EVENTS
- 1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre turns down a Nobel Prize. The French existentialist philosopher and writer published a letter in the newspaper Le Figaro to explain why he did not want to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature he had been awarded the day before on October 22. In his letter, he said he did not want to take sides in the East and West struggle of the Cold War, by accepting an award that was given out by Western institutions.
- 1707 – The first meeting of the Parliament of Great Britain.
- 1942 – British General Bernard Montgomery launched a major offensive against German forces under Erwin Rommel at El Alamein, Egypt.
- 1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time
- 1956 – A Hungarian uprising against Communist rule began with students and workers demonstrating in Budapest. Soviet Russians responded by sending in tanks and put down the revolt after several days of bitter fighting.
- 1973 – A U.N. sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria.
- 1983 – Terrorists drove a truck loaded with TNT into the U.S. and French headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, exploding it and killing 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers.
- 1989 – Hungary declared itself a republic 33 years after Soviet Russian troops crushed a popular revolt against Communist rule.
- 1990 – Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitaly Masol resigned after mass protests by students, becoming the first Soviet official of that rank to quit under public pressure.
- 1998 – Swatch announces Internet time. The Swiss watch company invented a new unit of time called the .beat, which corresponds to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Under the Internet Time system, a day is divided into 1000 .beats.
- 2001 – Apple releases the iPod
- 2002 – Dubrovka theater hostage crisis. About 50 Chechen rebels led by Movsar Barayev took over the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow during the performance of Nord-Ost, a musical. The rebels took about 850 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. The siege lasted for about 3 days and ended after Russian security forces released a chemical gas in the theater. All of the rebels and about 170 hostages died during the siege.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1869 – John Heisman (Football coach Heisman Trophy)
- 1925 – Johnny Carson (Tonight Show Host)
- 1940 – Pele (Soccer Player)
- 1942 – Michael Crichton (Author)
- 1957 – Paul Kagame (Rwandan politician, 6th President of Rwanda)
- 1959 – Weird Al Yancovic (Comedian)
- 1959 – Nancy Grace (TV News Host)
- 1975 – Keith Van Horn (Basketball Player)
- 1976 – Ryan Reynolds (Actor)
DEATHS
- 1915 – W.G. Grace (English cricketer)
- 1921 – John Boyd Dunlop (Scottish businessman, co-founded Dunlop Rubber)
- 1950 – Al Jolson (Lithuanian/American singer, actor)
- 1957 – Christian Dior (French fashion designer, founded S.A. )
- 2000 – Yokozuna (American wrestler)