October 4, 2016
The vice presidential debate of the 2016 presidential election is held at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence. 

October 6, 2014
Same-sex marriage is legally recognized in Virginia following a decision by the United States Supreme Court to refuse to hear an appeal in the case “Bostic v. Schaefer.”

   October 7, 1763
King George III establishes the Proclamation Line of 1763, which prohibits colonial exploration and settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and voids any previous claims there. Many Virginians ignore this decree and push west anyway.

October 7, 1849
Edgar Allan Poe, noted Richmond writer and poet, dies in Baltimore, Maryland.

October 8, 1869
The Virginia General Assembly meets to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, a prerequisite for readmission to the Union.

October 10, 1800
Governor James Monroe orders the execution of Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith from Henrico County who plotted an unsuccessful slave revolt in the Richmond area.

October 11, 1809
Meriwether Lewis is found dead at an inn near Nashville, Tennessee. The cause of his death still remains a controversy, although most historians believe it was suicide.

October 12, 1773
The "Public Hospital of Insane and Disordered Minds" opens in Williamsburg—the nation's first hospital devoted exclusively to the care of people with mental health issues. Today this institution is known as Eastern State Hospital.

October 12, 1818
Elizabeth Van Lew, who would serve as a Union spy during the Civil War, is born in Richmond. After the war, President Grant would name her postmistress for the City of Richmond.

October 12, 1870
Civil War general Robert E. Lee dies while serving as president of Washington College in Lexington. The college is renamed Washington and Lee in his honor.

October 15, 1954
Hurricane Hazel blows into Virginia after coming ashore in North Carolina as a category 4 hurricane. This storm lays a track of destruction all the way from Virginia to Canada.

October 16, 1859
A biracial group of abolitionists, led by northerner John Brown, raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), with the intention of arming enslaved people and forming an “Army of Liberation”. Brown and six of his co-conspirators were captured, tried, and sentenced to death.

October 19, 1781
Around noon, in Yorktown, Virginia, British officers deliver a surrender document signed by the Lord Cornwallis to American and French forces, effectively ending the Revolutionary War. 

October 21, 1804
The Lewis and Clark expedition arrives at the Mandan, or the self-named Numakiki, land in present-day North Dakota. Here the explorers spend their first winter and meet Sacagawea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman who would help navigate the rest of their journey.

October 25, 1888
Richard Evelyn Byrd, naval aviator and explorer, is born in Winchester.

October 25, 2008
The Central Virginia Rainbow partnership is formed as the first collaborative effort among Virginia LGBTQ groups.

October 26, 1676
Nathaniel Bacon dies of dysentery in Gloucester, and with him dies Bacon's Rebellion. His supporters bury him in a secret location to protect his remains from the wrath of Governor William Berkeley and his followers.

October 31, 1895
The Jefferson Hotel opens one week ahead of schedule. Lewis Ginter, a Richmonder who amassed a fortune by marketing rolled cigarettes, foots the $5-million-plus bill for the construction.