Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 20

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 * 1740 – Under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction, Maria Theresa (pictured) ascended the Habsburg throne.


 * 1936 – British woman Mabel Freer was refused entry to Australia after failing a dictation test given in Italian, leading to a debate over Australia's immigration policy.


 * 1944 – World War II: Fulfilling a promise he made two years previously, General Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte to begin the recapture of the Philippines.


 * 1969 – Experimental results from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center were published showing that protons were composed of smaller particles, the first evidence of quarks.
 * 1973 – Watergate scandal: Both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than obey Richard Nixon's order to have Archibald Cox fired.


 * 1977 – Three members of the American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd died when their chartered plane crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi.

* 1982 – During a UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, a large number of attendees trying to leave the Central Lenin Stadium resulted in a stampede that caused 66 deaths.


 * 1986 – Aeroflot Flight 6502 crashed on approach to Kurumoch Airport in Samara (then Kuibyshev in the Soviet Union), killing 70 people on board.


 * 2011 – First Libyan Civil War: Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed Libyan leader, was captured by rebel forces during the Battle of Sirte, and was killed shortly thereafter.
 * Born/died: | Ralph d'Escures |d|1122| Catherine Gordon, Duchess of Gordon |b|1718| Pauline Bonaparte |b|1780| Otto Julius Zobel |b|1887| James Chadwick |b|1891| James Anthony Froude |d|1894|Chen Liting |b|1910| Janet Jagan |b|1920| Jean Keene |b|1923| Tom Petty |b|1950|  Kamala Harris |b|1964| Francis Chan |d|1967| Paige Bueckers |b|2001| Farooq Leghari |d|2010