Dwight David Eisenhower 1890 - 34th president of the United States
- 1912 - Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee, WI. Roosevelt's wound in the chest was not serious and he continued with his planned speech. William Schrenk was captured at the scene of the shooting.
- 1947 - Over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, pilot Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the first person to break the sound barrier.
- 1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis began. It was on this day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing data discovered Soviet medium-range missile sites in Cuba. On October 22 U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced that he had ordered the naval "quarantine" of Cuba.
- 1964 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in America. He was the youngest person to receive the award.
- 1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev charged that the U.S. wanted to "bleed the Soviet Union economically" with the arms race in space.
