On Oct. 3, 1226, St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, died. (He would be canonized two years later.)
In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln asked Congress to designate the fourth Thursday in November each year as Thanksgiving.
In 1866 the Treaty of Vienna ended the war between Austria and Italy.
In 1929 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formally changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In 1941 Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Nazi leader, declared in a Berlin speech that the Soviet Union had been “broken” in World War II and never would rise again.
In 1951, capping a dramatic late-season comeback, Bobby Thomson hit a home run in the ninth inning of a playoff game to win the National League pennant for the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1952 Britain tested its first atomic bomb off the coast of Australia.
In 1962 astronaut Wally Schirra blasted off from Cape Canaveral aboard the Sigma 7 for a nine-hour, six-orbit flight.
In 1974 Frank Robinson was named manager of the Cleveland Indians, becoming major-league baseball’s first black manager.
In 1981 Irish nationalists imprisoned in Northern Ireland ended a seven-month hunger strike that had resulted in 10 deaths.
In 1987 U.S. and Canadian negotiators agreed on a framework for an accord to eliminate all tariffs between the world’s two largest trading partners.
In 1990 West and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division and declared the creation of a unified country.
In 1991 Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In 1995, after a nine-month trial and deliberations of less than four hours, a Los Angeles jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of murder charges in the stabbing deaths of his former wife and a friend of hers. (Later, he would be found liable in a civil proceeding.)
In 1998 versatile motion picture actor Roddy McDowall, who starred in the Lassie films as a child and in “Planet of the Apes” 25 years later, died of cancer in his Los Angeles home. He was 70.
