On Oct. 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in several communities in Michigan.

On this date:In 1914, the World War I song “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” by Ivor Novello and Lena Guilbert Ford, was first published in London under the title ”’Till the Boys Come Home.”

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman told a press conference in Tiptonville, Tennessee, that the secret scientific knowledge behind the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.

In 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5, 2-0.

In 1982, all labor organizations in Poland, including Solidarity, were banned.

In 1985, the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro (ah-KEE’-leh LOW’-roh) killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a wheelchair, and threw his body overboard.

In 1997, scientists reported the Mars Pathfinder had yielded what could be the strongest evidence yet that Mars might once have been hospitable to life.

In 1998, the House triggered an open-ended impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton in a momentous 258-176 vote; 31 Democrats joined majority Republicans in opening the way for nationally televised impeachment hearings.

In 2002, a federal judge approved President George W. Bush’s request to reopen West Coast ports, ending a 10-day labor lockout that was costing the U.S. economy an estimated $1 to $2 billion a day.

In 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake flattened villages on the Pakistan-India border, killing an estimated 86,000 people.

In 2010, British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who’d been taken captive in Afghanistan, was killed during a U.S. special forces rescue attempt, apparently by a U.S. grenade.

In 2016, Donald Trump vowed on Twitter to continue his campaign; many Republicans were calling on Trump to abandon his presidential bid in the wake of the release of a 2005 video in which he made lewd remarks about women and appeared to condone sexual assault.

In 2020, authorities in Michigan said six men had been charged with conspiring to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in reaction to what they viewed as her “uncontrolled power.” (Two of the six pleaded guilty, two others were acquitted and the remaining two were convicted at a retrial in August 2022.) Democrat Joe Biden said President Donald Trump’s tweet earlier in the year to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” may have encouraged the alleged kidnapping plot.