This Month In History October

It is time for October In History!

October In History

This month includes presidential history, the wild west, WWII history, facts about Alaska and Oklahoma, and more!

October 1st

• 1890 Yosemite National Park was established in California.
• 1982 EPCOT opened at Disney World.

October 2nd

• 1835 The Texas Revolution, the conflict between Mexico and the Texas colonists, began. It is also known as the Texas War of Independence.
• 1919 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him partially paralyzed.

October 3rd

• 1990 East and West Germany were reunited.

October 4th

• 1950 Snoopy made his debut in the Peanuts comic strip.
• 1957 The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.

October 5th

• 1813 Shawnee chief Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames, during the War of 1812.
• 1892 Most of the wild west gang known as the Dalton Gang, was gunned down in Coffeyville, Kansas while attempting to rob a bank.

October 6th

• 1979 Pope John Paul II was the first pope to visit the White House.

October 7th

• 1949 East Germany was created. It was five months after Great Britain, the United States, and France established the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany.
• 2011 The U.S and British forces began attacks on Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The attacks were a response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington, D.C.

October 8th

• 1871 The Great Chicago Fire began. The fire killed around 300 people and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings.
• 1998 The U.S. House of Representatives voted to conduct impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the U.S.

October 9th

• 1974 German Oskar Schindler died at the age of 66. He was the subject of the film Schindler’s List and was credited for saving 1,200 lives during the Holocaust.

October 10th

• 1944 Germans killed 800 Gypsy children at the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Germany.
• 1973 Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned due to tax evasion and accepting bribes while serving in office.

October 11th

• 1844 Henry John Heinz, American businessman and developer of Heinz Ketchup, was born.
• 1884 Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was born.

October 12th

• 1870 General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, died at the age of sixty-three.
• 2000 The USS Cole, a Navy destroyer, was attacked by terrorists while refueling. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and thirty-eight were wounded.

October 13th

• 1754 American Revolutionary heroine Molly Hays was born. She is known as Molly Pitcher for the water she carried to soldiers during the Battle of Monmouth. There are a lot of stories and legends surrounding Molly Pitcher and the role she played during the Revolutionary War.
• 1884 The Prime Meridian, the longitude line dividing the eastern and western hemispheres, was established.
• 2010 Thirty-three Chilean miners were rescued after spending sixty-nine days trapped underground in a mine.

October 14th

• 1947 U.S Air Force Pilot Chuck Yeager is the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.
• 1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis began. It became a thirteen day standoff over the nuclear Soviet missiles installed on Cuba, just 90 miles from the U.S.

October 15th

• 1878 Thomas Edison began the Edison Electric Company with the help of investors like J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt’s.
• 1990 Mikahail Gorbachev, who was a Soviet Leader, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending the Cold War.

October 16th

• 1758 Noah Webster, American author and lexicographer, was born. His spelling and grammar books taught generations of Americans to read and spell. He also wrote what is known as the first distinctly American dictionary.

October 17th

• 1835 The Texas Rangers were formed with a group of twenty-five lawman created to protect what is now known as Texas.
• 1989 A 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay area. Sixty- three people were killed. Over three thousand people were injured and thousands of buildings were damaged and destroyed.

October 18th

• 1867 The U.S. took possession of Alaska after purchasing the land from Russia for less than two cents an acre.

October 19th

• 1813 Napoleon Bonaparte lost the Battle of Leipzip. He lost around 70,000 men in the battle. It was one of the biggest, if not the biggest battle, of the Napoleonic Wars.

October 20th

• 1944 More than one hundred thousand U.S. forces landed in the Philippines to prepare for a major invasion as part of WWII.

October 21st

• 1861 Union troops lost The Battle of Ball’s Bluff in Virginia. It was the second major battle in the Civil War.
• 1867 More than 7,000 Plains Indians gathered in Kansas, to sign the Medicine Lodge Treaty, which gave up their traditional life and forced them to move to Oklahoma.

October 22nd

• 1811 Franz List, a famous Hungarian composer, and pianist, was born.
• 1962 In a televised speech, President John F. Kennedy, announced that the U.S. had discovered Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba.

October 23rd

• 1925 Johnny Carson, a comedian and television star was born.
• 1983 Lebanese terrorists drove a truck full of explosives into the U.S Marine barracks in Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one U.S. military members were killed.

October 24th

• 1946 The United Nations is formally established. It was formed following WWII in hopes of dealing with international conflict and promoting peace.
• 2005 Rosa Parks, civil rights activist who refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on a segregated Alabama bus, died.

October 25th

• 1764 Abigail Smith married John Adams who became the second President of the United States. They were married fifty-four years.
• 1881 The famous artist Pablo Picasso was born.

October 26th

• 1825 The Erie Canal, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes through the Hudson River, opened.
• 1854 C.W. Post, founder of Post cereals was born.

October 27th

• 1858 Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth President of the U.S., was born.
• 1904 The New York Subway opened

October 28^th

• 1940 Italian dictator Mussolini invaded Greece. Greece fought back and it was a disastrous campaign for Mussolini.
• 1955 Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, was born.

October 29^th

• 1929 The stock market crashed, on what is now known as black Tuesday and the beginning of the Great Depression.

October 30^th

• 1735 John Adams, the second U.S. President, was born.
• 1811 Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, was published anonymously. A small group of people knew that Austen was the writer, but most knew only the author as a lady.

October 31^st

• 1517 Martin Luther, posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. It marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
• 1864 Nevada became the 36^th state in the U.S.