1520 King Henry VIII of England orders the installation of bowling lanes in his palace at Whitehall.
… Saint Richard Gwyn was martyred by being hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason on 15th October 1584. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Richard Gwyn was born c. 1537 in Montgomeryshire and studied at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Douai, before returning to Wales as a teacher. Gwyn was a staunch Catholic and this was at the time following The Protestant Reformation, that it was highly dangerous to be Catholic, however, Gwyn refused to convert to the Anglian faith and often had to change his home to avoid fines and imprisonment. He was arrested by the Vicar of Wrexham, an Anglican convert in 1579 and spent the next five years in and out of prison. On one occasion Gwyn was fined £280 for refusing to attend Anglican church services, and another £140 for brawling when they took him there. Then in the spring of 1582 where, instead of being tried for an offence, he was given a sermon by an Anglican minister. However, he started to heckle him to the extent that the exercise had to be abandoned. Richard Gwyn was indicted for high treason in 1583 and despite his defence and objections to the dubious practices of the court, Gwyn was executed by hanging, drawing and quartering, at the Beast Market in Wrexham on 15 October 1584. His last words, in Welsh, were reportedly "Iesu, trugarha wrthyf" ("Jesus, have mercy on me"). …
1666 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that Charles II had started wearing the first known waistcoat. The King was so overweight that he left the bottom button undone, a fashion custom followed to this day.
1789 George Washington begins the first US presidential tour with a tour of New England.
… Traditionally, October 15th was the day of the Llangammarch Horse Fair which by the 1890s was the biggest pony fair in Wales and well known throughout Britain.
Llangammarch lies in the foothills of Mynydd Epynt, where local farmers had the grazing rights of over 34,000 acres of mountain upland. The Epynt has been associated with horse-breeding for centuries with the name probably derived from the name of the Celtic goddess Epona, the protector of horses, and the leader of souls to the underworld in the afterlife.
In the weeks before the Fair, farmers would gather their ponies and early on the day of the Fair, hundreds of horses would be driven off the Eppynt down to Llangammarch, where the village's long street was soon packed with ponies and horses, carthorses and cobs. As horses and ponies were the main form of transport at the time, as well as being vital for farm work, driving livestock and for use as pit ponies, dealers would come from all over Wales, Ireland and the midlands and southern counties of England. Some of the horses were also destined for the culinary markets of Belgium and France. There were no auctioneers and deals were struck by the clap of hands and payment in cash. Ponies and horses sold at the Fair were then driven to Garth railway station where special trains were laid on for their onward transportation. There would also be various stalls selling clothes and anything and everything connected with horses. Local residents sold refreshments to the fairgoers and there would be much celebration in Llangammarch's pubs and hotels.
The purchase of several thousand acres of Mynydd Epynt by the Ministry of Defence in 1939, for use as a training area, resulted in the removal of the ponies, which combined with the introduction of more efficient tractors used for farmwork saw a rapid decline for Llangammarch's Horse Fair and by the last years of the 1940s, it had disappeared.
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1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus is arrested and accused of espionage in France.
1917 Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is executed by a firing squad in Vincennes near Paris for allegedly spying for Germany during World War I.
1980: Abbey Road Studios in London auctions off thousands of pounds worth of recording equipment, including some used for Beatles recordings. At the same time it is reported that a roll of toilet paper with ‘Property of EMI’ stamped on every sheet sold for £500.
1987: In what becomes known as the Great Storm of 1987 a violent extratropical cyclone hits England, France and the Channel Islands. Fallen trees block roads and railways and there is widespread structural damage to property. Many radio stations are off the air due to power and aerial problems. Radio Caroline from the radio-ship Ross Revenge is one of the few that is still broadcasting as dawn breaks over the devastation..
