Browse Historical Events by Day: What Happened on October 4th?

The Orient Express train makes its inaugural run leaving Paris with 40 passengers for Constantinople, (as the city of Istanbul was still commonly called in the west) and ending in Giurgiu, Romania, with stops in Munich and Vienna. At Giurgiu, passengers were ferried across the Danube to Ruse, Bulgaria, to pick up another train to Varna where they were then ferried by steamship across the Black Sea to Constantinople. With this one trip, the notion of long-distance travel was completely redefined. All original Orient Express routes finally retired in 2009 after almost 100 years of the most famous train journeys in the world. More

German Chancellor Max von Baden, sends a telegraph message to President Woodrow Wilson requesting an armistice between Germany and the Allied powers in World War I. a few days later, Wilson responded to Baden’s armistice request (and a subsequent German communiqué on October 12) with a note that quickly deflated German expectations.

Artist and sculptor Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore. Work on the monument finished 14 years later on October 31, 1941. It involved the efforts of nearly 400 men and women. The duties involved varied greatly from the call boy to drillers to the blacksmith to the housekeepers. Despite the colossal proportion and difficult nature of the project, there were no worker fatalities. Borglum died 7 months before the project was declared completed. His son Lincoln Borglum supervised the completion. More

The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. More

Lesotho Independence day from the UK.

A Boeing 747 cargo planer flight 1862 of El Al Airlines nose-dives into two high-rise apartment complexes in the Bijlmermeer neighborhood minutes after takeoff, exploding on impact causing the building to partially collapse. The explosion and fire made the identification of those on the ground difficult to make, but it was estimated that about 100 people were dead as well as the plane captain, two other pilots and a passenger. More