October 8 in History

The Great Chicago Fire began on October 8, 1871, in or near the O'Leary barn on DeKoven Street. The popular story blames Mrs. O'Leary's cow for kicking over a lantern, but a reporter later admitted he invented that detail. What actually fed the fire was a city built almost entirely of wood after years of drought. Firefighters were already exhausted from a large blaze the night before, and a watchman sent them to the wrong location. Winds off the prairie drove the flames northeast through the business district. The fire burned for three days, destroying 17,450 buildings across 2,000 acres and leaving 100,000 of the city's 300,000 residents homeless. Roughly 300 people died. Chicago rebuilt rapidly, adopting fire-resistant construction codes that pioneered steel-frame architecture and the modern skyscraper.

Japanese operatives and soldiers stormed Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul before dawn on October 8, 1895, hunting Queen Min, who had been working to align Korea with Russia rather than Japan. They found her in the inner chambers, stabbed her multiple times, then burned her body on the palace grounds to destroy evidence. Japanese minister Miura Goro had organized the assassination, but when the international outcry proved devastating, Japan tried and acquitted all 56 suspects in what historians regard as a sham trial. Queen Min, later given the posthumous title Empress Myeongseong, had been the most powerful political figure in Korea and the primary obstacle to Japanese domination. Her murder removed that obstacle and accelerated Korea's path to becoming a Japanese protectorate by 1905 and a full colony by 1910.

Corporal Alvin York was a conscientious objector from the mountains of Tennessee who initially sought exemption from military service on religious grounds. His battalion commander talked him into fighting by citing Biblical passages about just war. On October 8, 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, York's patrol of 17 men stumbled into a German headquarters unit and captured several soldiers before machine gun fire pinned them down, killing six Americans. York, an expert marksman who had won turkey shoots back home, picked off 28 German soldiers one by one from 300 yards. When six Germans charged him with bayonets, he shot them with his pistol. The surviving Germans surrendered. York and his seven remaining men marched 132 prisoners back to American lines. He received the Medal of Honor and returned home to Tennessee.

President George W. Bush created the Office of Homeland Security on October 8, 2001, less than a month after the September 11 attacks. He appointed Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge to lead it. The office had no statutory authority and no budget of its own, serving primarily as a coordinating body among existing agencies. That changed in November 2002 when Congress established the Department of Homeland Security, the largest reorganization of the federal government since 1947. The new department merged 22 agencies and 170,000 employees, including the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Customs, Immigration, FEMA, and the newly created TSA. The consolidation was meant to prevent intelligence failures by centralizing threat assessment. Whether it achieved that goal or simply created a larger bureaucracy remains debated.

Willy Brandt knelt at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial in 1970. He hadn't planned it. He stood there a moment, then went to his knees in the rain, in silence, in front of the monument to the Jewish uprising. He was a Social Democrat who had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He had nothing personal to atone for. That was the point. He later said he did what people do when words fail them. The photograph ran on front pages across the world. He won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

Chinese officials in Canton boarded a cargo ship called the Arrow on October 8, 1856, and arrested twelve crew members for suspected piracy. The ship was Chinese-owned but registered in Hong Kong under a British flag that may have already expired. The British consul, Harry Parkes, demanded an apology and the return of all prisoners. Qing officials returned the men but refused to apologize. The British bombarded Canton. France joined the war after a French missionary was executed in Guangxi province. Over four years of fighting, the Anglo-French forces burned the Old Summer Palace in Beijing as punishment for the torture and execution of envoys. The resulting treaties opened eleven new ports to foreign trade, legalized the opium trade, and allowed Christian missionaries throughout China. An estimated 60,000 Chinese died.