Thursday, October 11, 1691

A bomb exploded in the Myyrmanni shopping center in Helsinki, Finland (aftermath pictured), resulting in seven deaths and 159 injuries.

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.

An estimated 750,000 people attended the "Great March" in Washington, D.C., to demand greater civil rights for the LGBT community.

Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan (pictured) became the first American woman to perform a space walk.

Typhoon Nora, the fourth-most intense tropical cyclone on record, dissipated after killing 40 people and leaving more than a million homeless across Taiwan and the Philippines.

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.

A field-sequential color system developed by Hungarian-American engineer Peter Goldmark became the first color television system to be adopted for commercial use, only for it to be abandoned a year later.

CBS's field-sequential color system for television was the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

World War II: At the Battle of Cape Esperance on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, American ships intercepted and defeated a Japanese fleet sent to attack Henderson Field.

Former British king Edward and his wife arrived at Berlin Friedrichstraße station to begin a tour of Nazi Germany, where they were greeted with Nazi salutes and dined with high-ranking members of the state apparatus.

In Washington, D.C., the Daughters of the American Revolution was founded.

The Morant Bay rebellion, led by Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, began in Jamaica; after protestors burned down the courthouse, it was brutally suppressed by Governor Edward John Eyre.