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• ...that the Züschen tomb (pictured) and the Lohra tomb in Hesse, Germany, are prehistoric gallery graves belonging to the Late Neolithic Wartberg culture?
• ...that a person must be deemed competent to receive the death penalty in order to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright?
• ...that after his release from prison, Laurence McKeown, a former volunteer in the Provisional IRA who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike, earned a Ph.D. from Queen's University Belfast and co-founded the Belfast Film Festival?
• ...that the Hillsboro Police was the first law enforcement agency in Oregon to collect demographic statistics from traffic stops to combat racial profiling?
• ...that the Michigan Wolverines are college football's most victorious program by total wins and percentage?
• ...that early Seattle real estate developer George Kinnear served as the Captain of the "Home Guard" that put down the city's Anti-Chinese riots of 1885–1886?
• ...that U.S. President Ronald Reagan timed his first proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day to coincide with the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion case?
• ...that despite a Nazi ban on all sports, soccer matches with hooliganism still occurred in Poland?
• ...that Isaac Jefferson was a valued slave at U.S. President Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation?
  

• The first Malaysian astronaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor (pictured), is launched towards the International Space Station on board Soyuz TMA-11.
• Gerhard Ertl wins the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces.
• Dozens die in fierce fighting between pro-Taliban militants and the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan.
• Roman Catholic priest Christian Von Wernich is sentenced to life imprisonment by an Argentine federal court for murders, torture and abductions committed during the 1976–83 Dirty War.
• Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg win the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics for their independent discoveries of giant magnetoresistance.
• U.S. track and field athlete Marion Jones relinquishes the five medals she received at the 2000 Summer Olympics after admitting to the use of anabolic steroids.

October 11: National Coming Out Day and General Pulaski Memorial Day in the United States.

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The British Royal Navy defeated American ships at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, but gave American forces enough time to prepare their defenses for the Saratoga campaign.
• 1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia's oldest university, was inaugurated in Sydney two years after the New South Wales Legislative Council established it with the passage of the University of Sydney Act.
• 1865 – The Morant Bay rebellion, led by Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, began in Jamaica, but it eventually was brutally suppressed by Governor Edward John Eyre.
• 1942 – World War II: At the Battle of Cape Esperance on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, American ships intercepted and defeated a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.
• 1954 – Ho Chi Minh (pictured) and the Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam under the terms of the Geneva Accords which saw the end of the First Indochina War and French colonisation.
• 1962 – Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, the first Roman Catholic ecumenical council in 92 years.

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