Over the centuries, many important events have happened on October 22, from military victories to scientific discoveries. On this day, the Soviet space station landed on Venus and the Pope overturned Galileo's sentence.
1702 – Russian troops under the command of Peter I stormed the Noteburg (Oreshek) fortress. This was one of the first major victories of the Northern War and opened the way to the Baltic Sea.
1730 – Ladoga Canal is opened. It became the largest hydraulic engineering project of the 18th century.
1797 – Frenchman André Jacques Garnerin made the first parachute jump in history from a hot air balloon, descending from an altitude of about 900 meters.
1842 – Goldsmith Gustav Faberge opened a workshop in St. Petersburg. Then, the famous Faberge House grew from there.
1895 – One of the most famous train derailments in history occurred at Montparnasse station in Paris: a train crashed through a wall and into the square. Footage of the accident has become legendary.
1909 – Frenchwoman Elisa Desroches, known as Raymonde de Laroche, became the first woman to fly solo in an airplane. It is believed that pilot Charles Voisin only allowed de Laroche to fly the plane on the ground, but she disobeyed and flew several hundred meters.
1944 – Troops of the Karelian Front reach the Soviet state border with Norway, completing the liberation of the Arctic from Nazi troops.
1964 – French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying that a writer should not “turn himself into an institution.”
1975 – The Soviet space station Venera 9 landed on the surface of Venus. For the first time in history, photos of the planet's surface were transmitted to Earth.
1980 – Pope John Paul II officially overturned the 1633 verdict condemning Galileo for claiming that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
1982 – The movie “Rambo: First Blood” with Sylvester Stallone is released – kicking off the legendary series of films about Vietnam War veteran John Rambo.
1987 – Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his comprehensive poetic creativity.”
2012 – American cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after admitting to systematic doping.
2022 – Giorgia Meloni becomes the first female prime minister in Italian history, head of the country's government.
