October 1
1569 - The Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned by Britain's Queen Elizabeth for trying to marry Mary the Queen of Scots.
1800 - Spain ceded the territory of Louisiana back to France. Later the property would be purchased by the U.S. effectively doubling its size.
1880 - Thomas Edison began the commercial production of electric lamps at Edison Lamp Works in Menlo Park.
1885 - Special delivery mail service began in the United States. The first routes were in West Virginia.
1890 - The U.S. Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act. The act raised tariffs to a record level.
1896 - Rural Free Delivery was established by the U.S. Post Office.
1903 - The first modern World Series took place between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
1908 - The Model T automobile was introduced by Henry Ford. The purchase price of the car was $850.
1918 - Damascus was captured from the Turks during World War I by a force made up of British and Arab forces.
1933 - Babe Ruth made his final pitching appearance. He pitched all nine innings and hit a home run in the 5th inning.
1936 - General Francisco Franco was proclaimed the head of the Spanish state.
1938 - German forces enter Czechoslovakia and seized control of the Sudetenland. The Munich Pact had been signed two days before.
1940 - The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened as the first toll superhighway in the United States.
1943 - Naples was captured by the Allied forces during World War II.
1946 - The International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced 12 Nazi officials to death. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms and 3 were acquitted.
1946 - The first baseball play-off game for a league championship was played. The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-2.
1949 - Mao Tse-tung raised the first flag of the People's Republic of China when the communist forces had defeated the Nationalists. The Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan.
1952 - "This is Your Life" began airing on NBC-TV.
1961 - Roger Maris (New York Yankees) hit his 61st home run of the season to beat Babe Ruth's major league record of 60.
1962 - Johnny Carson began hosting the "Tonight" show on NBC-TV. He stayed with the show for 29 years. Jack Paar was the previous host.
1964 - The Free Speech Movement was started at the University of California at Berkeley.
1968 - "Night of the Living Dead" premiered in Pittsburgh, PA.
1971 - Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, FL.
Disney movies, music and books
1972 - The Chinese government approved friendly relations with the United States.
1979 - The United States handed control of the Canal Zone over to Panama.
1980 - Robert Redford became the first male to appear alone on the cover of "Ladies' Home Journal." He was the only male to achieve this in 97 years.
1982 - EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) Center opened in Florida. The concept was planned by Walt Disney.
1984 - U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan announced that he was taking a leave of absence following his indictment on charges of larceny and fraud. He was later acquitted.
1985 - The PLO's headquarters in Tunisia was raided by Israeli jet fighters.
1988 - Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the Soviet presidency.
1989 - The authorized Charles Schulz biography, Good Grief, was published.
1989 - 7,000 East Germans were welcomed into West Germany after they were allowed to leave by the communist government.
1990 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and once again condemned Iraq's takeover of Kuwait.
1990 - In Croatia, minority Serbs proclaimed autonomy.
1991 - U.S. President Bush condemned the military coup in Haiti that removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power. U.S. economic and military aid was suspended.
1991 - The U.S. trust territory of Palau became independent.
1992 - The Strategic Arm Reduction Treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate.
1994 - The U.S. and Japan avoided a trade war by reaching a series of trade agreements.
1994 - The National Hockey League (NHL) team owners began a lockout of the players that lasted 103 days.
1995 - Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine other defendants were convicted in New York of conspiring to attack the U.S. through bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.
1996 - Lucent Technologies became an independent company.
1998 - The U.S. government posted a $2.2 million reward for the capture of Augustin Vasquez Mendoza. He is accused of killing an undercover U.S. agent during a drug purchase in 1994.
1999 - The 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China was celebrated in Beijing.
2001 - San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban Internet filters designed to keep pornography away from children at city libraries. The board left the decision up to the Library Commission to decide whether to install filtering software in children's areas. A federal law in the U.S. mandated the use of the filters.
2009 - In the United Arab Emirates, the exterior construction of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper was completed.
