I often wonder what significant anniversaries are due at some point in the future as some of them might be of interest as triggers for blog posts or visits somewhere. However, it is often difficult to find out quickly what events have significant anniversaries - hence this section on the website.
By "significant anniversaries", I mean dates that are not, for example, the 73rd anniversary of something, but the 50th, 100th, 200th etc.
It should help to flag up interesting events.
Significant anniversaries during October 2023
| Anniversary | Details |
| 1st | Just Stop Oil activists target buildings used by the Home Office, MI5, the Bank of England and News Corp, spraying orange paint on each and demanding an end to new oil and gas licences. (31st Oct 2022) |
| 1st | A man kills himself after throwing incendiary devices at a Border Force processing centre in Dover, Kent, where asylum seekers are taken after being rescued in the English Channel. (30th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The Mail on Sunday alleges that Russian spies gained access to Liz Truss's phone during her time as foreign secretary, and that the details were suppressed by then-prime minister Boris Johnson and cabinet secretary Simon Case. (29th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The first televised sentencing at a murder trial in England and Wales takes place at the Old Bailey. This follows the first televised manslaughter sentencing on 28 July. Jemma Mitchell, 38, is given a minimum term of 34 years for killing and decapitating 67-year-old Mee Kuen Chong at her London home in June 2021. (28th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Sunak reimposes a ban on fracking in the UK, undoing the plan by Liz Truss, and in line with the Conservative Party's original election manifesto of 2019. (26th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | More than a dozen protesters from Just Stop Oil are arrested after blocking Piccadilly in central London and spray painting luxury car showrooms in nearby Mayfair. (26th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Liz Truss makes her final speech outside 10 Downing Street, in which she defends her economic policies and insists that "brighter days lie ahead" for the UK. (25th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Rishi Sunak officially becomes Prime Minister as the King asks him to form a new government. In his first speech, Sunak pays tribute to his predecessors, but acknowledges that "some mistakes were made". He promises to "place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government's agenda". (25th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election: Rishi Sunak becomes the new Leader of the Conservative Party, and the Prime minister (24th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The NHS launches 'Our Future Health', one of the world's largest health and genetic data gathering projects, aimed at creating a long-term repository of information for researchers. Five million UK adults are invited to participate. (24th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The parliamentary watchdog finds that Labour MP Christian Matheson should be suspended from the Commons for four weeks for "serious sexual misconduct". He subsequently resigns from his Chester seat. (21st Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Liz Truss announces her pending resignation as Prime Minister after just 45 days. Her tenure will be the shortest of any Prime Minister in UK history. Her successor will be elected in a Conservative leadership contest, to be completed in the next week. (20th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Truss takes her first Prime Minister's Questions after cancelling most of the mini-budget. She tells the Commons she is "completely committed" to raising pensions in line with inflation, per the "triple lock" guarantee. (19th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Suella Braverman resigns as Home Secretary after sending an official document from her personal email to a fellow MP, a serious breach of ministerial rules. She is succeeded by Grant Shapps. (19th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The government wins a vote on its fracking plans by 326 to 230, a majority of 96. The vote is characterised as 'chaotic', with Conservative MPs unsure whether the vote would be treated as a vote of confidence in the government, and MPs alleging that bullying and manhandling took place in the voting lobby. However, ministers deny these claims, with Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg saying to "characterise it as bullying was mistaken". (19th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Inflation in September rises slightly, back to its July level of 10.1%, up from 9.9% in August. (19th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, delivers an emergency statement to the Commons, in which he announces that the government "will reverse almost all the tax measures" from the mini-budget. The reconfigured budget will raise £32bn, out of the £70bn needed to close the funding gap. (17th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The delayed 2021 Rugby League World Cup begins. (15th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Kwasi Kwarteng is dismissed as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He becomes the second shortest-serving Chancellor in UK political history, after Iain Macleod who died of a heart attack in 1970. Jeremy Hunt succeeds him. (14th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Just Stop Oil protesters throw tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh's 1888 masterpiece, Sunflowers, in the National Gallery. The rotating sign outside Scotland Yard is also spray painted orange. More than 20 arrests are made. (14th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Royal Mail announces plans to axe 10,000 jobs, blaming ongoing strike action and rising financial losses. (14th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Battersea Power Station opens to the public for the first time in 40 years. (14th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The Bank of England warns of a "material risk" to financial stability, as the government's borrowing costs rise sharply again. (11th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The UK imposes sanctions on Iran's morality police, along with five leading political and security officials, following the death of Mahsa Amini. (10th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Another strike is held by rail workers, with only 20% of services running. (8th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Four people are injured, with three taken to hospital, following a street robbery and stabbing near Liverpool Street station in the heart of London's financial district. Police establish a cordon at the junction of Bishopsgate and Camomile Street but say the attack is not terror-related. (6th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Train drivers hold another day of strikes, with 9,000 members of ASLEF staging a 24-hour walkout. (5th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Liz Truss makes her first Conservative Party Conference speech as Prime Minister, saying she is focused on "growth, growth, growth" and decrying what she calls an "anti-growth coalition". The event is interrupted by protesters from Greenpeace. (5th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | The first preliminary hearing of the COVID-19 inquiry is held. Chair Baroness Hallett says those who have suffered will be at the inquiry's heart. (4th Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Following a backlash, the government announces the cancellation of their plan to abolish the highest income tax band. (3rd Oct 2022) |
| 1st | More than 50,000 rail workers go on a 24-hour strike, the biggest of the year to date, with only 11% of train services running in the UK. (1st Oct 2022) |
| 1st | Thousands of people around the UK attend a series of simultaneous protests against the cost of living crisis, timed to coincide with the jump in gas and electricity unit prices. (1st Oct 2022) |
| 5th | Gavin Williamson announces that women who serve in the Army are now able to transfer into infantry roles, including the special forces, such as the SAS. (25th Oct 2018) |
| 5th | A case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (so-called "mad cow disease") is confirmed on a farm in Aberdeenshire, the first of its kind in Scotland for 10 years. (18th Oct 2018) |
| 5th | Pepper becomes the first robot to appear at a UK parliamentary meeting, talking to MPs about the future of artificial intelligence in education. (16th Oct 2018) |
| 5th | Storm Callum: Parts of Wales experience their worst flooding in 30 years. (13th Oct 2018) |
| 5th | The Wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank takes place at the St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. (12th Oct 2018) |
| 5th | The government announces that heterosexual couples in England and Wales will be given the right to enter into civil partnerships rather than marriage. (2nd Oct 2018) |
| 10th | The Privy Council grants a Royal Charter on press regulations after the newspaper industry loses a last minute legal bid to seek an injunction against the plans. (30th Oct 2013) |
| 10th | The government approves Hinkley Point C, the first nuclear plant to be constructed in the UK since 1995. It will be completed in 2023 and remain operational for 60 years, supplying about 7% of the country's electricity. (21st Oct 2013) |
| 10th | About 100 homes are damaged when a "tornado" hits Hayling Island in Hampshire. (20th Oct 2013) |
| 10th | Charles Taylor arrives in the UK to serve the remainder of his 50-year prison sentence, the first head of state to be convicted of war crimes since World War II. (15th Oct 2013) |
| 10th | British physicist Peter Higgs is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of the Higgs boson. (8th Oct 2013) |
| 20th | Supersonic aircraft Concorde makes its final commercial flights after twenty-seven years. (24th Oct 2003) |
| 50th | Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escape from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, Republic of Ireland aboard a hijacked helicopter that lands in the exercise yard. (31st Oct 1973) |
| 50th | The Dalai Lama made his first visit to the UK. (20th Oct 1973) |
| 50th | The Wicker Man was first shown in cinemas, as a b-movie double with "Don't Look Now", a controversially sexual film. One would become a cult classic, the other forgotten. (16th Oct 1973) |
| 50th | London Broadcasting Company, Britain's first legal commercial Independent Local Radio station, begins broadcasting. (8th Oct 1973) |
| 60th | A BAC One-Eleven prototype airliner crashes in UK with the loss of all on board. (22nd Oct 1963) |
| 60th | Prime Minister Harold Macmillan announces his resignation on the grounds of ill health. (10th Oct 1963) |
| 70th | British nuclear test Totem 2 is carried out at Emu Field, South Australia. (27th Oct 1953) |
| 70th | British nuclear test Totem 1 detonated at Emu Field, South Australia. (15th Oct 1953) |
| 75th | KLM Constellation air disaster: a KLM Lockheed Constellation airliner crashes (20th Oct 1948) |
| 100th | First BBC broadcast from Aberdeen - followed by Bournemouth on the 17th. (10th Oct 1923) |
| 200th | Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, sells the first raincoat. (12th Oct 1823) |
| 250th | Just before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, several of the British East India Company's tea ships are set ablaze at the old seaport of Annapolis, Maryland. (14th Oct 1773) |
Alternatively, see all anniversaries for this month.
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