- 539 BC – The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon, ending the Babylonian empire. (Julian calendar)[1]
- 633 – Battle of Hatfield Chase: King Edwin of Northumbria is defeated and killed by an alliance under Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon of Gwynedd.[2]
- 1279 – The Nichiren Shōshū branch of Buddhism is founded in Japan.[3]
- 1398 – In the Treaty of Salynas, Lithuania cedes Samogitia to the Teutonic Knights.[4]
- 1406 – Chen Yanxiang, the only person from Indonesia known to have visited dynastic Korea, reaches Seoul after having set out from Java four months before.[5]
- 1492 – Christopher Columbus‘s first expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas.[6]
- 1654 – The Delft Explosion devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100 people.
- 1692 – The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Province of Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phips.
- 1748 – War of Jenkins’ Ear: A British squadron wins a tactical victory over a Spanish squadron off Havana.
- 1773 – America’s first insane asylum opens.
- 1792 – The first celebration of Columbus Day is held in New York City.
- 1793 – The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- 1798 – Flemish and Luxembourgish peasants launch the rebellion against French rule known as the Peasants’ War.
- 1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute.
- 1810 – The citizens of Munich hold the first Oktoberfest.
- 1822 – Pedro I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor.
- 1847 – Werner von Siemens founds Siemens & Halske, which later becomes Siemens AG.
- 1849 – The city of Manizales, Colombia, is founded by ‘The Expedition of the 20’.
- 1871 – The British in India enact the Criminal Tribes Act, naming many local communities “Criminal Tribes”.
- 1890 – Uddevalla Suffrage Association is formed.
- 1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools.
- 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 – World War I: The First Battle of Passchendaele takes place resulting in the largest single-day loss of life in New Zealand history.
- 1918 – A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Minnesota.
- 1928 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Boston Children’s Hospital.
- 1933 – The military Alcatraz Citadel becomes the civilian Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
- 1944 – World War II: The Axis occupation of Athens comes to an end.
- 1945 – World War II: Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor.
- 1959 – At the national congress of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance in Peru, a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party who later form APRA Rebelde.
- 1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion.
- 1960 – Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma is stabbed to death during a live Television broadcast.
- 1962 – The Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead and at least U.S. $230 million in damages.
- 1963 – After nearly 23 years of imprisonment, Reverend Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit missionary, was released from the Soviet Union.
- 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 pressure suits.
- 1968 – Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain.
- 1970 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization continues as President Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.
- 1971 – The 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire begins.
- 1979 – Typhoon Tip becomes the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded.
- 1983 – Japan’s former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, and is sentenced to four years in jail.
- 1984 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army fail to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. The bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
- 1988 – Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down execution-style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia.
- 1992 – A 5.8 earthquake occurred in Cairo, Egypt. At least 510 died.
- 1994 – The Magellan spacecraft burns up in the atmosphere of Venus.
- 1997 – The Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria kills 43 people at a fake roadblock.
- 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, dies five days after he was beaten outside of Laramie.
- 1999 – Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup.
- 1999 – The former Autonomous Soviet Republic of Abkhazia declares its independence from Georgia.
- 2000 – The USS Cole, a US Navy destroyer, is badly damaged by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
- 2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
- 2005 – The second Chinese human spaceflight, Shenzhou 6, is launched, carrying two cosmonauts in orbit for five days.
- 2013 – Fifty-one people are killed after a truck veers off a cliff in Peru.
- 2017 – The United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO.[7] and is immediately followed by Israel.
- 2018 – Princess Eugenie marries Jack Brooksbank at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
- 2019 – Typhoon Hagibis makes landfall in Japan, killing 10 and forcing the evacutation of 1,000,000 people.[8]
- 2019 – Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya becomes the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:40 in Vienna.[9]
- 2019 – The Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans, which is under construction, collapses, killing two and injuring 20.[10]
-Source: wikipedia
