Following are some of the major events to have occurred on October 2:
1935 – Italian forces invaded Abyssinia.
1998 – Gene Autry, the “Singing Cowboy” whose “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” sold more than 30 million copies, died.
2001 – NATO formally invoked its mutual defence clause for the first time in its history after the United States produced evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
2001 – The Swiss flag carrier Swissair suspended all flights indefinitely after failing to find funds to keep flying.
2002 – Chinese government donates animals to Afghanistan’s war-battered zoo.
2002 – Swimmer Kosuke Kitajima of Japan sets new world record in 200m breaststroke.
2003 – The South African novelist J.M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Literature Prize.
2006 – The Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello were awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of RNA interference, a fundamental mechanism for the silencing of certain genes, and so of controlling the flow of genetic information.
2007 – South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun crosses military border into North Korea.
2015 – School children dress as Mahatma Gandhi in world record attempt.
2016 – Ethiopians killed in stampede after police fire warning shots at protest.
(Reuters)