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1399 - Henry Bolingbroke succeeded to the English throne after Richard II abdicated the previous day.

1568 - John III is proclaimed King of Sweden by army and nobility on deposition of Eric XIV.

1641 - At one time, New York and New Jersey were jointly known as the New Netherlands. Today an ordinance by the authorities of the New Netherlands declared an annual fair be held at Fort Amsterdam, now called New York City. The ruling said there would be two fairs, an October 15th Cattle Fair and a November 1st Hog Fair. Anyone who had things to buy or sell could attend.

1787 - Sailing ship Columbia leaves Boston on first voyage around world by an American vessel.

1791 - Mozart's opera, "Die Zauberfloete," premiered at the Theater-auf-der-Wieden in Vienna.

1846 - Dr. William Morton, a dentist from Massachusetts, was the first to use anesthesia in extracting a tooth.

1868 - Spain's Queen Isabella flees to France and is declared deposed.

1888 - "Jack the Ripper" butchered two more women, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes, in London.

1891 - Georges Boulanger, French general and leader of an influential political movement which nearly toppled the Third Republic, committed suicide.

1911 - The first film stuntman employed as a stand-in for an actor was Lt. H.H. Arnold, who, on this date, undertook the flying sequences in the silent film, The Military Air Scout (1911.

1927 - Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in a 154-game season, with 540 times at bat, setting a baseball record. His 60th was on this date. In the same game, Walter Johnson made his final major league appearance.

1929 - The first rocket-powered aircraft, the Opel-Hatry Rak-1 glider, was tested by its inventor Fritz von Opel.

1933 - The theme song "Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here" opened the "National Barn Dance". First heard on Chicago, Illinois's WLS since 1924, the half-hour country music and comedy show relocated to the NBC Blue network. "National Barn Dance" broadcast from the Eighth Street Theater in Chicago. Every Saturday night, the stage was made into a hayloft. Joe Kelly hosted.

1935 - For the first time, "The Adventures of Dick Tracy" came to radio. The 15-minute show was based on the comic strip by Chester Gould that was first published in newspapers in 1931. The show was heard five days a week, following the comic strip's practice of introducing villains over time. Years later, "Dick Tracy" would be made into several movies and a series on television.

1935 - "Porgy and Bess" was first presented at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts.

1938 - British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stood before a crowd at Heston Airport, London, and waved the paper he had signed with German Chancellor Adolph Hitler. The document was the result of a conference in Munich in which Germany and Great Britain offered to resolve their differences peacefully.

1939 - On Mutual radio, "Captain Midnight" was heard for the first time on radio. Flying his single-engine plane all over, the Captain fought crime. Ovaltine dropped its sponsorship of "Little Orphan Annie" to support "Captain Midnight". Another sponsor was Skelly Oil.

1941 - On Bluebirds Records, the Larry Clinton Orchestra recorded their version of "That Solid Old Man".

1946 - International military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, finds 22 German Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes, and 11 are sentenced to death.

1947 - The World Series was on television for the first time; with the New York Yankees beating the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-3. Sponsors of the event were the Gillette Safety Razor Company and Ford Motor Company, paying $65,000 to cover the entire series. Bob Edge, who also did razor commercials, Bob Stanton and Bill Slater were the announcers.

1949 - The Berlin Airlift, under which the United States and Britain kept Berlin supplied against a Russian blockade, came to an end after 277,264 flights which carried 2,323,738 tons of supplies.

1951 - The Red Skelton Show, which was on the air for 20 seasons, debuted on this date on NBC.

1952 - Thomas Nelson and Sons published the first complete revision of the King James Version of the Bible in 51 years.

1954 - Julie Andrews, later a household name in movies, television and records, had her first opening on Broadway, when she appeared in "The Boy Friend".

1955 - James Dean, the brooding film actor, acclaimed for his work in "Giant", "East of Eden" and "Rebel Without a Cause", was killed in a car crash in the small farm town of Cholame, California. His Porsche Spider hit another car, head-on at 75 miles an hour. Also killed in the crash was Dean’s mechanic. The site of the accident is marked by a scarred, stainless steel memorial. A Japanese fan designed, paid for and erected the once-shiny tribute. At the Jack Ranch Cafe, a few feet away from the crash site, James Dean souvenirs are sold.

1955 - The French delegation withdrew from the United Nations Assembly after it had voted to debate the situation in Algeria.

1962 - James Meredith was the first black man to enroll in the all-white University of Mississippi. United States troops were sent to keep law and order and force compliance of the desegregation law, as riots broke out. Three people died and over fifty were injured in the melee.

1963 - The Soviet Union publicly declared itself on the side of India in the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir.

1965 - A failed coup attempt began in Indonesia. Six generals were kidnapped and a "30th September Movement" said it had taken control to foil a plot by the military; the generals were found dead on October 3.

1966 - Botswana (formerly called Bechuanaland) achieved its independence from Great Britain. The year before the capital was moved from Mafikeng, in South Africa, to the newly-established Gaborone. Independentist leader Seretse Khama was elected as the first president, and remained in office until his death in 1980. The country was named after its dominant ethnic group, the Tswana or Batswana.

1966 - 20 Argentine nationalists who "invaded" the Falkland Islands in a hijacked airliner during a visit by Prince Philip of Britain surrendered to a catholic priest.

1966 - German war criminals Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were freed at midnight from Spandau prison after serving 20 years imprisonment. The prison, built for 600 inmates, was left with only one, Rudolf Hess.

1971 - A nine-member citizens committee organized to investigate the prision riot at Attica, New York earlier that month where 10 hostages and 32 prisoners were killed. It was the worst such event in United States history.

1971 - The Soviet Union and the United States signed pacts that were aimed at avoiding an accidental nuclear war.

1976 - California enacted the Natural Death Act of California. The law was the first example of right-to-die legislation in the United States

1980 - Israel issued new currency, replacing the pound with the shekel.

1982 - The television hit comedy, Cheers, aired for the first time. It won numerous awards, including Emmys for Best Comedy Series, Best Actor and Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Director.

1984 - With a final score of 1-0, and a California win over Texas, pitcher Mike Witt entered the elite category in major league baseball of perfect games thrown. Mike was only the 11th pitcher in 104 years to complete this feat.

1984 - Garry Trudeau’s comic strip, "Doonesbury", returned after a 20-month hiatus. Married to former "Today" co-host Jane Pauley, Trudeau brought the sometimes controversial strip back by showing how the gang from Walden Pond “jumped from draft beer and mixers to cocaine and herpes.”

1986 - The United States released accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, one day after the Soviets released Nicholas Daniloff.

1988 - Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a Kremlin shake-up.

1990 - The Soviet Union and South Korea agreed to set up diplomatic relations.

1990 - The Soviet Union and Israel formally agreed to establish diplomatic relations, broken after the six-day war in 1967.

1990 - Breakaway Liberian rebel leader Prince Johnson declared all-out war on main rebel leader Charles Taylor.

1991 - Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled in a bloody coup which first installed a military junta and later a military-backed civilian regime.

1992 - The presidents of China and South Korea toasted the end of the Cold War hostility after the two countries signed wide-ranging economic accords.

1992 - George Brett of the Kansas City Royals reached 3,000 career hits during a game against the California Angels.

1993 - An estimated 10,000 people were killed when an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 6.4 struck southern India.

1993 - Queen Elizabeth awarded United States General Colin Powell an honorary knighthood in recognition of his outstanding contribution to British-U.S. relations and for his role in the Gulf War.

1993 - A series of earthquakes measuring 6.4 on the open-ended Richter scale in southwestern India devastated 36 villages. Over 10,000 bodies were recovered, but it was estimated that as many as 22,000 may have died.

1994 - Boris Yeltsin failed to get off his plane at Shannon Airport for scheduled talks with Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds.