October 31
1517 - Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace church, marking the start of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.
1846 - A heavy snowfall trapped the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
1864 - Nevada became the 36th state.
1913 - The Lincoln Highway, the first automobile highway across the United States, was dedicated.
1941 - Work on the Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota, which had began in 1927, was completed.
1956 - Rear Admiral G. J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at the South Pole.
1961 - The body of Josef Stalin was removed from Lenin's Tomb as part of the Soviet Union's "de-Stalinization" drive.
1984 - Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her own security guards.
1992 - Pope John Paul II admitted that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in convicting Galileo of heresy 350 years earlier.
1999 - EgyptAir Flight 990, bound from New York to Cairo, crashed off the Massachusetts coast, killing all 217 people aboard.
2005 - President George W. Bush nominated Judge Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.
2011 - The United Nations estimated that the world population had reached 7 billion people. (The population is greater than 8 billion today.)
Birthdays
24 - Willow Smith (singer)
24 - Amaya Colon (model)
25 - Danielle Rose Russell (actress)
31 - Leticia Wright (actress)
31 - Nadine Lustre (actress)
32 - Vanessa Marano (actress)
57 - Vanilla Ice (rapper)
58 - Mike O'Malley (actor/comedian)
60 - Darryl Worley (singer)
61 - Dermot Mulroney (actor)
61 - Fred McGriff (baseball player)
61 - Rob Schneider (actor/comedian)
63 - Peter Jackson (director)
73 - Nick Saban (football coach)
74 - Jane Pauley (TV host)
78 - Stephen Rea (actor)
93 - Dan Rather (news anchor)
99 - Lee Grant (actor)
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Today in Sports History - October 31
1943 - Washington Redskins quarterback Sammy Baugh passes for a then NFL record six touchdowns in a 48-10 win over Brooklyn.
1950 - Earl Lloyd of the Washington Capitols became the first African-American to play in an NBA game; Lloyd would go on to play for nine seasons, winning an NBA championship in 1955 with the Syracuse Nationals.
1968 - The Milwaukee Bucks won their first game in franchise history, defeating the Detroit Pistons 138-118.
1994 - Venus Williams makes her professional tennis debut at age 14.
2010 - For the first time in major league history, two former presidents attended the same World Series Game. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both attended Game 4 at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, TX.
2014 - Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, and Joe Torre are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
