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On October 12, 1492, the crew of the Santa María sighted land in the Bahamas after more than two months at sea. Christopher Columbus went ashore believing he had reached Asia and claimed the territory in the name of the Spanish Crown. The encounter between Europe and the Americas forever changed the course of history and began the era of modern globalisation.

On October 12, 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell was shot by the German army in Brussels for having helped more than 200 Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium. Her execution provoked a wave of international outrage and was used by the Allies as war propaganda. She is today considered a national heroine in the United Kingdom.

On October 12, 2008, Chinese taikonaut Zhai Zhigang conducted China's first spacewalk, spending about twenty minutes outside the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft. China thus became the third country in the world — after the US and the Soviet Union — to master extravehicular activity, consolidating its ambitious space programme.