Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 October 26

The Byzantine civil war of 1341–47 broke out after the death of Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos (pictured). As his chief aide and closest friend, John VI Kantakouzenos became regent for the Emperor's young son and heir, John V Palaiologos. While Kantakouzenos was absent from Constantinople, a new regency was established with support from Empress-Dowager Anna of Savoy, which launched a persecution of Kantakouzenos' family and supporters. In response, Kantakouzenos was proclaimed co-emperor at Demotika on 26 October 1341. During the first years of the war, the forces of the new regency prevailed. Most of the cities in Thrace and Macedonia came under regency control, but Kantakouzenos reversed these gains with assistance from the neighbouring rulers of Serbia and the Turkish beyliks. Kantakouzenos was crowned in 1346, and entered Constantinople on 3 February 1347. By agreement, he was to rule for ten years as the senior emperor and regent for John V, until the boy came of age. Despite this apparent victory, a subsequent resumption of the civil war forced Kantakouzenos to retire to become a monk in 1354. The conflict proved disastrous for the Empire, as seven years of warfare, marauding armies, social turmoil, the loss of territory to neighbouring rulers, and the Black Death devastated Byzantium, reducing it to a rump state. (Full article...)

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• China launches an experimental lunar mission, Chang'e 5-T1, which will loop behind the Moon and return to Earth.
• A soldier is shot dead at the National War Memorial (pictured) in Ottawa, Canada, and shots are fired in the Centre Block Parliament building.
• Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege is awarded the Sakharov Prize for helping victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Comet Siding Spring makes a very close approach to Mars and is observed by means of surface rovers and satellites.
• At least 43 people are killed in Nepal's worst snowstorm disaster around the mountains of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri.
• Jean Tirole is awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of market power and regulation.

Ongoing: Ebola outbreak – Hong Kong protests – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Ben Bradlee – Gough Whitlam – Oscar de la Renta

October 26: National Day in Austria (1955); Feast day of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki

• 1708 – The final stone of St Paul's Cathedral (pictured), rebuilt after the original burned down in the 1666 Great Fire of London, was laid by the son of its architect, Christopher Wren.
• 1921 – The Chicago Theatre, which is the oldest surviving Neo-Baroque French-revival grand movie palace, opened.
• 1944 – World War II: In one of the largest naval battles in modern history, Allied forces defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the seas surrounding the Philippine island of Leyte.
• 1977 – Somalian hospital cook Ali Maow Maalin began displaying symptoms in the last known case of naturally occurring smallpox.
• 1994 – Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty settling relations between the two countries and pledging that neither would allow its territory to become a staging ground for military strikes by a third country.

More anniversaries: October 25 – October 26 – October 27