October 4 is the 277th day of the year (278th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 88 days remain until the end of the year.
1535 – The Coverdale Bible is printed, with translations into English by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale.
1582 – The Gregorian Calendar is introduced by Pope Gregory XIII.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: Troops under George Washington are repelled by British troops under William Howe.
1853 – The Crimean War begins when the Ottoman Empire declares war on the Russian Empire.
1876 – The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas opens as the first public college in Texas.
1918 – World War I: An explosion kills more than 100 people and destroys a shell loading plant in New Jersey.
1919 : By the 4th game of the 1919 World Series between the champion Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds. Questions were already being asked 'Is The 1919 Series Fixed' which the Cincinnati Reds won. Following 12 months of investigation and confessions from two of the players all eight implicated White Sox, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, were banned from Major League Baseball for life and the first Commissioner of Baseball is created to ensure it never happened again 1927 – Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore.
1957 – Sputnik 1 becomes the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.
1960 – An airliner crashes on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 people.
1963 – Hurricane Flora kills 6,000 in Cuba and Haiti.
1965 – Pope Paul VI begins the first papal visit to the Americas.
1983 – Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour (1,019.468 km/h) at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
1985 – The Free Software Foundation is founded.
1992 – El Al Flight 1862 crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground.
1993 – Tanks bombard the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Yeltsin rally outside.
1997 – The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history occurs in North Carolina 2001 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 crashes after being struck by an errant Ukrainian missile. Seventy-eight people are killed.
Born on this day: 1822 – Rutherford B. Hayes, American general, lawyer, and politician, 19th President of the United States (d. 1893) 1861 – Frederic Remington, American
painter, sculptor, and illustrator (d. 1909) 1880 – Damon Runyon, American newspaperman and short story writer. (d. 1946) 1888 – Lucy Tayiah Eads, American tribal chief (d. 1961) 1895 – Buster Keaton, American film actor, director, and producer (d. 1966) 1911 – Mary Two-Axe Earley, Canadian indigenous women's rights activist (d. 1996) 1923 – Charlton Heston, American actor, director and gun rights activist (d. 2008 1941 – Anne Rice, American author (d. 2021) 1946 – Susan Sarandon, American actress and activist Died on this day: 1970 – Janis Joplin, American singer-songwriter (b. 1943) 2022 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter and musician (b. 1932