On Oct. 9, 1002, Leif Ericson, the Norse mariner and adventurer, landed in what is now North America.
In 1701 the Collegiate School of Connecticut, now known as Yale University, was chartered in New Haven, Conn.
In 1776 a group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco.
In 1855 I.M. Singer registered a patent in New York for the first sewing machine motor.
In 1888 Washington Monument was opened to the public.
In 1930 Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States when she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, Calif.
In 1934 Yugoslavia’s King Alexander was assassinated during a visit to Marseille, France.
In 1936 the first generator at Boulder (now Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles.
In 1940 Beatles co-founder John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England.
In 1946 the first electric blanket was manufactured in Petersburg, Va.
In 1958 Pope Pius XII died after 19 years as Roman Catholic pontiff.
In 1974 Czech-born German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving about 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, died in Frankfurt, West Germany. (He would be buried in Jerusalem.)
In 1975 physicist Andrei Sakharov became the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1976 wall posters in Beijing reported that Chinese Prime Minister Hua Guofeng had been chosen to succeed Mao Zedong as Communist Party chairman.
In 1986 the U.S. Senate convicted U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” making him the fifth federal official in history to be removed from office through impeachment.
In 1987 author, politician and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce died; she was 84.
In 1989 the San Francisco Giants defeated the Cubs to win the National League playoffs four games to one.
In 1995 an earthquake along the west coast of Mexico claimed 51 lives.
In 1996 two Americans, Robert Curl Jr. and Richard Smalley, and a Briton, Harold Kroto, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry while three Americans — David Lee, Robert Richardson and Douglas Osheroff — won the physics prize.
In 1997 more than 200 people died when Hurricane Pauline ravaged Mexico’s southwestern coast, including Acapulco, the nation’s most popular resort.
In 2001 letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., were sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy; the letters later tested positive for anthrax. Also in 2001 Americans Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman and German-born U.S. resident Wolfgang Ketterle won the Nobel Prize in physics.
In 2003 a nine-day trash-haulers strike ended in Chicago, with an estimated 135,000 tons of garbage awaiting pickup.
In 2005 a driverless Volkswagen won a $2 million race across the rugged Nevada desert, beating four other robot-guided vehicles that completed a Pentagon-sponsored contest aimed at making warfare safer for humans. Also in 2005 comedian Louis Nye died in Los Angeles; he was 92.
