During the American Revolution, Patriot irregulars under Colonel William Campbell defeat Tories under Major Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of King’s Mountain.

For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis—the automobile’s frame—is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one “Model T.” Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes. The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford’s use of the moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car affordable to ordinary consumers.

On October 7, 1943, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, orders the execution of 98 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.

On October 7, 1944, in a bold act of resistance, several hundred prisoners incarcerated in the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau stage the Sonderkommando revolt, destroying most of the gas chambers and crematoria where they were forced to work. While some of the inmates manage to kill a handful of Nazi officers and briefly escape the camp, the uprising is swiftly crushed and its perpetrators executed.

Poet Allen Ginsberg reads his poem “Howl” at a poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later.

On October 7, 1960, the first episode of the one-hour television drama "Route 66" airs on CBS. The program had a simple premise: It followed two young men, Buz Murdock (George Maharis) and Tod Stiles (Martin Milner), as they drove across the country in an inherited Corvette (Chevrolet was one of the show’s sponsors), doing odd jobs and looking for adventure.

On October 7, 1975, a Federal Appeals Court judge reverses a deportation order for John Lennon, allowing him to remain legally in his adoptive home of New York City.

On October 7, 1985, Lynette Woodard, captain of the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic women's basketball team in 1984, becomes the first female player for the Harlem Globetrotters. “I got chills, Woodard, 26, says of her selection. "I just shook my head and I said: ‘It’s me, I know it’s me.’” She beats out nine other finalists for the historic honor.

On October 7, 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States “war on terror” and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The conflict in Afghanistan would span two decades and become the longest war in U.S. history.