362 - The temple of Apollo at Daphne, outside of Antioch, is destroyed in a mysterious fire.
1383 - The 1383-1385 Crisis in Portugal: A period of civil war and disorder began when King Fernando died without a male heir to the Portuguese throne.
1633 - Ming dynasty fight with Dutch East India Company that Battle of southern Fujian sea (1633), Ming dynasty won great victory.
1730 - The Ladoga Canal construction is completed.
1746 - The College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) receives its charter.
1784 - Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
1797 - One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.
1836 - Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.
1844 - The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipated the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment.
1867 - Foundation of the National University of Colombia.
1877 - The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners.
1878 - The first rugby match under floodlights takes place in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton.
1883 - The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod's Faust (opera).
1895 - In Paris an express train overruns a buffer stop and crosses more than 30 metres of concourse before plummeting through a window at Gare Montparnasse.
1907 - Panic of 1907: A run on Knickerbocker Trust Company stock sets events in motion that will lead to a depression.
1910 - Dr. Crippen is convicted at the Old Bailey of poisoning his wife and was subsequently hanged at Pentonville Prison in London.
1926 - J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal.
1928 - Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus.
1934 - In East Liverpool, Ohio, notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd is shot and killed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.
1941 - French hero of the resistance Guy Môquet is executed by the Germans, along with 29 other hostages as a retaliation for a killed German officer.
1943 - World War II: Kassel: RAF conducts an air raid on the city of 236,000 people, killing 10,000, rendering 150,000 homeless. Second firestorm raid in Germany
1944 - World War II: Battle of Aachen: The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.
1946 - Forty four British sailors die when two British warships hit mines off the coast of Albania.
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American spy planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.
1963 - BAC One-Eleven prototype airliner crashes on October 22 in UK with the loss of all on board.
1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor.
1964 - Canada: A Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects the design which becomes the new official Flag of Canada.
1966 - The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' Go-Go).
1968 - Apollo program: Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times.
1970 - Tunku Abdul Rahman resign from Prime Minister of Malaysia.
1972 - Vietnam War: In Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris. Thieu rejects the proposal and accused the United States of conspiring to undermine his regime.
1975 - The Soviet unmanned space mission Venera 9 lands on Venus.
1976 - Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs. The dye is still used in Canada.
1981 - The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization for its strike the previous August.
1981 - The founding congress of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Organisation faction led by Hareram Sharma and D.P. Singh begins.
1981 - The TGV railway service Paris-Lyon is inaugurated.
1983 - Two correctional officers are killed by inmates in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspired the Supermax model of prisons.
1999 - Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity.
2005 - Tropical Storm Alpha forms in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record with 22 named storms.
2006 - A Panama Canal expansion proposal is approved by 77.8% of voters in a National referendum held in Panama.
2008 - India launches its first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1.
2010 - The International Space Station surpasses the record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, having been continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000 (3641 days).
