Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow drowns off the North Carolina coast when a Yankee craft runs her ship aground. She was returning from a trip to England.

In Boston on October 1, 1903, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Americans, 7-3, in the first professional baseball World Series game. Pirates right fielder Jimmy Sebring hits the first World Series home run—an inside-the-park shot to deep center field off Americans ace Cy Young—in the seventh inning to extend the Pirates' lead to 7-0. Sebring is the game's star, driving in four runs.

On October 1, 1910, a massive explosion destroys the Los Angeles Times building in the city’s downtown area, killing 21 and injuring many more. Since Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Otis, a virulent opponent of unions, believed that the bomb was directed at him, he hired the nation’s premier private detective, William J. Burns, to crack the case. In addition to printing numerous editorials against unions, Otis was the leader of the Merchants and Manufacturing Association, a powerful group of business owners with extensive political connections.

On October 1, 1920, Scientific American magazine reports that the rapidly developing medium of radio would soon be used to broadcast music. A revolution in the role of music in everyday life was about to be born.

On October 1, 1946, 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted.

On October 1, 1958, the American Express Company issues its first charge card in the U.S. and Canada to give traveling customers more flexibility. The purple paperboard card—which later becomes the iconic green or gold plastic card—pre-dates a new era of paying for purchases with revolving credit cards, with MasterCard and Visa following years later.

On October 1, 1961, in New York's final game of the regular season, Yankees slugger Roger Maris hits his 61st home run, becoming the first player in Major League Baseball to hit more than 60 in a season. He tops former Yankees great Babe Ruth, who hit 60 home runs in 1927.

An earthquake in Whittier, California, kills 6 people and injures 100 more on October 1, 1987. The quake was the largest to hit Southern California since 1971, but not nearly as damaging as the Northridge quake that would devastate parts of Los Angeles seven years later.

Polly Klaas is abducted at knifepoint by an intruder in her Petaluma, California, home during a slumber party with two friends. Despite a massive manhunt and national attention, there was no sign of the missing 12-year-old or her abductor for two months.

On October 1, 2005, suicide bombers strike three restaurants in two tourist areas on the Indonesian island of Bali, a popular resort area. The bombings killed 22 people, including the bombers, and injured more than 50 others. This was the second suicide-bombing incident to rock the island in less than three years. (In 2002, a series of three bombs killed 202 people, many of them foreign nationals in Bali on vacation, including 88 Australians.)