Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October

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October 1: Unification Day in Cameroon (1961); National Day in China (1949); Independence Day in Tuvalu (1978); Defenders Day in Ukraine (2015)

• 959 – Edgar acceded to the English throne upon the death of his brother Eadwig.
• 1386 – The Wonderful Parliament met at Westminster Abbey to address King Richard II's need for money, but soon changed focus to the reform of his administration.
• 1890 – At the encouragement of preservationist John Muir and writer Robert Underwood Johnson, the U.S. Congress established Yosemite National Park (pictured) in California.
• 1918 – First World War: British and Arab troops captured Damascus from the Ottoman Empire.
• 2003 – A levy was imposed on the hiring of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands at the time.

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October 2: International Day of Non-Violence; Gandhi Jayanti in India

• 1766 – As part of wider food riots, citizens in Nottingham, England, looted large quantities of cheese; one man was killed during attempts to restore order.
• 1879 – Qing China signed the Treaty of Livadia with the Russian Empire, but the terms were so unfavorable that the Chinese government refused to ratify the treaty.
• 1913 – The Shubert Theatre opened on Broadway with a production of Hamlet.
• 1967 – Thurgood Marshall (pictured) was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• 2005 – Typhoon Longwang made landfall in China as the deadliest tropical cyclone in that year to impact the country.

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October 3

• 1392 – Muhammad VII became the twelfth sultan of the Emirate of Granada.
• 1602 – Anglo-Spanish War: An English fleet intercepted and attacked six Spanish ships at the Battle of the Narrow Seas (pictured).
• 1849 – American author Edgar Allan Poe was found semi-conscious and delirious in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances; it was the last time he was seen in public before his death four days later.
• 1952 – The United Kingdom successfully conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the world's third state with nuclear weapons.
• 1991 – Nadine Gordimer became the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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October 4: Cinnamon Roll Day in Sweden and Finland

• 1209 – Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor (seal pictured), was crowned.
• 1918 – An ammunition plant in Sayreville, New Jersey, U.S., exploded, killing around 100 people and destroying more than 300 buildings.
• 1957 – The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
• 2003 – A suicide bomber killed 21 people, including a two-month-old baby, and injured 60 others inside a restaurant in Haifa, Israel.

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October 5: World Teachers' Day

• 869 – The Fourth Council of Constantinople, the eighth Catholic Ecumenical Council, was convened to discuss the patriarchate of Photios I of Constantinople.
• 1789 – French Revolution: Upset about the high price and scarcity of bread, thousands of Parisian women and allies marched (pictured) on the Palace of Versailles.
• 1869 – During construction of the Eastman tunnel in St. Anthony, Minnesota (now Minneapolis), the Mississippi River broke through the tunnel's limestone ceiling, nearly destroying Saint Anthony Falls.
• 1994 – Swiss police found the bodies of 48 members of the Order of the Solar Temple, who had died in a cult mass murder-suicide.

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October 6: German-American Day in the United States, Mid-Autumn Festival (2025) in China

• 618 – Transition from Sui to Tang: Wang Shichong's army defeated Li Mi's forces at the Battle of Yanshi, allowing Wang to consolidate power and soon depose China's Sui dynasty.
• 1934 – Catalonia's autonomous government, led by Lluís Companys (pictured), declared a general strike, an armed insurgency, and the establishment of the Catalan State in reaction to the inclusion of conservatives in the Spanish republican regime.
• 1976 – Two bombs placed by the CIA-linked Cuban dissident group Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations exploded on Cubana Flight 455, killing all 73 people aboard.
• 1989 – About 200 members of the San Francisco Police Department instigated a police riot in the Castro following a peaceful protest held by the political group ACT UP.

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October 7

• 1763 – King George III issued a royal proclamation that forbade British settlement of much of newly acquired French territory in North America, reserving the land for indigenous peoples.
• 1849 – American writer Edgar Allan Poe died under mysterious circumstances at Washington Medical College four days after being found on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, in a delirious and incoherent state.
• 1914 – Japan captured Pohnpei from Germany, eventually leading to large-scale Japanese immigration to Micronesia.
• 1944 – The Holocaust: Sonderkommando work-unit members in Auschwitz concentration camp revolted upon learning that they were due to be killed; although a few managed to escape, most were massacred on the same day.
• 2006 – Anna Politkovskaya (pictured), a Russian journalist and human-rights activist, was assassinated in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow.

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October 8

• 1871 – The Great Chicago Fire (pictured), which according to popular belief was started by a cow belonging to Catherine O'Leary kicking over a lantern, began and proceeded to destroy much of the city's central business district.
• 1956 – Major League Baseball pitcher Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history.
• 1998 – A new airport for Oslo, Norway, opened at Gardermoen, replacing a smaller one at the same location that had served as a backup to the city's previous main airport at Fornebu.
• 2001 – At Linate Airport in Milan, Italy, Scandinavian Airlines Flight SK686 collided on take-off with a Cessna Citation II business jet, killing 118 people.

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October 9: Leif Erikson Day in the United States, parts of Canada, and communities in the Nordic countries

• 1813 – Late in the Napoleonic Wars, Empress Marie Louise (pictured) issued decrees conscripting tens of thousands of French teenagers, who became known as Marie-Louises.
• 1874 – The Universal Postal Union, then known as the General Postal Union, was established with the signing of the Treaty of Bern to unify disparate postal services and regulations so that international mail could be exchanged easily.
• 1914 – World War I: The civilian authorities of Antwerp surrendered and allowed the German army to capture the city.
• 2019 – Syrian civil war: Turkish forces began an offensive into north-eastern Syria following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region.

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October 10

• 1846 – English astronomer William Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune.
• 1933 – In the first proven act of sabotage in the history of commercial aviation, a Boeing 247 operated by United Airlines exploded in mid-air near Chesterton, Indiana, killing all seven people aboard.
• 1963 – The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground, went into effect.
• 1973 – U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with tax evasion.
• 1992 – After 20 years of construction, Vidyasagar Setu (pictured), the longest cable-stayed bridge in India, opened, joining Kolkata and Howrah.

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October 11: Yom Kippur begins at sunset (Judaism); Feast day of Saint James the Deacon (Anglicanism); Double Ninth Festival in China (2024); National Coming Out Day

• 1142 – The Treaty of Shaoxing was ratified, ending the Jin–Song wars, although sporadic fighting continued until 1234.
• 1968 – Apollo 7, the first manned mission of NASA's Apollo program, and the first three-man American space mission, launched from Complex 34 in Cape Kennedy, Florida.
• 1987 – Sri Lankan Civil War: The Indian Peace Keeping Force began Operation Pawan to take control of Jaffna from the Tamil Tigers and enforce their disarmament as a part of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord.
• 2002 – A bomb exploded in the Myyrmanni shopping center in Helsinki, Finland (aftermath pictured), resulting in 7 deaths and 159 injuries.

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October 12

• 1799 – 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.
• 1890 – The Uddevalla Suffrage Association was founded in Uddevalla, Sweden, with the purpose of bringing about universal suffrage.
• 1928 – 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.
• 1933 – 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.
• 2013 – Twelve people were killed in an apartment-building collapse in Medellín, leading to new construction laws being passed in Colombia.

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October 13: Indigenous Peoples' Day in the United States (2025)

• 645 – Goguryeo–Tang War: Led by Emperor Taizong, the Tang army was forced to abandon a siege of Ansi Fortress.
• 1773 – French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy (pictured), an interacting, grand design spiral galaxy located an estimated 31 million light-years away.
• 1917 – At least 30,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun in the fields of Cova da Iria near Fátima, Portugal.
• 1961 – Newly elected Burundian prime minister Louis Rwagasore was assassinated by his political rivals.
• 2013 – During the Hindu festival of Navaratri at a temple in Madhya Pradesh, India, rumours about an impending bridge collapse caused a stampede that resulted in 115 deaths.

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October 14: Thanksgiving in Canada (2024)

• 1758 – Third Silesian War: At the Battle of Hochkirch, an Austrian army under Leopold Joseph von Daun surprised the Prussians commanded by Frederick the Great, overwhelming them and forcing a general retreat.
• 1888 – French inventor Louis Le Prince filmed Roundhay Garden Scene (pictured), the earliest surviving motion picture, in Leeds, England.
• 1956 – B. R. Ambedkar, a leader of India's "Untouchable" caste, publicly converted to Buddhism and became the leader of the Dalit Buddhist movement.
• 2021 – Approximately 10,000 John Deere employees went on strike in one of the largest private-sector strikes in the United States.

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October 15

• 1529 – Ottoman–Habsburg wars: The siege of Vienna ended with Austrian forces repelling the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of conquest in Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
• 1888 – The "From Hell" letter, allegedly from Jack the Ripper, was sent to George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in London.
• 1965 – Vietnam War protests: At an anti-war rally in New York City, David J. Miller burned his draft card (example pictured), the first such act to result in arrest under a new amendment to the Selective Service Act.
• 1979 – President Carlos Humberto Romero of El Salvador was overthrown and exiled in a military coup d'état.

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October 16

• 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacked French forces led by Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic Wars, with over 500,000 troops involved.
• 1834 – Most of the Palace of Westminster in London was destroyed in a fire caused by the burning of wooden tally sticks.
• 1916 – Margaret Sanger (pictured) established the United States' first family planning clinic in Brooklyn, New York.
• 1943 – The Holocaust: The Gestapo conducted a raid on the Roman Ghetto, capturing 1,259 members of the Jewish community, most of whom were sent to Auschwitz.
• 2013 – In Laos's deadliest air accident, Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashed into the Mekong River, resulting in the deaths of all 49 people aboard.

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October 17

• 1604 – German astronomer Johannes Kepler began observations of an exceptionally bright object, now known as Kepler's Supernova, that had appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus.
• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British general John Burgoyne's Saratoga campaign ended with his surrender to the Americans, later convincing France to enter the war in alliance with the United States.
• 1814 – A wooden beer-fermenting vat in London burst, destroying a second vat and causing a large flood of at least 128,000 imperial gallons (580,000 l; 154,000 US gal) of porter that killed eight people.
• 1914 – Off the coast of the Dutch island of Texel, a British naval squadron sank the German 7th Half Flotilla of torpedo boats in the Battle off Texel.
• 1964 – Prime Minister Robert Menzies inaugurated the artificial Lake Burley Griffin (pictured) in the centre of the Australian capital Canberra.

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October 18: Alaska Day (1867)

• 1565 – The first recorded naval battle between Europeans and the Japanese occurred when a flotilla of samurai attacked two Portuguese trade vessels at the Battle of Fukuda Bay in Nagasaki.
• 1748 – The War of the Austrian Succession ended with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
• 1873 – Renton defeated Kilmarnock 2–0 in the opening match of the inaugural Scottish Cup.
• 1968 – At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American athlete Bob Beamon (pictured) achieved a distance of 8.90 m (29.2 ft) in the long jump event, setting a world record that stood for 23 years.

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October 19

• 1579 – A ceremony was held in Edinburgh marking the coming of age of James VI of Scotland as an adult ruler.
• 1752 – The Pennsylvania Gazette published a statement by Benjamin Franklin describing a kite experiment (depicted) to determine the electrical nature of lightning.
• 1914 – First World War: Allied forces began engaging German troops at the First Battle of Ypres.
• 1944 – The Guatemalan Revolution began with a small group of army officers led by Francisco Javier Arana and Jacobo Árbenz launching a coup against dictator Jorge Ubico.

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October 20

• 1939 – Pope Pius XII (pictured) published his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, which critiqued ideologies such as racism, cultural superiority and totalitarianism.
• 1951 – African-American college football player Johnny Bright was the victim of an on-field assault, eventually leading to changes in NCAA football rules that mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.
• 1967 – Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin filmed an unidentified subject, which they claimed was Bigfoot, at Six Rivers National Forest in California.
• 1984 – The Spanish trawler Sonia sank in British waters after a five-hour chase by the Irish Naval Service patrol vessel Aisling, during which almost 600 shots were fired.
• 1991 – An earthquake struck the Indian state of Uttarakhand, killing at least 768 people and destroying thousands of homes.

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October 21

• 1096 – First Crusade: At the Battle of Civetot, the Seljuk forces of Kilij Arslan destroyed the army of the People's Crusade as it marched toward Nicaea.
• 1867 – The first and second of three treaties were signed near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, between the United States federal government and several Native American tribes in the Great Plains, requiring them to relocate to areas in present-day western Oklahoma.
• 1941 – World War II: German soldiers massacred nearly 2,800 Serbs in Kragujevac in reprisal for insurgent attacks in the district of Gornji Milanovac.
• 1968 – At the height of the Japanese university protests, protesters occupied Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and clashed violently with police.
• 1994 – In Seoul, South Korea, 32 people were killed and 17 others injured when a span of the Seongsu Bridge collapsed (pictured).

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October 22

• 1724 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of the chorale cantata Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn yourself, O dear soul), based on the communion hymn of the same name, in Leipzig.
• 1727 – George II and Caroline of Ansbach (pictured) were crowned king and queen of Great Britain in Westminster Abbey.
• 1895 – At Gare Montparnasse in Paris, an express train derailed after overrunning the buffer stop and crashed through the station wall, with the locomotive landing on the street below.
• 1924 – The educational non-profit organization Toastmasters International was founded at a YMCA in Santa Ana, California.
• 2014 – In Ottawa, Canada, the downtown core was placed on lockdown after a series of shootings at Parliament Hill.

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October 23: Shemini Atzeret begins at sunset (Judaism); Mole Day

• 1798 – War of the Second Coalition: The Ottoman–Albanian forces of Ali Pasha of Janina defeated French troops and captured the town of Preveza at the Battle of Nicopolis.
• 1850 – The inaugural National Women's Rights Convention, presided over by American activist Paulina Wright Davis (pictured), began in Worcester, Massachusetts.
• 1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his biplane 14-bis for 50 metres (160 ft) at an altitude of about four metres (13 ft).
• 2001 – Grand Theft Auto III was released, helping to popularize open-world and mature-content video games.
• 2022 – Myanmar civil war: Burmese military forces launched airstrikes that killed at least 80 concertgoers in Kachin State.

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October 24: Simchat Torah begins at sunset (Jewish diaspora)

• 1260 – Qutuz (bust pictured), the sultan of Egypt, was assassinated and replaced by fellow Mamluk leader Baybars.
• 1796 – War of the First Coalition: The Battle of Schliengen was fought between the French and Austrian armies, who both claimed victory.
• 1945 – The Charter of the United Nations entered into force after being ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of the other signatories.
• 1975 – In protest against wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices, 90 percent of Iceland's female population went on strike for a day.
• 2003 – The inaugural Afro-Asian Games opened in Hyderabad, with 2,040 athletes from 96 nations competing.

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October 25

• 1616 – Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog left a plate on an island in Shark Bay, the oldest-known artefact of European exploration in Australia still in existence.
• 1854 – Crimean War: The ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade (pictured) was decisively repelled by Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava.
• 1950 – The People's Volunteer Army ambushed the South Korean II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, and elsewhere engaged the 1st Infantry Division at the Battle of Unsan, marking China's entry into the Korean War.
• 2001 – Windows XP, one of the most popular and widely used versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, was released for retail sale.
• 2022 – At 49 days, Liz Truss concluded the shortest tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

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October 26

• 1341 – The Byzantine army proclaimed chief minister John VI Kantakouzenos as emperor, triggering a civil war between his supporters and those of John V Palaiologos, the heir to the throne.
• 1871 – Liberian president Edward James Roye was overthrown in modern Africa's first coup d'état.
• 1892 – Ida B. Wells (pictured) began publishing her research on lynching in the United States, for which she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
• 1955 – Ngô Đình Diệm proclaimed himself president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam after defeating former emperor Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum supervised by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu.
• 2004 – Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, considered one of the best video games ever made, in North America.

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October 27

• 1904 – The first underground segment of the New York City Subway opened, connecting New York City Hall (station pictured) with Harlem.
• 1914 – World War I: The Royal Navy dreadnought HMS Audacious was sunk by a mine, but its loss was kept secret for four years.
• 1946 – Inter-religious riots in which Hindu mobs targeted Muslim families began in the Indian state of Bihar, resulting in 2,000 to 30,000 deaths.
• 1967 – American Catholic priest Philip Berrigan led a protest against the Vietnam War by pouring blood over Selective Service records in Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1993 – Widerøe Flight 744 suffered a controlled flight into terrain while on approach to Namsos Airport, Norway, killing two crew members and four passengers.

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October 28

• 1707 – The Hōei earthquake ruptured all segments of the Nankai megathrust simultaneously – the only earthquake recorded to have done so.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: As George Washington's Continental Army retreated northward from New York City, the British Army captured the village of White Plains.
• 1928 – Indonesian composer Wage Rudolf Supratman introduced "Indonesia Raya", now the country's national anthem.
• 1971 – Prospero (flight spare pictured), the first British satellite launched on a British rocket, lifted off from Launch Area 5B in Woomera, South Australia.
• 1992 – Hans-Adam II threatened to dismiss the Landtag of Liechtenstein over disagreements on the date of a referendum for the country's accession to the EEA.
• 2013 – The first terrorist attack in Beijing's recent history took place when members of the Turkistan Islamic Party drove a vehicle into a crowd, killing five people and injuring thirty-eight others.

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October 29: Republic Day in Turkey (1923)

• 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Wauhatchie, one of the few night battles of the war, concluded with the Union Army opening a supply line to troops in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• 1960 – A C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S., resulting in 22 deaths.
• 1986 – British prime minister Margaret Thatcher officially opened the M25, one of Britain's busiest motorways.
• 1991 – Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra.
• 2013 – The first phase of the Marmaray project opened with an undersea rail tunnel (train pictured) across the Bosphorus strait.

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October 30

• 1938 – CBS Radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds", a radio drama that newspapers accused of tricking Americans into believing there was an actual Martian invasion.
• 1948 – A luzzu (Maltese fishing boat) overloaded with passengers capsized and sank in the Gozo Channel off Qala, killing 23 of the 27 people on board (monument pictured).
• 1991 – The Madrid Conference, an attempt by the international community to revive the Israeli–Palestinian peace process through negotiations, convened.
• 1993 – The Troubles: Three members of the Ulster Defence Association opened fire in a crowded pub during a Halloween party, killing eight people and wounding nineteen others.
• 2002 – After his terminal-cancer diagnosis, Warren Zevon made his last public appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, giving the advice to "enjoy every sandwich".

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October 31: Halloween

• 1917 – World War I: Allied forces defeated Turkish troops in Beersheba in Southern Palestine at the Battle of Beersheba, with the battle involving one of the last successful cavalry charges.
• 1941 – 100 crew members of the USS Reuben James (pictured) perished when their vessel became the first U.S. Navy ship sunk by hostile action during World War II after it was torpedoed by the German submarine U-552.
• 1963 – A gas explosion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis killed 81 people and injured about 400 others.
• 1973 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escaped from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin aboard a hijacked helicopter that landed in the prison's exercise yard.
• 2003 – After 22 years in power, Tun Mahathir Mohamad retired as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

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