1683 – German immigrant families found Germantown in the colony of Pennsylvania, marking the first major immigration of German people to America.
1723 – Benjamin Franklin arrives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of 17.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: General Sir Henry Clinton leads British forces in the capture of Continental Army Hudson River defenses in the Battle of Forts Clinton and Montgomery.
1789 – French Revolution: Louis XVI returns to Paris from Versailles after being confronted by the Parisian women on 5 October
1846 – George Westinghouse, American engineer (d. 1914) was born. Westinghouse was one of Thomas Edison’s main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system. Westinghouse’s electricity system ultimately prevailed over Edison’s insistence on direct current. George Westinghouse licensed Nikola Tesla’s American patents for the induction motor and transformer designs.
1854 – England: The Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead starts shortly after midnight, leading to 53 deaths and hundreds injured.
1876 – The American Library Association was founded.
1882 – 1st World Series game, Cincinnati (AA) beats Chicago (NL) 4-0
1884 – The Naval War College of the United States Navy is founded in Newport, Rhode Island.
1889 – Thomas Edison shows his 1st motion picture
1890 – Mormon Church outlaws polygamy
1892 – Alfred Lord Tennyson, writer and British Poet Laureate, dies at 83
1911 – Cy Young’s farewell appearance in a major league game is a letdown as he loses to Brooklyn 13-3 in a Braves uniform in his 906th game
1923 – The great powers of World War I withdraw from Istanbul.
1927 – Opening of The Jazz Singer, the first prominent talking movie.
1939 – World War II: Germany’s invasion of Poland ends with the surrender of Polesia army after the Battle of Kock
1942 – World War II: The October Matanikau action on Guadalcanal begins as United States Marine Corps forces attack Imperial Japanese Army units along the Matanikau River.
1942 – Britt Ekland, Stockholm Sweden, actress (Wicker Man, Asylum)Born
1943 – Cees Veerman, Dutch singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Cats) (d. 2014) was born.
1945 – Tavern owner “Billy Goat” Sianis buys seat for his goat for Game 4 of World Series & is escorted out, he casts goat curse on Cubs
1946 – US Pres Harry Truman questions Great Britain Jews about Palestine
1948 – Gerry Adams, Northern Irish politician is born
1948 – Glenn Branca, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, avant-garde composer and guitarist – Born
1948 – The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 100,000 in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic.
1949 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino (Tokyo Rose) sentenced to 10 years & $10,000 fine
1949 – US Pres Harry Truman signs Mutual Defense Assistance Act (for NATO)
1949: The Soviet Union creates the Democratic Republic of Germany ( East Germany ) within the Soviet occupation zone.
1951 – Stalin proclaims USSR has atom bomb
1951 – Kevin Cronin, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (REO Speedwagon) was born.
1951 – Will Keith Kellogg, American businessman, founded the Kellogg Company (b. 1860) died.
1961 – President John F. Kennedy advises American families to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear war. Many Americans did prepare for nuclear war by buying up canned goods and building backyard bomb shelters. Also at the time many home builders offered a bomb shelter as part of new home packages.
1964 – Matthew Sweet, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Community Trolls, Oh-OK, and The Thorns) was born.
1966 – The hallucinogic drug LSD is declared illegal in the United States. LSD is a Schedule I drug making it illegal to manufacture, buy, possess, process or distribute LSD without a DEA license.
1967 – Haight-Ashbury hippies throw a funneral to mark end of hippies
1969 – Walter Hagen, US PGA golfer (US Open 1914, 19), dies at 76
1973 – Egypt launches a coordinated attack with Syria against Israel leading to the Yom Kippur War.
1976 – Cubana Flight 455 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados, after two bombs, placed on board by terrorists with connections to the CIA, exploded. All 73 people on board are killed.
1976 – New Premier Hua Guofeng orders the arrest of the Gang of Four and associates and ends the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China. (the name given to a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The members consisted of Mao Zedong’s last wife Jiang Qing, the leading figure of the group, and her close associates Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen.)
1976 – Massacre of students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, to protest the return of ex-dictator Thanom, by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.
1976 – US Pres Gerald Ford says there is “no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe”
1978 – Mick Jagger apologizes for racist lyrics in “Some Girls”
1979 – Richard Seymour, American football player (Patriots) Born
1979 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit the White House.
1980 – John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) sentenced to 3 months inprisonment on assault charges
1981 – Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat is murdered by “Islamic extremists”. (Mubarak had a hand in the assassination, as he and Israel’s intelligence organization the Mossad allegedly stood behind the killing. – Dr Marwan’s widow said she still believed the 62-year-old millionaire, found dead by the fourth-floor balcony of his London home, had been pushed.
A close aide of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat before he was assassinated, Dr Marwan was identified by several sources as both a Mossad spy and a double agent for Egypt.
In 2002 an Israeli historian claimed Dr Marwan had alerted Israel of Egypt and Syria’s plans to attack on Yom Kippur of 1973.
The allegations, made by Ahron Bregman, have never been confirmed. The academic said he was helping Dr Marwan write his memoirs before his death.
He had said he “strongly believed” Dr Marwan was a double agent working mainly for the Egyptians.)
1985 – PC Keith Blakelock is murdered as riots erupt in the Broadwater Farm suburb of London.
1985 – Nelson Riddle, American bandleader (b. 1921)Dies
1986 – Russian nuclear sub K291 sinks in Atlantic Ocean
1987 – Fiji becomes a republic.
1989 – Bette Davis, US actress (All About Eve, White Mama), dies at 81
1993 – Larry Walters, American “lawn chair” pilot (b. 1949)Dies
1995 – 51 Pegasi was discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting around it.
2000 – Slobodan Milosevic, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has resigned, following mounting pressure to quit over allegations of vote-rigging.
2002 – Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá is canonized.
2006 – Buck O’Neil, American baseball player (b. 1911)Dies
2007 – Jason Lewis completes the first human-powered circumnavigation of the globe.
2012 – Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict XVI’s butler, is found guilty of leaking confidential documents and is sentenced to 18 months imprisonment
2013 – 53 people are killed in political clashes in Egypt