15 October History
- 1529 - Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade.
- 1582 - The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.
- 1783 - Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.
- 1813 - During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.
- 1863 - For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sinks during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.
- 1878 - Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.
- 1880 - Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.
- 1892 - An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.
- 1894 - Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.
- 1914 - Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls "labor's charter of freedom." The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
- 1924 - German ZR-3 flies 5000 miles, the furthest Zeppelin flight to date.
- 1941 - Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.
- 1945 - Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
- 1950 - President Harry Truman meets with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
- 1964 - Nikita Khrushchev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.
15 October Birthdays
- 70 BC - Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), Roman poet.
- 1830 - Helen Hunt Jackson, writer and poet.
- 1844 - Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher and writer.
- 1881 - P.G. Wodehouse, novelist and playwright.
- 1905 - C.P. Snow, novelist.
- 1908 - John Kenneth Galbraith, economist, writer and diplomat.
- 1910 - Torbjorn Oskar Caspersson, Swedish cytologist and geneticist.
- 1917 - Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
- 1920 - Mario Puzo, novelist and screenwriter best known for The Godfather.
- 1923 - Italo Calvino, Italian novelist.