On Oct. 19, 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drafted a declaration of rights and liberties.
In 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte’s French troops began their retreat from Moscow.
In 1864 Confederate units under Gen. Jubal Early attacked Union troops at Cedar Creek, Va., in the Civil War. (The Union forces rallied for a victory.)
In 1931 novelist John le Carre was born in Poole, England.
In 1950 U.S. and other United Nations forces entered Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, in the Korean War.
In 1954 Britain and Egypt reached agreement on evacuating troops from the Suez Canal zone.
In 1960 the U.S. embargoed shipments to Cuba that included all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products. Also in 1960 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and 52 other protesters were arrested in a sitdown demonstration at an Atlanta department store.
In 1973 former White House counsel John Dean admitted he had plotted to cover up the truth about the Watergate break-in and agreed to be a witness for the prosecution.
In 1978 veteran actor Gig Young and his wife were found shot to death in their New York City apartment.
In 1983 Maurice Bishop, prime minister of the Caribbean island of Grenada, was killed in a coup.
In 1987 the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points.
In 1992 President George Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton and independent Ross Perot met in East Lansing, Mich., for their third and final presidential campaign debate.
In 1994 comedian Martha Raye, 78, died in Los Angeles.
In 1999 legislation to overhaul the nation’s campaign-finance laws collapsed in Congress in the face of a filibuster by Senate Republicans for the fourth successive year.
