| 19 October 1216 | England [births and deaths] | John I (‘John Lackland’), King of England 1199–1216, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, brother of Richard I, dies in Newark, Nottinghamshire, England (48). |
| 19–20 October 1314 | Holy Roman Empire [administration] | Frederick the Handsome, Duke of Austria, sometimes called Frederick the Fair, is elected Holy Roman Emperor. The following day Ludwig IV of Bavaria is also elected, and civil war ensues. |
| 19 October 1453 | France, England [Hundred Years War (1337–1453)] | The beleaguered port of Bordeaux, France, finally surrenders to the forces of King Charles VII of France, an event which sees the fall of the last English stronghold in Gascony and in France (excepting Calais) and ends the Hundred Years' War. |
| 19 October 1466 | Poland-Lithuania, Prussia, Holy Roman Empire, Germany [wars] | The Thirteen Years' War between Poland and the Teutonic Order of Knights ends with the Peace of Torun. The Teutonic Order of Knights cedes the disputed areas of Pomerania and West Prussia to Poland, and becomes a vassal of King Casimir (Kazimierz) IV of Poland. |
| 19 October 1745 | Ireland [births and deaths] | Jonathan Swift, Irish author and satirist, author of Gulliver's Travels, dies in Dublin, Ireland (77). |
| 19 October 1781 | America [American Revolution] | British forces under Charles, Lord Cornwallis, surrender to the besieging American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, after a three-week siege. The British also evacuate Charleston in South Carolina and Savannah in Georgia. |
| 19 October 1925 | Italy, Italian Somaliland [political events] | Italy completes the occupation of Italian Somaliland in east Africa (part of present-day Somalia), making it a protectorate. |
| 19 October–18 November 1926 | UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa [political events] | An Imperial Conference in London, England, decides that Britain and the Dominions (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa) are autonomous communities, equal in status. |
| 19 October 1926 | USSR [political events] | Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinovyev are expelled from the Politburo of the Communist Party in the USSR, having been defeated by Joseph Stalin on the question of whether to continue Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's New Economic Policy. |
| 19 October 1954 | Egypt, UK [diplomacy] | Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, prime minister of Egypt, signs a British–Egyptian agreement which terminates the treaty of alliance of 1936. British troops are to withdraw from the Suez Canal zone, but Britain reserves the right to intervene if the canal is threatened. The agreement comes into force from 6 December. |
| 19 October 1956 | USSR, Japan [treaties] | A Soviet–Japanese treaty ends an 11-year state of war dating from 1945, but the status of the disputed Kurile Islands remains unresolved. |
| 19 October 1987 | USA [banking and finance] | The New York Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 508.32 points (23%) on ‘Black Monday’, precipitating large falls in stock prices across the world. |
