On October 12, 2007, former U.

On October 12, 1997, songwriter, actor and humanitarian John Denver dies when his experimental amateur aircraft crashes into Monterey Bay on the California coast.

Racial violence flares aboard U.

The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into orbit around Earth, with cosmonauts Vladamir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, and Boris Yegorov aboard.

In one of the most surreal moments in the history of the Cold War, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev pounds his fist on the table, and according to some reports, removes his shoe and threatens to pound a table with it in protest against a speech critical of Soviet policy in Eastern Europe.

Private First Class Desmond T.

On October 12, 1940, cowboy-movie star Tom Mix is killed when he loses control of his speeding Cord Phaeton convertible and rolls into a dry wash (now called the Tom Mix Wash) near Florence, Arizona.

A massive forest fire rages through Minnesota on October 12, 1918, killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands homeless.

Without fear or favour nurse Edith Cavell tended the wounded in war-torn Europe. She also helped soldiers escape and sadly paid the ultimate price on this day.

On the morning of October 12, 1915, the 49-year-old British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad in Brussels, Belgium.