539 BC – The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
633 – Battle of Hatfield Chase: King Edwin of Northumbria is defeated and killed by the British under Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon of Gwynedd.
1113 – The city of Oradea is first mentioned under the Latin name Varadinum ("vár" means fortress in Hungarian).
1216 – John, King 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, is said to have inscribed the Dai-Gohonzon.
1398 – The Treaty of Salynas is signed between Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Teutonic Knights, who received Samogitia.
1492 – Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached the Indies.
1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
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 Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
1748 – British and Spanish naval forces engage at the Battle of Havana during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
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 City.
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.
1798 – Flemish and Luxembourgish peasants launch the rebellion against French rule known as the Peasants' War.
1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse was the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 900 meters.
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 – Pedro I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Empire of Brazil.
1823 – Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1847 – German inventor and industrialist Werner von Siemens founds Siemens & Halske, which later becomes Siemens AG, the largest engineering company in Europe.
1871 – Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals. Repealed in 1949, after Independence of India.
1890 – Uddevalla Suffrage Association is formed.
1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.
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 Children's Hospital, Boston.
1933 – The military Alcatraz Citadel becomes the civilian Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
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.
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.
1953 – The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York City
1959 – At the national congress of APRA in Peru a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party who 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 colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
1960 – Television viewers in Japan unexpectedly witness the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japan Socialist Party, when he is stabbed and killed during a live broadcast.
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
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 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 are 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
1979 – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams is published.
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 four years in jail.
1984 – Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
1986 – Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit the People's Republic of China
1988 – Jaffna University Helidrop: Commandos of Indian Peace Keeping Force raided the Jaffna University campus to capture the LTTE chief and walked into a trap.
1988 – Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down execution-style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia.
1988 – Birchandra Manu massacre in Tripura, India
1991 – Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.
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 – Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria that killed 43 at a fake roadblock.
1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, died five days after he was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside of Laramie, Wyoming.
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 is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in 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.
2013 – Fifty-one people are killed after a truck veers off a cliff in La Convención Province in Peru.
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