On October 31, 1776, in his first speech before British Parliament since the leaders of the American Revolution came together to sign the Declaration of Independence that summer, King George III acknowledges that all was not going well for Britain in the war with the United States.

Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn’t had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died.

Five years after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalinism and the “personality cult” of Soviet rulers at the 20th Party Congress, Joseph Stalin’s embalmed body is removed from Lenin’s tomb in Moscow’s Red Square.

On October 31, 1963, American television impresario Ed Sullivan, waiting for a flight at London's Heathrow Airport, happens to witness the pandemonium of Beatlemania—a pop-culture fever then raging in the U.K. and rapidly spreading across the European continent. Thinking the mass hysteria must be for a member for the British royal family, he was told it was actually for a popular rock 'n' roll band called the Beatles. His response: "Who the hell are the Beatles?"

Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, is assassinated in New Delhi by two of her own bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, both Sikhs, emptied their guns into Gandhi as she walked to her office from an adjoining bungalow. Although the two assailants immediately surrendered, they were both shot in a subsequent scuffle, and Beant died.

On October 31, 1997, 33-year-old Violet Palmer becomes the first woman to officiate an NBA game. Despite the watershed moment, there is little reaction from the crowd when she is announced before the tip-off of the Dallas Mavericks-Vancouver Grizzlies game. "This is a dream come true, but it's come about by a lot of hard work," says Palmer.

On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious and anonymous inventor of Bitcoin, released the Bitcoin white paper, introducing the cryptocurrency—and how it could be used—to the world. By design, only 21 million Bitcoins will ever be "mined," or released into the market.