Other Notable Events, October 9

In 1888, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., was opened to the public.

In 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated by a Croatian terrorist during a state visit to France.

In 1974, Oskar Schindler, the German businessman credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died at the age of 66.

In 1975, Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, became the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1983, James Watt, facing U.S. Senate condemnation for a racially insensitive remark, resigned as U.S. President Ronald Reagan's interior secretary.

In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera opened in London.

In 1989, the Soviet news agency Tass, under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of increasing openness in society, reported a flying saucer visit to the Soviet Union.

In 1992, NASA announced that the unmanned Pioneer spacecraft was apparently lost after orbiting Venus for 14 years.

In 1997, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned after Communist members of Parliament withdrew their support for his coalition government.

In 2001, the Pentagon reported the destruction of seven terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and, claiming control of the skies over Afghanistan, launched heavy airstrikes against Taliban garrisons and troop encampments.

In 2002, the Washington-area sniper claimed a seventh victim with the slaying of a man at a gas station near Manassas, Va.

Also in 2002, as stock prices continued to fluctuate wildly, the Dow Jones industrials closed at 7,286.27, a five-year low.

In 2004, the death toll in the double bombings in the central Pakistani city of Multan reached 40 with 100 others injured. The explosions caught a crowd of Sunni Muslims leaving an anniversary gathering.

Also in 2004, John Howard won a fourth term as Australian prime minister.

In 2005, as the 7.6-magnitude earthquake death toll soared near the reported 40,000 mark in Pakistan, a massive relief effort was under way in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. India reported 650 dead and Afghanistan four.

In 2006, North Korea announced it had conducted an underground nuclear test.

Also in 2006, the U.N. Security Council approved South Korean Foreign Secretary Ban Ki-moon as the next U.N. secretary-general to succeed Kofi Annan.

In 2007, the Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record high of 14,164.53 points.

In 2008, in the most active day in New York Stock Exchange history, investors sold off stocks in a panic. The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 679 points -- 7.3 percent -- falling more than 300 points in the last hour to close at less than 9,000 for the first time in five years.

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

In 2010, with the midterm elections less than a month away, and with millions of dollars from special interest groups, Republicans were reported outspending Democrats by as much as 2-to-1 in some races where Democrats once held sizable leads.

Also in 2010, a Scottish aid worker held hostage in Afghanistan was killed supposedly by her captors during an attempt to rescue her.

In 2011, in the worst outbreak of street violence to hit Egypt since the February collapse of the Mubarak regime, 24 people were reported killed and around 200 were injured.