October 10
A former U.S. postal worker kills his former supervisor with a three-foot samurai sword, shoots the supervisor’s fiance, and shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, N.J.. His violent outburst was one of several high-profile attacks by postal workers that resulted in the addition of the phrase “going postal” to the American lexicon. – 1994.
October 11
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” – 2002.
October 12
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sees a Bahamian island, and thinks he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. -1492.
Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, and the decision to repeat the festivities in the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the annual Oktoberfest, – 1810.
Three bombings shatter the peace in the town of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The blasts, the work of militant Islamist terrorists, left 202 dead and more than 200 injured, many with severe burns. – 2002.
October 13
The cornerstone is laid for a presidential residence in the newly-designated capital city of Washington. In 1800, president John Adams became the first president to reside in the executive mansion, which soon became known as the White House because its white-gray Virginia freestone contrasted strikingly with the red brick of nearby buildings. – 1792.
The last of 33 miners trapped nearly a half-mile underground for more than two months at a caved-in mine in northern Chile, are rescued. The miners survived longer than anyone else trapped underground in recorded history. – 2010.
October 14
Prior to a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wis., Theodore Roosevelt, the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, is shot at close range. The bullet failed to mortally wound him and Roosevelt went on to deliver his scheduled speech with the bullet still in his body. – 1912.
U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. – 1947.
The Cuban Missile Crisis begins and brings the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cuba, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, were stationed 90 miles off the American coastline. – 1962.
October 15
President Woodrow Wilson signs the Clayton Antitrust Act, often referred to as “Labor’s Magna Carta,” which established that unions are not conspiracies under the law. It, for the first time freed unions to strike, picket, and boycott employers. In the years that followed, however, numerous state measures and court interpretations weakened the law. – 1914.
October 16
Marie-Antoinette, who lived extravagantly during a time of economic turmoil in France, is beheaded by guillotine nine months after the execution of her husband, the former King Louis XVI of France. They were convicted of treason. – 1793.
Abolitionist John Brown leads 18 men, including five free blacks, in an attack on the Harper’s Ferry ammunition depot, in Virginia, near Maryland, the beginning of guerilla warfare against slavery prior to the Civil War. – 1859.
Herman Goering, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, chief forester of the Reich, chief liquidator of sequestered estates, supreme head of the National Weather Bureau, and Hitler’s designated successor dies by his own hand. – 1946.
Civil war in China between the nationalists and the communists breaks out in 1927. The embattled Chinese communists break through nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China. Known as Ch’ang Cheng, the Long March, the communist forces’ retreat lasts for 368 days and covers 6,000 miles, approximately twice the distance from New York to San Francisco. – 1934.