October 6
The surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Israel in October 1973, called the Yom Kippur War, throws the Middle East into turmoil and threatens to bring the United States and the Soviet Union into direct conflict for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. – 1973.
Some 1,700 female flight attendants win 18-year, $37 million suit against United Airlines. They had been fired for getting married. – 1986.
October 7
The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin. Over the course of the next day, 1,200 individuals lose their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. – 1871.
A U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the president George W. Bush-led United States war on terrorism and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. East Coast. – 2001.
October 8
Flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary and ignite a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 residents, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless, and causes an estimated $200 million, equivalent of $3.8 billion in today’s dollars, in damages. – 1871.
The U.S. House of Representatives votes to proceed toward impeaching president Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in alleged involvement in several scandals, including allegedly improper Arkansas real-estate deals, suspected fundraising violations, claims of sexual harassment, and accusations of cronyism involving the firing of White House travel agents. – 1998.
October 9
Harnessing the power of the mighty Colorado River, Hoover Dam begins to send electricity over transmission lines spanning 266 miles to Los Angeles. – 1936.
Socialist revolutionary and Cuban guerilla leader, Che Guevara, 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. – 1967.
Michelle Knapp is watching television in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, N.Y. when she hears a thunderous crash in the driveway. A sizable hole is in the rear end of her car from what looked like an ordinary, bowling-ball-sized rock. The next day it was confirmed that the object was a genuine meteorite. – 1992.
Some 3,300 sanitation workers who work for private haulers in Chicago win a nine-day strike featuring a 28% wage increase over five years. – 2003.
October 10
Six days into a cotton field strike by 18,000 Mexican and Mexican-American workers in Pixley, Calif., four strikers are killed and six wounded; eight growers were indicted and charged with murder. – 1933.
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.