October 7, 1916: Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222–0, in the most lopsided college football game in American history.
October 9, 1940: Rock and Roll legend John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England.
October 9, 1975: Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, was born in New York.
October 9, 1582: Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
October 10, 1971: Sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, the London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
October 10:
1973: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.
1985: Actor-director Orson Welles died in Los Angeles at age 70. Actor Yul Brynner died in New York at age 65.
2004: Christopher Reeve, the “Superman” of film fame who became a quadriplegic after a May 1995 horse riding accident, died in Mount Kisco, New York, at age 52.
October 10, 1780: The Great Hurricane of 1780, the deadliest known Atlantic hurricane ever, hits the Barbados Islands. Between 20,000 and 30,000 are killed in the Caribbean.
October 10th, 1957: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand is published.
October 11, 1975: Saturday Night Live debuts on NBC.
Same day: Bill and Hillary Clinton tie the knot.
October 12, 1998: Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, dies five days after he was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside of Laramie, Wyoming.
October 12, 2000: 17 sailors killed in suicide bomb attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.
October 13, 2016: Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
October 14, 1926: Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, is first published.
October 15, 1951: The first episode of I Love Lucy airs on CBS.
October 16, 1793: After a two-day trial, Marie Antoinette was convicted of high treason and executed by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution. Her last words are recorded as, “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès.” or “Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose.”, after accidentally stepping on her executioner’s shoe.
October 16, 2001: the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial was formally dedicated in Washington, D.C.
October 17, 1814: Eight people die in the London Beer Flood. A huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons (610,000 L) of beer ruptures, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons (1,470,000 L) of beer bursts out and gushes into the streets.
October 18, 1963: “Félicette,” a black and white female Parisian stray cat, becomes the first cat launched into space, by France. The mission was a sub-orbital flight, and lasted 13 minutes, reaching a height of 157 kilometers, and included 5 minutes of weightlessness. Félicette was recovered safely after the capsule parachuted to Earth; she was euthanized three months later so that scientists could examine her brain.
October 18, 1767: The Mason-Dixon line, the boundary between colonial Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, was set as astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey.
October 19, 1973: President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes.