- 1009 - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church now within the walled Old City of Jerusalem, was destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.
- 1851 - " Moby-Dick", a novel by Herman Melville, was first published as "The Whale".
- 1922 - The British Broadcasting Company was founded by a consortium to establish a network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service in the United Kingdom.
- 1954 - Texas Instruments introduced the first transistor radio.
- 1977 - German Autumn: a national crisis revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer in Cologne and the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane to Somalia by the Red Army Faction (RAF) came to an end when various RAF members committed suicide in prison and Schleyer was killed in France. The German government later stated that it would never again negotiate with terrorists.
Recent days: October 17 - October 16 - October 15