Oct. 12 (UPI) -- On this date in history:
In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands. Columbus thought he had reached India.
In 1810, the citizens of Munich were invited to join in celebrating the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen in what would become the first Oktoberfest.
In 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell, 49, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium in World War I.
In 1933, the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, otherwise known as The Rock, was acquired by the United States Department of Justice. Less than a year later, the prison would become home to some of the country's most notorious criminals.
