Oct. 3
1990: West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a reunified country.
1993: Eighteen U.S. service members and hundreds of Somalis were killed in the Battle of Mogadishu — the deadliest battle for U.S. troops since the Vietnam War and inspired the film “Black Hawk Down.”
1995: A jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of the 1994 slayings of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Oct. 4
1927: Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began construction on what is now Mount Rushmore National Memorial.
1957: The Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.
1970: Rock singer Janis Joplin was found dead in her Hollywood hotel room at age 27.
Oct. 5
1953: Earl Warren was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson.
1986: Nicaraguan Sandinista government soldiers shot down a cargo plane carrying weapons and ammunition bound for Contra rebels; the event exposed a web of illegal arms shipments, leading to the Iran-Contra Scandal.
2011: Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former chief executive, died at age 56.
Oct. 6
1536: English theologian and scholar William Tyndale, who was the first to translate the Bible into Early Modern English, was executed for heresy.
1927: The era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of “The Jazz Singer,” starring Al Jolson.
1973: War erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday, starting a nearly three-week conflict that would become known as the Yom Kippur War.
Oct. 7
1765: The Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to draw up Colonial grievances against England.
1949: The Republic of East Germany was formed.
1982: The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical “Cats” opened on Broadway.
1991: Law professor Anita Hill publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him; Thomas denied Hill’s allegations and would go on to win Senate confirmation.
1992: Trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1996: Fox News Channel made its debut.
Oct. 8
1871: The Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in several communities in Michigan.
1956: Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5, 2-0.
2005: A magnitude 7.6 earthquake flattened villages on the Pakistan-India border, killing an estimated 86,000 people.
Oct. 9
1936: The first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles.
1962: Uganda won autonomy from British rule.
1967: Marxist revolutionary guerrilla leader Che Guevara, 39, was executed by the Bolivian army.
2010: Chile’s 33 trapped miners cheered and embraced each other as a drill punched into their underground chamber, where they had been stuck for 66 days.
