.

1967 – A day after being caught, Che Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.

1969 – In Chicago, Illinois, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection to the trial of the "Chicago Eight" (trial started on September 24).

1969 – Students from the University of the Philippines formed the first Upsilonian Congress and established the Upsiloan Alpha Beta Grand Fraternity in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

1970 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.

1980 - Pope John Paul II shakes hands with Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama in a private audience in Vatican City.

1981 - End of capital punishment in France.

1983 - Attempted killing of President of South Korea Chun Doo-hwan. He survives, though 17 people are killed.

1986 – United States District Court Judge Harry E. Claiborne becomes the fifth federal official to be removed from office through impeachment.

1989 – An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.

1989 – In Leipzig, East Germany, 70,000 protesters demand the legalization of opposition groups and democratic reforms.

1991 – Ecuador becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.

1992 – A 13 kilogram (est.) meteorite lands in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu.

1995 – An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona.

2002 – After losing a massive amount of ground during the summer of 2002, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 7,286.27, its lowest level in five years. The NASDAQ also hit a six-year low of 1,114.11.

2004 - The new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh is officially opened.

2004 – Jo Brauner resigns as the anchor of German Tagesschau news show after 30 years.

2004 – Democratic elections held for the first time in Afghanistan.

2004 – The tri-annual federal election is held in Australia and Liberal Party of Australia leader, John Howard, wins a fourth term as Prime Minister in a landslide victory over opponent, Mark Latham of the Australian Labor Party.

2005 – China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the new accurate height of Mount Everest is 8848.43 m.

2005 - 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in the state election in Burgenland, Austria.

2006 – North Korea carries out its first-reported bomb test.

2007 - Yoko Ono opens the John Lennon Imagine Peace tower on the island of Videy near Reykjavik, Iceland.

2009 – First Lunar impact of the Centaur & LCROSS spacecrafts, as part of NASA's Precursor Robotic Programme.

2009 – Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

2011 - Sebastian Vettel wins his second Formula One World title, as the youngest driver to win two Formula One World Championships in-a-row.

2012 - Members of the Pakistan Taliban attempt to kill education activist Malala Yousafzai, by shooting her in the head. She survives the attack after receiving medical treatment.

2014 - UKIP wins its first parliamentary seat in a UK by-election in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, through defected Conservative MP Douglas Carswell.

2017 - Iceland becomes the least-populated country to qualify for a FIFA World Cup, defeating Kosovo 2-0 in Reykjavik.