- Oct 1 63 arrested in riot to buy Rolling Stone tickets in Milano, Italy
- Oct 1 Last game at Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium, Phils-2 Expos-1
- Oct 2 Billy Martin named manager of the Detriot Tigers
- Oct 2 Plane carrying Wichita State U football team crashes killing 30
- Oct 3 "Coco" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 333 performances
- Oct 3 Baseball umpires call their 1st strike
- Oct 3 WAPT TV channel 16 in Jackson, MS (ABC) begins broadcasting
- Oct 4 KC Chiefs Jan Stenerud kicks 55-yard field goal
- Oct 4 Umps return after 1-day walkout in quest of higher wages
- Oct 4 WFYI TV channel 20 in Indianapolis, IN (PBS) begins broadcasting
- Oct 4 Herbert Schmidtz makes highest parachute jump from a tower by leaping from a 1,984 ft TV mast in Tulsa, Oklahoma
- Oct 5 John Creach joins Jefferson Airplane
- Oct 5 Quebec separatists kidnap British trade commissioner James Cross
- Oct 5 PBS becomes a US television network.
- Oct 5 MLB National League Championship: Cincinnati Reds sweep Pittsburgh Pirates, 3 games to 0
- Oct 5 MLB American League Championship: Baltimore Orioles beat Minnesota Twins, 3 games to 0
- Oct 8 Soviet author Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn wins Nobel Prize for Literature
- Oct 8 The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) propose that a system of Proportional Representation (PR) should be used in elections in Northern Ireland
- Oct 9 Khmer Republic (Cambodia) declares independence
- Oct 10 Fiji gains independence from Britain (National Day)
- Oct 12 Rock Memorabilia Auction at Filmore East
- Oct 13 Angela Davis arrested in NYC
- Oct 13 USSR performs nuclear test at Sary Shagan USSR
- Oct 13 A man dies in a premature bomb explosion in Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Music Awards
Oct 14 4th Country Music Association Award: Merle Haggard wins
Merle Haggard
- Oct 14 Cleveland Cavaliers lose to Buffalo Braves in their 1st game 107-92
- Oct 14 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- Oct 14 USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR
- Oct 15 Baltimore Orioles beat Cincinnati Reds, 4 games to 1 in 67th World Series
- Oct 15 Bridge over Yarra River in Melbourne crashes; killing 35
- Oct 15 Russian passenger flight hijacked to Turkey
Election of Interest
Oct 15 Anwar Sadat elected 3rd President of Egypt, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser
Anwar Sadat
Event of Interest
Oct 16 Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act as a response to the October Crisis, the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act in Canadian history.
Pierre Trudeau
- Oct 17 Anwar Sadat sworn in as the 3rd President of Egypt
- Oct 18 Kathy Whitworth wins LPGA Quality Chekd Golf Classic
- Oct 18 Sachio Kinugasa begins 2,215 cons game streak for Hiroshima Carp
- Oct 19 Amdahl Corp forms at Sunnyvale, California
- Oct 19 John Frazier kills Ohta's declares WW 3 has begun
- Oct 20 American Norman Borlaug awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
- Oct 20 Zond 8 Launch (Moon Orbit & Return)
- Oct 21 777 Unification church couples wed in Korea
- Oct 21 Caledonian Airways takes over British United Airways
- Oct 21 Nobel prize of peace awarded to Norman E Borlaugh
- Oct 21 Bernadette Devlin is released from prison having served four months of her six month sentence for riotous behaviour
- Oct 23 Gary Gabelich sets auto speed record 622.4 mph (1,001 kph)
- Oct 23 Charles Haughey and two others are found not guilty of illegal arms importation by a Dublin jury; the 'Arms Trial' began on 28 May 1970
- Oct 24 Nancy Walker creates Ida Morgenstein role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
Election of Interest
Oct 24 Marxist Salvador Allende elected President of Chile by the Chilean Congress
Salvador Allende
- Oct 25 Marilynn Smith wins LPGA Women's Golf Charities Open
- Oct 25 21st Formula One WDC: Jochen Rindt wins by five points (the only season in which the World Championship title has been awarded posthumously)
- Oct 26 "Doonesbury" comic strip debuts in 28 newspapers
- Oct 26 Tanzania begins building railway Lusaka-Drone ash Salaam
- Oct 27 "Light, Lively & Yiddish" opens at Belasco Theater NYC for 87 performances
- Oct 28 NBA Cleveland Cavaliers 1st home game, lose to San Diego 110-99
- Oct 28 US/USSR sign an agreement to discuss joint space efforts
- Oct 29 WYEA (now WLTZ) TV channel 38 in Columbus, GA (NBC) 1st broadcast
- Oct 29 The Electoral Reform Society calls for the introduction of Proportional Representation (PR) in elections in Northern Ireland
- Oct 30 KVEW TV channel 42 in Kennewick, WA (ABC) begins broadcasting
- Oct 30 There are serious riots in the Catholic Ardoyne area of Belfast which last for three nights
- Oct 30 Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark meets with British Home Secretary Reginald Maulling to discuss matters related to reforms and security
Event of Interest
Oct 31 Jim Morrison is sentenced to six months in jail and a $500 fine for indecent exposure and open profanity, though remains free on a $50,000 bond pending appeal
Jim Morrison