Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 4
October 4: Independence Day in Lesotho (1966); World Animal Day; Fiji Week in Fiji begins; Labour Day in New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and South Australia.
- 1830 - Belgian Revolution: A provisional government in Brussels declared the creation of the independent and neutral state of Belgium, in revolt against the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
- 1910 - Manuel II, the last King of Portugal, fled to Great Britain when a revolution erupted in Lisbon and his palace was shelled. A republic was proclaimed the next day.
- 1957 - Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched at 19:12 UTC by a R-7 rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
- 1993 - Russian Constitutional Crisis: Tanks bombarded the White House in Moscow, a government building that housed the Russian parliament, where demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rallied outside .