12 October 1886

Twelve people were killed in an apartment-building collapse in Medellín, leading to new construction laws being passed in Colombia.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in a failed attempt to assassinate British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet.

Typhoon Tip, the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, reached a worldwide record-low sea-level pressure of 870 mbar (25.69 inHg) in the western Pacific Ocean.

While in prison for murder, boxer James Scott defeated Eddie "The Flame" Gregory, a leading light heavyweight.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reportedly pounded his shoe on a desk during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in protest at a speech by Philippine delegate Lorenzo Sumulong.

Japan Socialist Party leader Inejirō Asanuma (pictured) was assassinated during a live television recording by a far-right ultra-nationalist using a short sword.

Il Canto degli Italiani is adopted as national anthem by the newly formed Italian Republic.

The United States Department of Justice acquired a military prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, to be transformed into the last-resort Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

The iron lung (example pictured), a type of medical ventilator, was used for the first time at the Boston Children's Hospital to treat an eight-year-old girl paralyzed by polio.

First World War: New Zealand troops suffered more than 2,000 casualties, including more than 800 deaths, in the First Battle of Passchendaele, making it the nation's largest loss of life in one day.

A statue of Austin Blair (pictured) was dedicated in a ceremony that attracted up to 30,000 people to Lansing, Michigan.

The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States was first used in public schools to coincide with the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin became the first woman to make a parachute descent, falling 900 metres (3,000 ft) in the gondola of a hot air balloon.

The Peasants' War began in Overmere, Southern Netherlands, with peasants taking up arms against the French occupiers.

Believing he had reached the East Indies, Christopher Columbus made landfall on an island in the Caribbean, sparking a series of events that led to the European colonization of the Americas.

2022 Bratislava shooting, killing 3 (including the perpetrator) and injuring one. The shooting occurred outside of a gay bar in Bratislava known as Tepláreň. Two people (excluding the perpetrator) died as a result of the shooting: Juraj Vankulič, a non-binary person, and Matúš Horváth, a bisexual man. The perpetrator (Juraj Krajčík) was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot the morning after the attack.

Typhoon Hagibis makes landfall in Japan, killing 10 and forcing the evacuation of one million people.

Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya becomes the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:40 in Vienna.

Princess Eugenie marries Jack Brooksbank at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

The United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO. Israel immediately follows.

An apartment building collapse in Medellín, Colombia results in the deaths of twelve people.

The European Union wins the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Finnish Yle TV2 channel's Ajankohtainen kakkonen current affairs program airs controversial Homoilta episode (literally "gay night"), which leads to the resignation of almost 50,000 Finns from the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The second Chinese human spaceflight, Shenzhou 6, is launched, carrying two cosmonauts in orbit for five days.