October 1, 1903: The first baseball World Series begins. The American League’s Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates at Exposition Park in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. This was the best of nine games. The Pirates were in the lead winning 3-1 before the Americans made a comeback.
October 2, 1950: Charles M. Schulz publishes the first Peanuts comic strip. It ran for 50 years with the final strip being published on February 13, 2000.
October 3, 1990: East and West Germany are reunified after 40 years of separation.
October 4, 1582: Pope Gregory XIII implements the new Gregorian Calander. This introduces leap years every four years making the length of each year to be 365.25 days. This was made to stop the calendar from going away from the Spring and Fall equinoxes.
October 5, 1789: Ten thousand women march on the Palace of Versailles. During the French Revolution, there was a lack of grain that led to scarcity and high prices for bread. News broke out that army officers were enjoying a banquet at Versailles. The march started with a few women from a marketplace in Paris, and it kept growing until they reached Versailles.
October 6, 1927: The Jazz Singer, the first “talkie” movie, premiers. It was the first feature-length film with a musical score and audio track that synchronized with the picture. It was produced by Warner Brothers and starred Al Jolson and May McAvoy, stars who made a name for themselves during the silent film era.
October 7, 1993: The Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood ends after 103 days. The previous winter had a heavy snowfall and, in the spring, had server rainstorms. In May, both rivers rose above the flood stage covering 30,000 square miles that covered parts of nine states.
October 8, 1829: The Rocket, Geroge Stephenson’s steam locomotive, wins the Rainhill Trials. The Trials were held in England to find the best design for a new railway. The design of The Rocket was used for steam-driven locomotives for the next 150 years.
October 9, 1604: Kepler’s supernova is first observed by astronomers on Earth. The supernova occurred in the constellation Ophiuchus in the Milkey Way.
October 10, John Wesley Hyatt patents the first billiard ball made of celluloid. He was an earlier pioneer in the development of celluloid, the first plastic to be produced industrially. Before this, billiard balls were made of ivory.
October 11, 1958: NASA launches Pioneer 1. It was designed to study the surface of the moon, although an equipment failure prevented the spacecraft from reaching its destination.
October 12, 1492: Christopher Columbus lands in the Bahamas. He thought he landed in Southeast Asia and called the island “San Salvador.”
October 13 54: Emperor Claudius is poisoned. His stepson Nero ascends the thrown and many historians believe his wife was behind the poisoning.
October 14, 1066: The Battle of Hastings is fought. Norman forces under William of Normandy defeat an Anglo-Saxon army. After the battle, William assumes rule of England.
October 15, 1956: Fortran, the first modern computer language, is publicized. Engineers at IBM develop the language to replace hand-coding.
October 16, 1384: Jadwiga, daughter of Louis the Great, is crowned monarch of Poland. She became the first woman to rule Poland and reigned until her death in 1399.
October 17, 1931: Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion. Instead of attempting to jail him for the many murders he was suspected of ordering, the government chose to charge him for tax-related crimes.
October 18, 1963: The French space program sends Felicette, a cat, into space. Felicette was the first cat to travel to space and remained in orbit for 13 minutes. She survived parachuting safely to Earth.
October 19, 1813: Napoleon’s army is defeated by Coalition forces at the Battle of Leipzig. That battle involved more than 600,000 soldiers, the largest in history until WW1. After the defeat, Napoleon retreats to France where he is overthrown by The Coalition and exiled to Elba.
October 20, 1873: Four universities establish the rules of American football. Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers agree on the rules to govern their football league.
October 21, 2005: Astronomers discover Eris, a dwarf planet, at Paloma Observatory. Mike Brown and colleagues found the planet while examining images taken two years earlier by the Hubble Telescope.
October 22, 794: Emperor Kanmu moves the Japanese capital to present-day Kyoto. Originally Heinan-ky, meaning “tranquility and peace capital,” Kyoto was the official capital for more than a millennium until 1868 when the capital was moved to Tokyo.
October 23, 1850: The first National Women’s Rights convention in the US is held. Lucy Stone and Paulina Wrigth Davis preside over the convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, with around 900 in attendance.
October 24, 1929: Wall Street crashes. Wall Street loses 11% of its total value and by the end of the week more than $30 billion had been wiped out. This marks the beginning of the Great Depression.
October 25, 1917: The Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace. Lenin orders Red Guards to attack the seat of Imperial power in Russia. This attack starts a civil war ending with a Bolshevik victory in 1921.
October 26, 1776: Benjamin Franklin sails to France to seek aid for the American Revolution. He was successful in recruiting Lafayette and wins over the French King.
October 27, 1904: The New York City subway opens for business. After a blizzard in 1888 nearly shut down their public transit system, it became clear there was a need for an underground transit line.
October 28, 1636: Harvard is established. This makes it the first college established in the United States with the first classes being held two years later.
October 29, 1390: The first witchcraft trial is held. In Paris, Jehenne de Brigue was arrested and accused of witchcraft for exchanging recipes for love potions with Macette de Ruilly.
October 30, 1938: Orson Welles broadcasts The War of the Worlds. The radio play was performed as a Halloween episode for the series “Mercury Theatre on the Air.” The sound effects and convincing acting lead many listeners to believe the events of the novel were really happening.
October 31, 1517: Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.