On this day... October 22

On this day...

October 22 1633 – Ming Chinese naval forces defeated a Dutch East India Company fleet in the Taiwan Strait, the largest naval encounter between Chinese and European forces before the First Opium War two hundred years later. 1707 – In one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of the British Isles, more than 1,400 sailors on four Royal Navy ships were lost in stormy weather off the Isles of Scilly. 1879 – Thomas Edison performed a successful test using a carbonfilament thread in an incandescent light bulb (pictured), which would become the most successful version of the product. 1962 – Cold War: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced that Soviet nuclear weapons had been discovered in Cuba and that he had ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation. 1999 – Vichy France official Maurice Papon was jailed for crimes against humanity committed during World War II.