October 1, 1880 - Thomas Edison opens in Menlo Park, California, the “Edison Lamp Works”, the first light bulb factory in the world
October 1, 1958 - First day of operation for the NASA: established in July of the same year on the ashes of the pre-existing NACA, it is the civilian government agency responsible for aerospace research and the US space program
2 October 1836 - Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England, aboard the brig HMS Beagle after a five-year voyage during which he collected data that he will later use to develop his Evolution theory
2 October 1955 - The is deactivated ENIAC computers, the first electronic computer “general purpose” of rome
3 October 1837 - US inventor Samuel Morse patents the Morse code, the electric telegraph alphabet named after him
3 October 1839 - It is inaugurated the Naples-Portici, the first Italian railway line: it was double track and covered a distance of 7,25 kilometres
3 October 2017 - Scientists Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish are awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for founding the LIGO project for gravitational wave research
4 October 1957 - Launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth
5 October 1991 - Finnish computer scientist Linus Torvalds releases first kernel version Linux
5 October 1995 - Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announce that they have discovered the first extrasolar planet with a mass comparable to that of Jupiter around a Sun-like star, the 51 Pegasus
7 October 1913 - US entrepreneur Henry Ford introduces the Assembly line: it is the assembly process used in modern industries aimed at optimizing the work of the workers and reducing the time required for the assembly of a complex product
10 October 1959 - The Soviet probe Luna 3 sends the first photos of the hidden face of our satellite
11 October 1968 - NASA launches theApollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham.
12 October 1492 - Set sail on August 3 from Palos de la Frontera under the aegis of the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile to reach the Orient described by Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus arrives in San Salvador (El Salvador): America is discovered
12 October 1931 - Guglielmo Marconi sends from Rome, through the transmitters of Coltano, near Pisa, the radio signal illuminating Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, demonstrating the reliability and importance of intercontinental radio communications
13 October 2003 - The Public Library of Science begins publication of the open access scientific journal “PLoS Biology”
15 October 1997 - The space probe Cassini-Huygens it is launched from Cape Canaveral with the aim of studying the Saturn system, moons and rings included
16 October 2002 - In Alexandria of Egypt the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, an important library and cultural center in memory of the mythical library which was one of the most important Hellenistic cultural poles, as well as the largest and richest library in the ancient world
20 October 2004 - The computer operating system was born Ubuntu: It is open source, free and free
21 October 1879 - After 14 months of experiments, Thomas Edison perfects the first working bulb: will stay on for 13 hours before burning out
21 October 2001 - Apple presents its first iPod, the digital music player produced by the company until 2014: it will be placed on the market two days later
23 October 1996 - 137 years after the publication of "The Origin of Species", Pope John Paul II rehabilitates Charles Darwin, whose evolutionary theories were the cause of strong conflict with the Catholic Church
25 October 1671 - French-born Italian astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Cassini discovers Iapetus, the first of the four natural satellites of Saturn identified by him: the planet has a total of 62
26 October 1994 - British mathematician Andrew Wiles announces confirmation of proof ofFermat's last theorem, which assumes that there are no positive integer solutions to the equation an + bn = cn
28 October 2004 - The popular science magazine "Nature" publishes the discovery of a new human species, Homo floresiensis, which took place the previous year on the island of Flores, Indonesia, by a group of Australian and Indonesian researchers
29 October 1945 - In a department store in New York the first ballpoint pen priced at $12,50: the name by which it is more commonly known, "biro", derives from that of its inventor, the Hungarian journalist László Bíró
29 October 1969 - United States Department of Defense Agency establishes first computer-to-computer link, Arpanet: it is a sort of embryonic network from which the Internet will be born in 1983
29 October 1991 - NASA's Galileo spacecraft makes its closest pass at 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid
30 October 2016 - In the Center of Italy the strongest shock of the sequence of seismic events that affected the area in 2016 and 2017 occurs: it has a magnitude of 6.5 and its epicenter between the municipalities of Norcia and Preci, in the province of Perugia
31 October 1970 - The telephone dialing is extended to all of Italy: now it is possible to call any telephone number by simply adding an area code to the number called, without having to request the intervention of the switchboard operator
31 October 2002 - A magnitude 6.0 earthquake shakes Molise and Puglia: the event causes the collapse of a school in San Giuliano di Puglia causing 28 casualties
31 October 2011 - Earth reaches i 7 billion inhabitants