Washington Monument October 9, 1888 The Washington Monument is opened to the public. It was the first national monument to honor George Washington.

Great Chicago Fire - Not Started by a Cow October 8, 1871 3.3 square miles (9 km2) of Chicago is destroyed, more than 250 people are killed, and 100,000 of the 300,000 residents were left homeless. Adding to the problem, Chicago had been in a drought, having received only 1 inch (2.5 cm) of rain since July 4. It was no...

Achille Lauro Hijacking October 7, 1985 The Italian cruise ship MS Achille Lauro is hijacked off the coast of Egypt on her way to Israel by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front. They killed sixty-nine-year-old wheelchair-bound Jewish American Leon Klinghoffer and threw his body overboard. The hijackers' origi...

Oral Polio Vaccine October 6, 1956 Dr. Albert Sabin announces his oral polio vaccine (OPV) was ready for wide-scale testing. It was administered by sugar cube, as opposed to Jonas Salk's polio vaccine that was administered by injection. By 1961, Sabin's OPV had been tested on at least 100 million people in the USSR, pa...

"Grizzly Man" Comes to a Grizzly End October 5, 2003 American environmentalist Timothy Treadwell, known as the "Grizzly Man," and his girlfriend are killed and eaten by a bear while camping among the grizzlies. He had lived among the grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska for 13 summers. Th...