| 15 October 70 BC | Roman Empire, Italy [births and deaths] | Virgil, Roman poet, author of the Aeneid, born in Andes, near Mantua, Italy (–19 BC). |
| 15 October 961 | Spain [births and deaths] | Abd-ar-Rahman III, first caliph 929–61 and greatest ruler of the Umayyad dynasty of Spain, dies in Córdoba, Spain (70). |
| 15 October 1080 | Germany [wars] | In a battle near Hohen-Mölsen, Rudolf of Swabia defeats King Henry IV of Germany, but is mortally wounded. |
| 15 October 1214 | England [political events] | King John arrives back in England from France to face growing baronial discontent with his demands for money to fund his unsuccessful campaigns. |
| 15 October 1389 | Rome [births and deaths] | Urban V, Italian pope whose election caused the French cardinals to establish the antipope, dies in Rome (c. 71). |
| 15 October 1542 | Mogul Empire [births and deaths] | Akbar, Mogul emperor of India 1556–1605, who brought most of India under Mogul rule, born (–1605). |
| 15 October 1713 | France [births and deaths] | Denis Diderot, French philosopher of the Enlightenment, editor of the Encyclopédie/Encyclopedia, born in Langres, France (–1784). |
| 15 October 1802 | France, Switzerland [wars] | Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, intervenes in the civil war in Switzerland between the towns and the forest cantons. Using his newly-won authority in the region, he styles himself ‘Mediator of the Helvetic League’ and imposes a settlement. |
| 15 October 1844 | Prussia [births and deaths] | Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher and critic, especially of Christianity, born in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia (–1900). |
| 15 October 1881 | England [births and deaths] | P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse, English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and lyricist, creator of Jeeves, the archetypal gentleman's gentleman, born in Guildford, Surrey, England (–1975). |
| 15 October 1908 | [births and deaths] | John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born US economist known for his liberal ideas, born in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada. |
| 15 October 1934 | China [Chinese Civil War (1922–46)] | The Long March of the Chinese communists begins, led by Mao Zedong and others. Driven out by a Nationalist offensive, some 100,000 people leave the Jiangxi Soviet in southern China and march 9,600 km/6,000 mi to the province of Shaanxi in the extreme northwest, where the survivors set up a new communist revolutionary base. |
| 15 October 1946 | Germany [crime and punishment] | The former leading Nazi and head of the Luftwaffe (German air force) Hermann Goering, awaiting execution for war crimes, commits suicide in Nuremberg Prison, Germany, by taking poison. |
| 15 October 1951–24 June 1957 | USA [television] | I Love Lucy, US television's first smash hit situation comedy, is shown, starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. |
| 15 October 1964 | USA [births and deaths] | Cole Porter, US composer and lyricist, dies in Santa Monica, California (73). |
| 15 October 1973 | UK, Iceland [diplomacy] | Britain and Iceland end the ‘Cod War’ with an agreement on fishing rights. |
| 15 October 1975 | Iceland, West Germany [political events] | The ‘Cod War’ begins when Iceland increases its territorial waters from 80 km/50 mi to 320 km/200 mi and confronts West German trawlers with gunboats. |
| 15 October 1998 | France [railways] | Line 14 of the Paris Métro opens with fully automated, driverless trains, linking the right and left banks of the Seine river. |
| 15 October 2003 | [space exploration] | China becomes the third country to put a man in space after Russia and the USA as its first crewed spacecraft, navigated by Lt-Col Yang Liwei, touches down in inner Mongolia at the end of a 21-hour mission. |
