October 23 in History

Between 25,000 and 33,000 women marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City on October 23, 1915, in the largest suffrage parade the nation had ever seen. They carried banners, wore white dresses, and stretched for blocks. Male supporters, including several prominent politicians, marched alongside them. The parade was organized to build momentum for a New York state referendum on women's suffrage scheduled for November 2. That referendum failed. But the scale of the march stunned the political establishment. New York held another referendum in 1917 and passed it, making it the first large Eastern state to grant women full voting rights. The New York victory proved decisive for the national movement: Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment two years later, and it was ratified in 1920.

Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, known as Peyo, introduced the Smurfs as minor characters in a Johan and Peewit comic strip published in Spirou magazine on October 23, 1958. The small blue creatures were so popular with readers that Peyo gave them their own series within two years. The name 'Schtroumpf' was invented during a meal when Peyo forgot the word for salt and asked a friend to pass the schtroumpf. The joke stuck. Hanna-Barbera licensed the characters for an American Saturday morning cartoon in 1981 that ran for nine seasons and 256 episodes, making Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and the villain Gargamel household names worldwide. The franchise has since generated over $1 billion in merchandise, three feature films, and theme park attractions. All from three apples tall, blue, and living in mushroom houses.

A Mercedes truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of TNT drove past two guard posts and detonated inside the lobby of the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport at 6:22 a.m. on October 23, 1983. The explosion, equivalent to 21,000 pounds of TNT, was the largest non-nuclear blast since World War II. It collapsed the four-story building into rubble fifteen feet deep. Two hundred and forty-one Marines, sailors, and soldiers died. Moments later, a second truck bomb hit the French paratrooper barracks two miles away, killing 58 French soldiers. The simultaneous attacks were orchestrated by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Reagan withdrew U.S. peacekeepers from Lebanon within four months. The bombing demonstrated that suicide truck bombs could defeat even heavily fortified military positions.

Yolanda Saldivar was convicted of first-degree murder on October 23, 1995, for shooting Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla-Perez at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas. Saldivar had been president of Selena's fan club and manager of her boutiques before the family discovered she was embezzling funds. On March 31, 1995, Selena went to the motel to retrieve financial records. Saldivar shot her once in the back with a .38 revolver. Selena was 23 years old. The trial drew intense media coverage, particularly from Spanish-language outlets. The jury deliberated for two hours. Saldivar received life in prison with parole eligibility after 30 years. Selena's posthumous album Dreaming of You debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, the first predominantly Spanish-language album to do so.

Forty to fifty armed Chechen militants seized 912 hostages at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow on October 23, 2002, during a performance of the musical Nord-Ost. They strapped explosives to female fighters positioned throughout the auditorium and demanded Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. After a 57-hour standoff, Russian Spetsnaz forces pumped an aerosolized chemical agent, later identified as a fentanyl derivative, through the ventilation system. The gas incapacitated the hostage-takers but also killed approximately 130 hostages, roughly 14% of those inside. Russian authorities refused to identify the chemical agent to doctors trying to save poisoned hostages, a decision that turned survivable exposures into fatalities. All the militants were killed, many shot while unconscious. International criticism focused on the gas and the refusal to disclose its composition.

Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with an Almoravid army from North Africa to rescue the failing Muslim taifa kingdoms of Iberia. On October 23, 1086, his forces met Alfonso VI's Castilian army at az-Zallaqah, near Badajoz. The Almoravids used West African drums and massed cavalry charges to break the Christian lines. Alfonso's army was routed, and the king himself was wounded and barely escaped with 500 horsemen. The victory halted the Christian Reconquista's momentum for a generation and preserved Muslim control of southern Spain. Ibn Tashfin returned to Morocco, then came back two years later to annex the taifa kingdoms himself, replacing their squabbling emirs with Almoravid governors. The Reconquista wouldn't regain its momentum until the Almohad dynasty fractured in the 1200s.