What Happened on October 15th in History
30 historical events on this date
The German Rentenmark is introduced in Germany to counter hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic.
The Rentenmark was a currency issued on 15 November 1923 to stop the hyperinflation of 1922 and 1923 in Weimar Germany, after the previously used Papiermark had become almost worthless. It was...
The airship Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States.
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was a German passenger-carrying hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. The ship was...
Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.
Air India is the flag carrier of India, headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana. Its primary hub is located at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, with secondary hubs at Kempegowda...
The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed LaGuardia Airport) is dedicated.
LaGuardia Airport, colloquially known as LaGuardia or LGA, is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City, United States, situated on the northwestern shore of Long Island, bordering...
President Lluís Companys of Catalonia is executed by the Francoist government.
Lluís Companys i Jover was a Catalan politician from Spain who served as president of Catalonia from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.
World War II: Germany replaces the Hungarian government after Hungary announces an armistice with the Soviet Union.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes completes the synthesis of norethisterone, the basis of an early oral contraceptive.
Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas was a Mexican chemist known as co-inventor and the first to synthesize an oral contraceptive, progestin norethisterone.
Hurricane Hazel devastates the eastern seaboard of North America, killing 95 and causing massive floods as far north as Toronto.
Hurricane Hazel was the deadliest, second-costliest, and most intense hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm killed at least 469 people in Haiti before it struck the United...
FORTRAN, the first modern computer language, is first shared with the coding community.
Fortran is a third-generation, compiled, imperative programming language designed for numeric computation and scientific computing.
Vietnam War: A draft card is burned during an anti-war rally by the Catholic Worker Movement, resulting in the first arrest under a new law.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while...
The Black Panther Party is created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
The Black Panther Party was an American Marxist–Leninist and black power political and militant organization founded by college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in October 1966 in Oakland,...
During the construction of Australia's West Gate Bridge, a span of the bridge falls and kills 35 workers. The incident is the country's worst industrial accident to this day.
The West Gate Bridge is a steel, box girder, cable-stayed bridge across the Yarra River, north of its mouth into Port Phillip, and Westgate Park, located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The...
Supporters of the Malta Labour Party ransack and destroy the Times of Malta building and other locations associated with the Nationalist Party.
Black Monday in Malta refers to 15 October 1979 when the Progress Press and the home of Eddie Fenech Adami, then Leader of the Opposition, were ransacked following a rally by the Labour Party.
A coup d'état in El Salvador overthrows President Carlos Humberto Romero and begins the 12 year-long Salvadoran Civil War.
The 1979 Salvadoran coup d'état occurred on 15 October when junior officers of the Armed Forces of El Salvador's Military Youth Movement (MJM) bloodlessly overthrew General Carlos Humberto Romero,...
Aero Trasporti Italiani Flight 460 crashes near Conca di Crezzo, Italy, killing all 37 people on board.
Aero Trasporti Italiani Flight 460 was a scheduled passenger flight between Milan Linate Airport in Milan, Italy and Cologne Bonn Airport in Cologne, Germany on 15 October 1987. The flight was...
A coup d'état in Burkina Faso overthrows and kills then President Thomas Sankara.
The 1987 Burkina Faso coup d'état was a violent military coup in Burkina Faso, which took place on 15 October 1987. The coup was organized by Captain Blaise Compaoré against incumbent far-left...
Wayne Gretzky becomes the all-time leading points scorer in the NHL.
Wayne Douglas Gretzky is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former head coach. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for four teams from 1979 to 1999. Nicknamed...
Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was a Soviet and Russian politician who was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the...
The "Oh-My-God particle", an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray measured at 40,000,000 times that of the highest energy protons produced in a particle accelerator, is observed at the University of Utah HiRes observatory in Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.
The Oh-My-God particle (as physicists dubbed it) was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray detected on 15 October 1991 by the Fly's Eye camera in Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, United States. As of 2026, it...
The leaders of the Baltic States, Arnold Rüütel of Estonia, Anatolijs Gorbunovs of Latvia and Vytautas Landsbergis of Lithuania, signed the OSCE Final Act in Helsinki, Finland.
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Baltic...
The United States, under the Clinton administration, returns Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to the island.
Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office...
The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
Cassini–Huygens, commonly called Cassini, was a joint space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet...
NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles (180 km) of Jupiter's moon Io.
Galileo was an American robotic space probe that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as the asteroids Gaspra and Ida. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted...
China launches Shenzhou 5, its first crewed space mission.
Shenzhou 5 was the first human spaceflight mission of the Chinese space program, launched on 15 October 2003. The Shenzhou spacecraft was launched on a Long March 2F launch vehicle. There had been...
The 6.7 Mw Kiholo Bay earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport.
Seismic magnitude scales are used to describe the overall strength or "size" of an earthquake. These are distinguished from seismic intensity scales that categorize the intensity or severity of...
Seventeen activists in New Zealand are arrested in the country's first post-9/11 anti-terrorism raids.
On 15 and 16 October 2007, the New Zealand Police conducted a series of armed raids in response to alleged paramilitary training camps in the Urewera mountain range near the town of Ruatoki. About...
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes down 733.08 points, or 7.87%, the second worst percentage drop in the Dow's history.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The 7.2 Mw Bohol earthquake strikes the Philippines. At least 215 were killed.
Seismic magnitude scales are used to describe the overall strength or "size" of an earthquake. These are distinguished from seismic intensity scales that categorize the intensity or severity of...
One hundred and ninety-seven nations amend the Montreal Protocol to include a phase-out of hydrofluorocarbons.
The Montreal Protocol, officially the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of...
13-year-old American girl, Jayme Closs, is kidnapped from her Barron, Wisconsin home after her parents were both murdered.
On October 15, 2018, 21-year-old Jake Thomas Patterson abducted 13-year-old Jayme Lynn Closs after fatally shooting her parents, James and Denise Closs, at their home just outside of Barron,...