• 539 BC - The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
• 1216 - King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge
• 1279 - Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon
• 1492 - Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he's reached East Asia
• 1582 - Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day doesn't exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
• 1654 - The Delft Explosion devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100.
• 1692 - The Salem Witch Trials were ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
• 1773 - America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia
• 1792 - First celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York
• 1793 - The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina
• 1810 - First Oktoberfest: The Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
• 1822 - Peter I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Brazilian Empire.
• 1823 - Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, sells the first raincoat.
• 1892 - The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in unison by students in US public schools.
• 1898 - Establishment of the first town council in Mateur.
• 1899 - Boer republic of South Africa declares war with England.
• 1901 - President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
• 1915 - World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium
• 1917 - The First Battle of Passchendaele, now Passendale
• 1918 - A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Minnesota.
• 1928 - An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston
• 1933 - The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice
• 1941 - This and the next day, German Nazis kill 11,000 Jews in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. Einsatzkommando 6 massacres most of the remaining Jews of the city, marching them to a ravine where they were killed.
• 1942 - World War II: Japanese ships retreat after their defeat in the Battle of Cape Esperance with the Japanese commander, Aritomo Gotō dying from wounds suffered in the battle and two Japanese destroyers sunk by Allied air attack.
• 1953 - "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York
• 1959 - At the national congress of APRA in Peru a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party. They will later form APRA Rebelde.
• 1960 - Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonialist policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
• 1960 - Inejiro Asanuma is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The camera was rolling at that time.
• 1962 - Infamous Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead and at least U.S. $230 million in damages
• 1964 - The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits
• 1967 - Vietnam War: US Secretary of State Dean Rusk states during a news conference that proposals by the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition
• 1968 - Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain
• 1970 - Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas
• 1972 - En route to the Gulf of Tonkin, a racial brawl involving more than 100 sailors breaks out aboard the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk
• 1976 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Zedong as chairman of Communist Party of China.
• 1979 - The lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in the Western Pacific during Typhoon Tip.
• 1983 - Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from Lockheed and is sentenced to 4 years in jail.
• 1984 - Brighton hotel bombing: Margaret Thatcher survives an IRA bomb, which shredded her bathroom barely two minutes after she'd left it.
• 1986 - Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit the People's Republic of China
• 1988 - Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down executional style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia.
• 1991 - Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.
• 1994 - NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere either October 13 or October 14).
• 1997 - Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria; 43 killed at a fake roadblock.
• 1999 - Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup.
• 1999 - The Day of Six Billion: The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born.
• 2000 - The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39
• 2002 - Terrorists detonate bombs in Paddy's Pub and the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
• 2005 - The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè Hǎishèng for five days in orbit.
• 2007 - In Santa Clarita, California, the colision of two semi-trucks in a truck bypass tunnel in the Newhall Pass section of Interstate 5 sets off a chain reaction crash involving over 30 vehicles. The crash causes a major fire within the tunnel. Three people die and ten are injured.

Births