September 28th
 

1066 ~ William the Conqueror invaded England, landing at Pevensey, Sussex.

1915 ~ Birthday of Ethel Rosenberg, Spy.

1924 ~ The first round-the-world flight completed. It took 175 days.

1925 ~ Birthday of Seymour Cray, Computer Scientist.

1928 ~ Alexander Fleming discovered what later became known as penicillin, for which he shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1970 ~ Death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian statesman.

1976 ~ Stevie Wonder released Songs in the Key of Life.

1995 ~ Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an accord to transfer much of the West Bank to the control of its Arab residents.

1988 ~ Death of Charles Addams, Cartoonist, creator of The Adams Family.

2000 ~ Death of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada.

September 29th
 

1547 ~ Birthday of Miguel de Cervantes, Author (Don Quixote).

1714 ~ George, Elector of Hanover, arrived in Greenwich to assume the British throne as King George I.

1758 ~ Birthday of Horatio Nelson, English icon.

1901 ~ Birthday of Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist. Awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics.

1916 ~ John D. Rockefeller became the first billionaire.

1957 ~ The New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds.

1960 ~ Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a meeting of the UN General Assembly.

1962 ~ Alouette 1, the first Canadian satellite was launched.

1978 ~ Death of Pope John Paul, who reigned just 33 days.

2004 ~ The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passed within 964,000 miles of Earth.

September 30th
 

1791 ~ Mozart's opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.

1913 ~ Death of Rudolf Diesel, German inventor.

1924 ~ Birthday of Truman Capote, Author (In Cold Blood).

1927 ~ Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.

1938 ~ British, French, German and Italian leaders agreed that Nazi Germany would be allowed to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

1954 ~ The submarine USS Nautilus was commissioned as the first nuclear reactor powered vessel.

1955 ~ Death of James Dean, American actor.

1982 ~ Birthday of Tory Lane, Porn Actress.

1991 ~ President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti was forced from office.

2005 ~ The controversial drawings of Muhammad were printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

October 1st
 

1905 ~ The Julliard School of Music was founded in New York City.

1930 ~ Birthday of Richard Harris, Irish actor, singer-songwriter. Dumbledore could rock when he wanted to!

1939 ~ Winston Churchill during a radio broadcast described the Soviet Union as ''a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma''.

1943 ~ The International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremburg sentenced 12 Nazi leaders to death.

1949 ~ The People's Republic of China was formed with Mao Zedong as its head.

1961 ~ The New York Yankees' Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season.

1968 ~ The cult horror movie "Night of the Living Dead" had its world premiere in Pittsburgh.

1971 ~ Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida. Eventually it would become the largest, man-made, tourist attraction in the world.

1976 ~ Birthday of Dora Venter, Hungarian Porn Actress.

1979 ~ The United States returned sovereignty of the Panama canal to Panama.

Richard Harris nearly had an IRA fatwa put on him for his song "Too many Saviours on my Cross", which bitterly denounced sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

October 2nd
 

1187 ~ Saladin captured Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader rule.

1800 ~ Birthday of Nat Turner, leader of an American slave uprising.

1836 ~ Charles Darwin returned to England after a 5-year journey aboard the HMS Beagle collecting data he will later use to develop his theory of evolution.

1869 ~ Birthday of Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian political leader.

1890 ~ Birthday of Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor.

1904 ~ Birthday of Graham Greene, British novelist.

1935 ~ Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1967 ~ Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first African-American justice of United States Supreme Court.

1985 ~ Death of Rock Hudson, Actor.

1993 ~ Hardline Communists riot in Moscow.

October 3rd
 

1873 ~ Birthday of Emily Post, etiquette advisor.

1900 ~ Birthday of Thomas Wolfe, American novelist.

1916 ~ Birthday of James Herriot, veterinarian, author.

1922 ~ Rebecca L. Felton, D-Ga., became the first woman to be seated in the U.S. Senate. She was appointed to serve out the remaining term of Sen. Thomas E. Watson.

1925 ~ Birthday of Gore Vidal, author.

1952 ~ The Uk became the world's third nuclear power after successfully testing a nuclear weapon.

1967 ~ Death of Woody Guthrie, folk musician.

1973 ~ Frank Robinson was named major league baseball's first black manager as he was put in charge of the Cleveland Indians.

1990 ~ The re-unification of Germany. East Germany ceased to exist.

1995 ~ A jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murder in the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman.

October 4th
 

1903 ~ Birthday of John Vincent Atanasoff, inventor of the digital electronic computer.

1924 ~ Birthday of Charlton Heston, Actor.

1941 ~ Birthday of Anne Rice, Author.

1943 ~ Birthday of H. Rap Brown, civil rights activist & murderer.

1957 ~ Launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

1983 ~ The first Hooters restaurant opened in Clearwater, Florida.

1985 ~ Free Software Foundation founded.

1993 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the army to begin storming the Russian parliament building.

2002 ~ John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban”, received a 20-year sentence.

2004 ~ The SpaceShipOne rocket plane broke through Earth's atmosphere for the second time in five days to capture a $10 million prize.

October 5th
 

1813 ~ Death of Tecumseh, American Indian leader.

1882 ~ Birthday of Robert Goddard, rocket scientist.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corporation.

1947 ~ President Harry Truman gave the first televised White House address.

1968 ~ The beginning of The Troubles of Northern Ireland.

1969 ~ “Monty Python's Flying Circus" made its debut on BBC Television.

1970 ~ Montreal, Quebec: British Trade Commissioner James Cross was kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1994 ~ Forty eight members of a Swiss cult die in a mass suicide.

2000 ~ Mass demonstrations in Belgrade led to the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic.

2004 ~ Death of Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand physicist, Nobel laureate.

October 6th
 

1600 ~ Jacopo Peri's “Euridice”, the earliest surviving opera, premiered in Florence.

1846 ~ Birthday of George Westinghouse, Engineer & Inventor.

1892 ~ Death of Alfred Tennyson, British poet laureate.

1914 ~ Birthday of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer, leader of the “Kon-Tiki” expedition.

1927 ~ Opening of “The Jazz Singer”, the first talking movie.

1948 ~ Birthday of Gerry Adams, Irish politician.

1973 ~ Egyptian troops cross the Suez Canal, starting the Yom Kippur War.

1981 ~ Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated.

1887 ~ Death of Bette Davis, Actress.

1995 ~ The first extrasolar planet was discovered orbiting 51 Pegasi, in the constellation of Pegasus.

October 7th
 

1571 ~ The Ottoman Empire was defeated at the battle of Lepanto.

1796 ~ Death of Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher.

1849 ~ Death of Edgar Allan Poe, American writer.

1885 ~ Birthday of Niels Bohr, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1922.

1931 ~ Birthday of Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and anti-apartheid activist, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

1982 ~ "Cats" opened on Broadway.

1985 ~ The “Achille Lauro” was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.

1986 ~ Birthday of Bree Olson, Porn Actress.

2001 ~ The U.S. began its air offensive against al-Qaeda and the Taleban in Afghanistan.

2003 ~ California governor Gray Davis was recalled from office and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

October 8th
 

1871 ~ The Great Chicago Fire destroyed about 17,450 buildings, killed about 250 people and left another 90,000 homeless.

1920 ~ Birthday of Frank Herbert, Science Fiction writer.

1949 ~ Birthday of Sigourney Weaver, Actress.

1952 ~ The UK suffered its worst peacetime rail accident.

1961 ~ In London, the Post Office Tower opened.

1969 ~ Birthday of Julia Ann, Porn Actress.

1982 ~ Solidarity, and all other labor organizations in Poland, were banned.

1992 ~ Death of Willy Brandt, German politician.

2003 ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California.

2004 ~ Martha Stewart went to jail.

October 9th
 

1804 ~ Hobart, Tasmania, was founded.

1835 ~ Birthday of Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer.

1859 ~ Birthday of Alfred Dreyfus, French military officer.

1940 ~ Birthday of John Lennon, Musician & Songwriter.

1942 ~ The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act formalized Australian autonomy.

1948 ~ Birthday of Jackson Browne (Doctor My Eyes, The Pretender, Running On Empty).

1961 ~ Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" reached #1.

1967 ~ Guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia.

1970 ~ Birthday of Savannah, Porn Actress.

1974 ~ Death of Oskar Schindler, businessman.

October 10th
 

1813 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer.

1845 ~ In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opened with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

1875 ~ Death of Aleksey Tolstoy, Novelist & Poet.

1938 ~ The Sudetenland was ceded to Nazi Germany by the terms of the Munich Agreement.

1966 ~ Simon and Garfunkel released the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

1970 ~ A crisis hit Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier Pierre Laporte became the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1973 ~ Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion and resigned.

1975 ~ Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor remarried.

1980 ~ UK PM Margaret Thatcher gave a defiant speech at the Tory party conference "… I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"

1985 ~ U.S. Navy F-14s intercepted the plane carrying the “Achille Lauro” cruise ship hijackers and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sicily where they were arrested.

October 11th
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Henry Heinz, food manufacturer.

1899 ~ In South Africa, a war between the UK and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State began.

1958 ~ Pioneer 1 was launched; it failed to go as far as planned, fell back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

1961 ~ Death of Chico Marx, comedian.

1962 ~ Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council.

1968 ~ Launch of Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission.

1975 ~ The debut of Saturday Night Live.

1976 ~ China's "Gang of Four" was arrested.

1991 ~ Death of Redd Foxx, Comedian & actor.

2002 ~ The U.S. Senate joined the House in approving the use of America's military against Iraq.