On October 16, 1987, Mike Tyson stopped Olympic gold medalist Tyrell Biggs in round 7, admitting afterward he dragged out the beating to settle an old Olympic-trials grudge.
At 10:30 a.m. on October 15, 1997, a jet-black car shaped like a dart tore across Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and did something no wheeled vehicle had ever officially done: it went faster than sound. Twice, in opposite directions, within the mandatory one-hour window. The sonic booms rattled windows and set off car alarms in…
On October 14, 1987, eighteen-month-old Jessica McClure fell through an 8-inch opening into an abandoned well in her aunt’s backyard in Midland, Texas, and got stuck 22 feet down. It took rescue crews 58 hours to drill a parallel shaft through solid rock and pull her out alive on October 16 — a rescue that…
The Nightmare Before Christmas opened in limited release on October 13, 1993, four days after its premiere at the New York Film Festival and more than two weeks before its wide release on October 29. Disney distributed the stop-motion film through its Touchstone Pictures label instead of its own name, worried the gothic visuals —…
John Denver died on October 12, 1997, when the experimental Rutan Long-EZ aircraft he was flying ran out of fuel and crashed into Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove, California. He was 53 and had owned the plane only a few weeks. The NTSB later traced the crash to a fuel valve that had been relocated…
On October 11, 1984, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space, spending 3 hours and 29 minutes outside Space Shuttle Challenger with fellow astronaut David Leestma during mission STS-41-G. The pair tested the Orbital Refueling System, a prototype designed to let future satellites get refueled on-orbit instead of being…
On October 10, 1985, Hollywood lost two giants within hours of each other. Orson Welles, director of Citizen Kane, died of a heart attack at his Los Angeles home at age 70, just hours after taping his final television interview. Yul Brynner, the Oscar-winning star of The King and I, died that same day in…
The Phantom of the Opera officially opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London on October 9, 1986, after two weeks of previews. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical starred Michael Crawford as the Phantom and Sarah Brightman as Christine Daaé, was directed by Harold Prince, and went on to become the longest-running show in Broadway history before…
On October 8, 1995, Edgar Martinez hit an 11th-inning double down the left field line to score Joey Cora and Ken Griffey Jr., giving the Seattle Mariners a 6-5 win over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the ALDS at the Kingdome. The hit, known forever as “The Double,” won the franchise’s first…
On October 7, 1985, four Palestine Liberation Front gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean, holding roughly 400 passengers and crew hostage and murdering 69-year-old American tourist Leon Klinghoffer. Three days later, U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats forced the hijackers’ getaway plane down in Sicily, triggering a standoff with Italy that nearly…
Elizabeth Taylor had been married seven times before, but nothing in her previous six weddings prepared the world for what happened at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch on October 6, 1991. The bride was 59. The groom, Larry Fortensky, was a 39-year-old construction worker she’d met in rehab. And the venue had a working Ferris wheel….
On October 5, 1984, Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 7:03 a.m. on the STS-41-G mission, carrying the largest crew ever flown at that point — seven astronauts, including the first two women to fly together in space and the first Canadian ever to leave Earth. Six days later, mission specialist…
