Event of Interest
1492 Christopher Columbus misses Florida when he changes course
Christopher Columbus
Historic Discovery
1542 Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo discovers Catalina Island off the coast of California
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
- 1571 Battle of Lepanto: Holy League of southern European nations destroy Ottoman fleet in significant loss off Western Greece
Event of Interest
1637 Prince Frederick Henry occupies Breda
Frederick Henry
- 1690 English attack Quebec under Louis de Buade
- 1702 British & Dutch troops under Marlborough occupy Roermond
- 1714 People riot due to beer tax in Alkmaar, Netherlands
- 1737 A cyclone causes 40 foot waves that are believed to have killed 300,000 in Calcutta, India
- 1763 George III of Great Britain issues Proclamation of 1763, closing lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement
- 1765 Stamp Act Congress (First Congress of the American Colonies) convenes in New York City to devise a unified protest against new British taxation
- 1777 Americans beat British in Second Battle of Saratoga & Battle of Bemis Heights
- 1780 British defeated by American militia near Kings Mountain, SC
- 1806 Carbon paper patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgwood
- 1816 1st double decked steamboat, Washington, arrives in New Orleans
- 1825 Miramichi Fire - forest fire disaster in New Brunswick
- 1826 Granite Railway (1st chartered railway in US) begins operations
- 1828 The Greek city of Patras is liberated by the French expeditionary force in Peloponnese under General Maison.
- 1840 Willem I resigns as king of Netherlands
- 1856 Cyrus Chambers Jr patents folding machine that folds book & newspapers
- 1864 -Oct 13th) Battle of Darbytown Road, VA
- 1864 Naval Engagement at Bahia Harbor, Brazil - CSS Florida vs USS Wachusett
- 1868 Cornell University (Ithaca NY) opens
- 1870 Leon Gambetta flees Paris in balloon
- 1871 16-hour fire injures 30 of Chicago's 185 firefighters
- 1879 Germany & Austrian-Hungary sign Twofold Covenant
- 1886 Spain abolishes slavery in Cuba
- 1900 The term "orienteering" is first used for an event
- 1904 NY Highlander Jack Chesbro wins record 41st game of season (41-12)
Henri Farman Wins the Grand Prix d'Aviation
1907 France's Henri Farman flies 30m in a biplane
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- 1908 Crete revolts against Turkey & aligns with Greece
- 1908 Serbia & Montenegro sign anti-Austria-Hungarian pact
- 1912 The Helsinki Stock Exchange sees its first transaction.
- 1916 The German submarine U-53 arrives off Newport, Rhode Island, and sinks 9 British merchant ships in international waters
- 1919 First London-Amsterdam airline service (British Aerial Transport & KLM)
- 1919 Fritz Kreisler & F Jacobi's "Apple Blossoms" premieres in NYC
- 1919 KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, established (oldest existing airline)
- 1922 Oud-burgem of Rotterdam Zimmerman becomes High Comm's of Austria
- 1923 Yankees Everett Scott runs his consecutive-game streak to 1,138
- 1924 Greek government of Dikalekopoulis forms
- 1926 Italian Great Fascist Council forms
World Record
1928 Paavo Nurmi runs world record 10 miles (50:15.0)
Paavo Nurmi
- 1928 Race Tafari Makonnen crowned king of Abyssinia
Event of Interest
1929 Ramsay MacDonald is first British Prime Minister to address US Congress
Ramsay MacDonald
- 1931 1st infra-red photograph, Rochester, NY
Heinrich Himmler
- 1937 Johan Wagenaar's "Feestmars" premieres in Amsterdam
- 1938 Germany requires all Jewish passports be stamped with letter J
- 1940 World War II: the McCollum memo proposes bringing the U.S. into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.
- 1941 German army occupies Viarma, USSR
- 1942 1 salvo Katjoesja-rocket destroys Nazi battalion in Stalingrad
- 1942 Last camouflaged German raider Komet leaves Flushing (Netherlands)
- 1942 Maxwell Anderson's "Eve of St Mark" premieres in NYC
- 1942 US & UK government announce establishment of United Nations
- 1942 Yvon Robert beats Bill Longson in Montreal to become wrestling champ
- 1944 Allies bombs sea dikes at Vlissingen
Event of Interest
1944 Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ordered to return to Berlin
Erwin Rommel
- 1944 Riots in Amersfoort/Utrecht/Strugle
- 1944 Uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Jews burn down crematoriums
- 1945 Dutch author A M de Jong's murderer Ton van Gog escapes
- 1946 Charles Ives' 2nd string quartet premieres
- 1949 German Democratic Republic formed from Russian occupation zone (National Day). Wilhelm Pieck becomes 1st president, Otto Greatwohl becomes 1st premier
- 1950 US forces invade North Korea by crossing 38th parallel
- 1950 Walter Bedell Smith replaces Roscoe H Hillenkoetter as 4th CIA head
- 1950 William H Jackson becomes deputy director of CIA
Event of Interest
1951 David Ben-Gurion forms 3rd Israeli government
David Ben-Gurion
Event of Interest
1952 First "Bandstand" broadcast in Philadelphia on WFIL-TV (Dick Clark joins in 1955 as a substitute-host)
Dick Clark
- 1953 Bill Veeck tells Browns stockholders he faces bankruptcy unless they drop their suit to block his move to Baltimore, they comply
- 1954 Hassan el Hodeiby, leader of the Muslim Brothership, arrested in Egypt
- 1954 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Ad Sinarum gentem
- 1955 Aircraft carrier USS Saratoga launched at Brooklyn
Event of Interest
1955 Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reads his poem "Howl" for the first time at a poetry reading in San Francisco.
Allen Ginsberg
Far Side of the Moon Revealed
1959 Far side of Moon seen for the 1st time, courtesy of USSR's Luna 3 space probe
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Event of Interest
1960 2nd JFK & Richard Nixon debate
Richard Nixon
John F. Kennedy
- 1965 Charles Linster does 6,006 consecutive push-ups
- 1965 50 mph gust helps Robert Mitera ace 447-yd 10th hole at Miracle Hills, Omaha, Nebr to score world's longest straight hole-in-one
- 1967 Rolf Hochhuth's "Soldaten" premieres in West Berlin
- 1968 Motion Picture Association of America adopts film rating system
- 1968 Rioting continues in Derry, Northern Ireland after Royal Ulster Constabulary put down civil rights march two days earlier
- 1971 T McNally's "Where has Tommy Flowers gone?" premieres in NYC
Meeting of Interest
1971 Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner meets with British Prime Minister Edward Heath; they agree to send an additional 1,500 British Army troops to Northern Ireland
Edward Heath
Event of Interest
1976 Hua Guofeng succeeds Mao as Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Hua Guofeng
Event of Interest
1981 Hosni Mubarak becomes acting-president of Egypt
Hosni Mubarak
- 1982 Olof Palme forms Swedish government
- 1985 21st Space Shuttle Mission (51-J)-Atlantis 1 lands at Edwards AFB
- 1985 KHQ-AM in Spokane Wash's final transmission
- 1985 PLO terrorists seize Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro
- 1986 First edition of new British newspaper "Independent" published
- 1988 Latvian flag raised in Riga for first time since annexation by USSR
- 1988 Lou Piniella is fired as manager of Yankees for 2nd time
- 1990 Israel begins handing out gas masks to its citizens
- 1991 Child star Adam Rich arrested for stealing hypodermics
- 1991 Law Professor Anita Hill accuses Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments to her
- 1993 Massive Muslim demonstration in Xining, China, 12 killed
- 1993 Nobel prize for literature awarded to American Toni Morrison
- 1994 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
- 1994 Faud Guliyev appointed premier of Azerbijan
- 1994 Ingvar Carlsson forms Swedish government
- 1994 Lu Bin swims female 200m medley world record (2:11.57)
- 1995 Mariners rally from 5-0 to force Game 5 of Division Series vs Yankees
Event of Interest
1996 Rupert Murdoch launches Fox News with Roger Ailes as CEO
Rupert Murdoch
- 1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming.
- 2001 The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan starts with an air assault and covert operations on the ground
- 2001 Crude oil resumes flowing through the trans-Alaska pipeline after workers welded shut a bullet hole that caused 260,000 US gallons of oil to spill out
Event of Interest
2004 King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicates
Norodom Sihanouk
Historic Publication
2009 A digital version of psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung's 'Red Book' is published 48 years after his death and contains personal notes on his subconscious during the period in which he developed his principal theories
Carl Jung
- 2012 13 people are killed after a Sudanese military aeroplane crashes near Khartoum
- 2012 Sébastien Loeb wins the World Rally Championship for the ninth consecutive year
- 2013 Mulatu Teshome becomes president of Ethiopia
- 2013 James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof win the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on transport systems in cells
- 2014 Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura win the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing blue light emitting diodes
- 2014 Spanish nurse diagnosed with Ebola, the first case outside west Africa
Event of Interest
2015 US President Barack Obama apologises to Doctors without Borders President and the President of Afghanistan for the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz
Barack Obama
Event of Interest
2016 Washington Post releases videotape of Donald Trump boasting of groping and kissing women without consent
Donald Trump
- 2018 Romanian referendum to ban same sex marriage fails with only 20.4% voting
- 2018 China confirms it has detained Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, who resigns from his position after being reported missing
- 2018 Limousine crash kills 20 people, including two pedestrians in Schoharie, New York
October in History
![Elvis Comes Fifth in Talent Show]()
Elvis Comes Fifth in Talent Show
Elvis Presley made his first public appearance as a singer on this day. It did not go well: he came fifth in a local talent show. But he was only ten years old.
October 3, 1945![Barking Mad! Puppies Slain to Cure Leg Injury]()
Barking Mad! Puppies Slain to Cure Leg Injury
Charles Darwin shocked the world in 1859 with his evolution theory. Today, it's his writings about practices in the 19th Century that will shock many modern readers.
October 3, 1833![Jazz Singer Sounds Death Knell for Silent Movies]()
Jazz Singer Sounds Death Knell for Silent Movies
The Jazz Singer was premiered on this day and audiences were thrilled to hear Al Jolson talking. The pioneer film spelled the end for the silent-movie industry.
October 6, 1927![The Great Stand on the Ugra River]()
The Great Stand on the Ugra River
On one side of the Ugra River stood the Mongol Golden Horde, on the other, Ivan III, Grand Prince of the rising Muscovy Principality. At stake, everything.
October 8, 1480
