October 2: David Lean's film The Bridge on the River Kwai opens in the UK.

October 4: Space Age - Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. - Canada's Avro Arrow is unveiled to the public. - The comedy sitcom Leave It to Beaver premieres on television.

October 9: Neil H. McElroy is sworn in as United States Secretary of Defense.

October 10: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he is refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant. - A fire at the Windscale power station in the UK releases radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including Iodine-131.

October 11: The Jodrell Bank Radio telescope opens in Cheshire, UK. - The orbit of the last stage of the R-7 Semyorka rocket (carrying Sputnik I) is first successfully calculated on an IBM 704 computer by teams at The M.I.T. Computation Center and Operation Moonwatch, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

October 12: Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged is published.

October 21: Two trains collide in Turkey; 95 die. - The U.S. military sustains its first combat fatality in Vietnam, Army Capt. Hank Cramer of the 1st Special Forces Group.

October 23: Morocco begins its invasion of Ifni.

October 25: Mafia boss Albert Anastasia is assassinated in a barber shop, at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City, US.

October 27: Celal Bayar is re-elected president of Turkey.

October 31: Toyota begins exporting vehicles to the U.S., beginning with the Toyota Crown and the Toyota Land Cruiser (source: Wikipedia)