On Oct. 3, 1941, Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.”
In 1944, during World War II, U.S. Army troops cracked the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany.
In 1951, the New York Giants captured the National League pennant by a score of 5-4 as Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the “shot heard ’round the world.”
In 1961, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” also starring Mary Tyler Moore, made its debut on CBS.
In 1970, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was established under the Department of Commerce.
In 1974, Frank Robinson was named major league baseball’s first Black manager as he was placed in charge of the Cleveland Indians.
In 1981, Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.
In 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a reunified country.
In 1995, the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. (Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil trial).
In 2001, the Senate approved an agreement normalizing trade between the United States and Vietnam.
In 2003, a tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of duo “Siegfried & Roy” during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving the superstar illusionist in critical condition on his 59th birthday.
In 2008, O.J. Simpson was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. (Simpson was later sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was granted parole in July 2017 and released from prison in October of that year.)
In 2011, an Italian appeals court freed Amanda Knox of Seattle after four years in prison, tossing murder convictions against Knox and an ex-boyfriend in the stabbing of their British roommate, Meredith Kercher.