October 1987 in History

Events in History

Oct 6 Military coup leader Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka declares Fiji a republic

Oct 6 US Senate Judiciary Committee votes 9-5 to send nomination of Robert Bork for a seat on the Supreme Court to full senate with an unfavorable recommendation
Oct 9 Japanese bank buys "Lady McGill" stamp for $1,100,000
Oct 10 Garfield Park Nature Center opens, latest in Cleveland Metroparks
Oct 10 Giant's Jeffrey Leonard hits playoff record HR in his 4th cons game
Oct 11 200,000 march for gay and lesbian civil rights in Washington, D.C.
Oct 12 Oscar Arias (Costa Rican Pres) wins Nobel Peace Prize
Oct 13 1st military use of trained dolphins (US Navy in Persian Gulf)
Oct 13 Costa Rican President Oscar Arias wins Nobel Peace Prize
Oct 14 In Midland, Tx 1½-year-old Jessica McClure falls 22' (7m) down a well
Oct 15 6th Belgium government of Martens falls
Oct 15 Coup in Burkina Faso, president Sankara dies
Oct 15 Lanford Wilson's "Burn This" premieres in NYC
Oct 15 The Great Storm of 1987 hits France and England
Oct 16 338,500,000 shares traded on NY stock exchange (record)
Oct 16 Dow Jones for 1st time falls more than 100 pts (108.35)
Oct 16 Great Storm of 1987: 175-kph hurricane force winds hit London and much of the South of England killing 23 people and causing widespread blackouts
Oct 16 Jessica McClure rescued 58 hrs after falling 22' into a well shaft
Oct 16 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR

Oct 17 US First Lady Nancy Reagan undergoes a modified radical mastectomy

Oct 19 Black Monday: Stock markets around the world crash, including the Dow Jones stock index, which falls 508.32 points (22%), 4½ times the previous daily record
Oct 19 US warships destroy 2 Iranian oil platforms in Persian Gulf
Oct 20 10 die as US Air Force jet crashed into a Ramada Inn near Indianapolis
Oct 20 Dow-Jones increases 102.27 pts/608,120,000 shares traded (record)
Oct 20 Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz sentenced to 6 months in jail
Oct 21 7th Belgium government of Martens forms
Oct 21 Full US Senate debate begins on Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court

Oct 21 Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Robert Solow for his theory of economic growth

Oct 22 Nobel prize for literature awarded to Joseph Brodsky
Oct 23 Dutch government gives Fokker's Aircraft Ÿ212 million credit
Oct 23 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
Oct 23 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Oct 23 US Senate rejects Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by a bipartisan vote of 58-42
Oct 26 Dow Jones down 156.83 points
Oct 26 Head of Salvadoran Human Rights Comm assassinated by death squads
Oct 27 Lucas Mangopes Democratic Party wins Bophuthatswana elections
Oct 27 South Korean voters overwhelmingly approved a new constitution
Oct 30 In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the TurboGrafx-16, known as PC Engine.

Oct 2 Peter Medawar, British biologist (1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance"), dies at 72

Oct 3 French dramatist (Antigone, The Lark), dies at 77

Oct 8 Konstantinos Tsatsos, Greek politician and 2nd President of Greece (1975-1980), dies at 88
Oct 9 Clare Boothe Luce, American politician and U.S. ambassador to Italy, dies at 84
Oct 12 Alf Landon, American politician, Governor of Kansas (1933-37) and Republican Presidential nominee in 1936, dies at his Topeka home at 100
Oct 12 Philleo Nash, American politician and Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (1961-66), dies at 77

Oct 13 American physicist (transistors, Nobel 1956), dies at 85

Oct 15 Thomas Sankara, Burkinabé revolutionary and politician, President of Burkina Faso (1983-87), assassinated in a coup at 37
Oct 17 Abdul Malek Ukil, Bangladeshi politician (b. 1925)
Oct 18 Theodore Brameld, author (Use of Explosive Ideas), dies at 83
Oct 20 Andrey Nikolayevich Kolmogorov, Russian mathematician (theory of probability), dies at 84
Oct 21 Ying-Chin Ho, Taiwan government official, dies at 88
Oct 24 Constantin Alajalov, Armenian-American illustrator (The New Yorker; Saturday Evening Post; Dithers & Jitters), and painter, dies at 86
Oct 28 Andre Masson, French surrealist artist (Labyrinth), dies at 91
Oct 29 Kamal El Mallakh, Egyptian archaeologist (King Khufu Solar ship), and journalist, dies at 57
Oct 31 Joseph Campbell, American professor of comparative mythology (Mythic Image), dies at 83