08 October 1604: Jan Brunowski, Johannes Kepler’s assistant, was the first to observe Kepler’s nova.

08 October 1869: The 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, died in Concord, N.H.

08 October 1871: The city of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, burned to the ground in hours, killing 1,152 people. At the same time, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed 4 square miles (10 square km) of Chicago, killing 250 and leaving 90,000 homeless.

08 October 1918: Corporal Alvin Cullum York single-handedly captured 132 Germans and killed another 25 during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of World War I.

08 October 1945: President Harry Truman announced the U.S. would share the secret of the atomic bomb only with Great Britain and Canada.

08 October 1957: An accident at the Windscale nuclear facility in northwestern England caused a fire that burned for 16 hours and left 10 tons of radioactive fuel melted in the reactor core.