285 (or 286) – Execution of Saints Crispin and Crispinian during the reign of Diocletian, now the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers.
1812 – War of 1812: The American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.
1861 – The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.
1927 – The Italian luxury liner SS Principessa Mafalda sinks off the coast of Brazil, killing 314.
1938 – The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as “a degenerated musical system … turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people”, warning that it leads down a “primrose path to hell”. His warning is widely ignored.
1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council proving that Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.
2009 – The October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds 721.
Births
1881 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (d. 1973)
1888 – Richard E. Byrd, American admiral and pilot (d. 1957)
1913 – Klaus Barbie, German captain (d. 1991)
Deaths
1154 – Stephen, King of England (b. 1096)
1400 – Geoffrey Chaucer, English philosopher, poet, and author (b. 1343)
1916 – William Merritt Chase, American painter and educator (b. 1849)
1980 – Virgil Fox, American organist and educator (b. 1912)
1991 – Bill Graham, German-American concert promoter (b. 1931)
1993 – Vincent Price, American actor (b. 1911)
1995 – Bobby Riggs, American tennis player (b. 1918)
