Today:
539 BC: The army of Cyrus the Great captures Babylon, ending the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
1492: Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, likely on an island in the Bahamas.
1810: The first Oktoberfest is held in Munich, Bavaria, to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.
1901: President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the Executive Mansion to the White House.
1915: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad in Belgium during World War I for helping Allied soldiers escape.
1960: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk during a United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a speech.
1964: The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1, the first spaceflight to carry a multi-person crew.
1984: An assassination attempt against British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is made by the Provisional Irish Republican Army who bomb the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England.
1999: Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan in a military coup.
2000: The USS Cole, a US Navy destroyer, is attacked by suicide bombers in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 American sailors.