October comes from the Latin word octo which means “eight.” In ancient Rome, October was the eighth month of the year. However, when the Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII on February 24, 1582, it became the tenth month of the year.
Of course, probably the most well-known holiday of the month is Halloween (October 31st), but October is also National Arts & Humanities Month, Fire Prevention Month, Pizza Month, Popcorn Poppin’ Month, as well as National Dessert Month.
• October 1, 1890: Yosemite National Park established.
• On October 1, 1908, the first production Model T Ford was completed at the company’s plant in Detroit. For the next 20 years, Ford would build approximately 15 million Model T’s. It was the longest production run of any automobile model in history until 1972 when it was surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle.
• On October 1, 1961, New York Yankee Roger Maris becomes the first major-league baseball player to hit more than 60 home runs in a single season. Babe Ruth had set the record in 1927. In the last game of the regular season, Maris hit his 61st home run against the Boston Red Sox. (The Yankeess won the game 1-0.)
• National Boss’s Day is observed each year on October 16th.
• The Great Fire destroyed much of Chicago on October 8, 1871.
• On October 10, 1935, George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway to mixed critical reviews.
• Columbus Day is celebrated on October 14th.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower was born, October 14th, 1890
• On October 14, 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was ousted as both premier of the Soviet Union and chief of the Communist Party after 10 years in power. He was succeeded as head of the Communist Party by his former protégé Leonid Brezhnev, who would eventually also become the chief of state.
• After a bitter confirmation hearing, the U.S. Senate votes 52 to 48 to confirm Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court on October 15, 1991.
• Humorous novelist P.G. Wodehouse, creator of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves the butler, was born on October 15, 1881, in Surrey, England.
• On October 16, 1925, stage and screen actress Angela Lansbury, who starred in the TV series Murder, She Wrote and earned Oscar nominations for her performances in such films as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, was born in London, England. In 1991, Lansbury voiced the character of Miss Potts, the singing teapot, in Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated feature Beauty and the Beast.
• October 18, 1867, the U.S. formally took possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million—less than two cents an acre. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas. The purchase was championed by William Henry Seward, secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson.
• An iconic figure in the history of jazz music, who was instantly recognizable even to millions of non-jazz fans by his puffed-out cheeks and his trademark trumpet, with its horn bent upwards at a 45-degree angle, John Birks Gillespie—better known as “Dizzy”—was born in Cheraw, South Carolina on October 21, 1917.
• Oct 24, 1861 marked Western Union’s completion of the first transcontinental telegraph line.
• The Earps and the Clantons shot it out at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881.
• President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886.
• Oct 28, 1965: Workers complete the famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.
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