Shostakovich Evacuated
Oct 1 Dmitri Shostakovich evacuated by plane to Moscow
Best Foot Forward
Oct 1 Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane's musical "Best Foot Forward", starring June Allyson, with choreography by Gene Kelly, opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, NYC; runs for 326 performances
- Oct 2 6 Paris synagogues are bombed by Gestapo
- Oct 2 Germans launch attack on Moscow
The Maltese Falcon
Oct 3 "The Maltese Falcon" directed by John Huston and based on Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, premieres in New York City
Hitler's Broadcast on Russia
Oct 3 Adolf Hitler says Russia is "already broken and will never rise again" in a broadcast to the German people
- Oct 3 All elderly Jewish men of Kerenchug Ukraine, are killed by SS
- Oct 3 Nazis blow up 6 synagoges in Paris
- Oct 5 Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen drops a 3rd strike and Tom Hendrick reaches 1st safely for Yankees for a famous Baseball World Series error; would have been last out, instead Yankees score 4 and win 7-4; win series, 4-1
- Oct 6 Baseball World Series: NY Yankees beat Brooklyn Dodgers, 3-1 at Ebetts Field for a 4 games to 1 series win; Yankees 5th title in 6 years and 9th overall
- Oct 6 German army occupies Briansk, USSR
- Oct 7 German army occupies Viarma, USSR
- Oct 8 Building at Concentration Camp Birkenau begins
- Oct 9 Coup in Panama declares Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango the new president
Manhattan Project
Oct 9 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves an atomic program that would become the Manhattan Project
- Oct 10 RAF bombs Piraeus to prevent German heavy armor advancing
- Oct 10 WW2: Battle of Moscow - Germans Wehrmacht forces encounter stronger than expected resistance at the Mozhaisk line, west of Moscow
- Oct 12 Soviet government moves from Moscow to Volga as Nazis forces close in on Moscow
- Oct 13 Nazis kill 11,000 Jewish children and old people, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine; additional murders continue on the 14th [1]
- Oct 14 1st mass deportation of Kowno, Lodz, Minsk & Riga
- Oct 15 First mass deportation of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to Eastern Europe for "resettlement" in labor camps
Hideki Tojo PM
Oct 15 Hideki Tojo appointed Prime Minister of Imperial Japan
- Oct 15 Jews caught outside Nazi Ghetto walls in occupied Poland could be put to death
- Oct 15 WWII: Nazi SS-Brigadier General Walter Stahlecker submits summary report documenting killing of more than 118,000 unarmed Jewish men, women, and children by men under his command between June 22 and October 15, 1941 during invasion of the Soviet Union to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin,
- Oct 16 "Gordo" comic strip (by Gus Arriola) 1st appears in newspapers
- Oct 16 Germany advances within 60 miles (96 K) of Moscow
Siege of Odessa
Oct 16 Romanian Legionnaires enter Odessa, Russia during the siege of Odessa, part of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union
- Oct 17 USS Kearney becomes the 1st US destroyer torpedoed in World War II, while the country is still officially neutral
- Oct 18 Soviet spy Richard Sorge arrested in Tokyo
- Oct 19 1st woman jockey in North America, Anna Lee Wiley in Mexico
- Oct 20 Nazi occupiers murder 500 inhabitants of Kragujevac Serbia
Candle in the Wind
Oct 22 Maxwell Anderson's play "Candle in the Wind" premieres in NYC
Dumbo
Oct 23 Walt Disney's animated film "Dumbo" released
- Oct 25 16,000 Jews massacred in Odessa, Ukraine
- Oct 25 Germany attacks Moscow
Partisan Leaders Meet
Oct 26 Second meeting of partisans Tito and Draža Mihailović in Yugoslavia
- Oct 27 Chicago Daily Tribune editorialize there will not be war with Japan
How Green Was My Valley
Oct 28 "How Green Was My Valley" based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn, directed by John Ford and starring Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O'Hara premieres in New York (Best Picture 1942)
Let's Face It
Oct 29 Cole Porter's musical "Let's Face It" opens at the Imperial Theatre, NYC; runs 547 performances
- Oct 31 Clothing factory fire in Huddersfield, England kills 49
- Oct 31 Mount Rushmore Monument is completed in South Dakota, designed by Gutzon Borglum
- Oct 31 Prior to US joining WWII, German submarine U-552 torpedoes US destroyer Reuben James near Iceland
Admirals
Aviators
Gangsters
Generals
Industrialists
Suffragists