The Ninety-five Theses are a list of propositions written by Martin Luther that started the Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church. Luther, a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, enclosed them in a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz on 31 October 1517, a date now commemorated annually as Reformation Day. They advance Luther's positions against the selling of plenary indulgences, certificates that were said to reduce the punishment for sins in purgatory. Luther claimed that his positions accorded with those of the pope, but the Theses contradict a 14th-century papal bull. Luther's ecclesiastical superiors had him tried for heresy, which culminated in his excommunication in 1521. Though the Theses mark the start of the Reformation, Luther did not consider indulgences to be as important as other theological matters which would divide the church, such as justification by faith and the bondage of the will. His breakthrough on these issues would come later, and he did not see the writing of the Theses as the point at which his beliefs diverged from those of Rome. (Full article...)

Martin Luther in 1526

• ... that the communion song "Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet" ("God be praised and blessed"), which Martin Luther (pictured) derived from an older model, entered Catholic hymnals in the 20th century?
• ... that Dr. William Carpentier, the flight surgeon for Apollo 11 and Apollo 13, was registered on the Air Force One manifest as WFP – "World Famous Physician"?
• ... that when the citizens of Hanover accepted the Reformation in 1533, the 200-year-old Kreuzkirche became Lutheran?
• ... that the whaleback SS Clifton disappeared for over 90 years?
• ... that "Es spricht der Unweisen Mund wohl" ("The mouth of fools doth God confess") by Martin Luther was one of eight hymns in the first Lutheran hymnal?
• ... that in 2011, Myktybek Abdyldayev was part of a group of Kyrgyzstan deputies who sacrificed rams in front of government headquarters?
• ... that three stanzas of the penitential hymn "Ach lieben Christen seid getrost" ("Ah dear Christians, be comforted") by Johannes Gigas were retained unchanged for Bach's chorale cantata?
• ... that the United States experienced a Halloween "postcard craze" in the early 1900s?

Nursultan Nazarbayev

• Catalonia issues a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain, whose government imposes direct rule under Article 155 of its constitution.
• President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured) announces that the Kazakh language will begin using a Latin script, rather than the current Cyrillic script.
• The High Court of Australia finds that five parliamentarians are ineligible to serve.
• Venezuela's democratic opposition win the Sakharov Prize.
• At the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping assumes his second term as General Secretary, and the political theory Xi Jinping Thought is written into the party's constitution.

October 31: Halloween; Samhain begins (Northern Hemisphere); Beltane begins (Southern Hemisphere)

Indira Gandhi

• 1913 – Public transportation workers in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., went on strike, shutting down mass transit in the city and sparking riots when strikebreakers attempted to restart services.
• 1917 – World War I: Allied forces defeated Turkish troops in Beersheba in Southern Palestine at the Battle of Beersheba, with the battle involving one of the the last successful cavalry charges.
• 1973 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escaped from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin aboard a hijacked helicopter which landed in the prison's exercise yard.
• 1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (pictured) was assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, sparking anti-Sikh riots throughout the country.
• 2015 – Shortly after takeoff, Metrojet Flight 9268 exploded and then crashed into the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.

John Keats (b. 1795) · Natalie Clifford Barney (b. 1876) · Charles Taze Russell (d. 1916)