10 Historic Events That Happened on Halloween

According to ancient pagans, Halloween is when the “veil” between the living and spirit worlds is at its thinnest, meaning the day is ripe for supernatural occurrences, haunting encounters, and tragic events. Here are 10 Halloween happenings that show October 31 isn’t just a spooky holiday.

1. Polls opened for the 11th U.S. presidential election // 1828
2. Hundreds perish in the Monmouth steamship disaster // 1837
3. Nevada becomes the 36th state // 1864
4. The “last great cavalry charge” secures an Allied victory during World War I // 1917
5. The deadliest month of the flu pandemic concludes // 1918
6. Mussolini celebrates Fascist Party power in Rome // 1922
7. Harry Houdini dies under mysterious circumstances // 1926
8. A German U-boat sinks the Reuben James // 1941
9. Sammy Baugh plays the best individual game of the best individual football season of all time // 1943
10. “Monster Mash” remains at the top of the Billboard 100 // 1962

Polls opened for the 11th U.S. presidential election // 1828

No matter how stressful presidential politics get, at least the nation can look forward to the end of the campaign season once the polls close on November 8. This wasn’t always the case in America. Before the 1848 election, states were allowed to hold their voting at any time over several weeks. Back then, when news traveled slowly and the nation’s harvests had an even stronger influence on the political schedule, federal law gave states 34 days to conduct the election before the Electoral College got together on the first Wednesday of December.

Voting in those early contests obviously tended to kick off in late October or early November, but only two—1800 and 1828—saw polls open on All Hallows’ Eve. The 1828 election was a particularly nasty (not to mention historically significant) contest that saw the populist Democrat, Andrew Jackson, knock out the Whig incumbent, John Quincy Adams.

The nation was still young, but the 1828 election firmly established the two party system and saw the debut of deeply personal attacks and concerted rumormongering—Adams supporters labeled Jackson, the eventual winner, a war criminal and called his wife Rachel an “adulteress.” Fueling the increase in vitriol was the proliferation of party-affiliated press organs, which relied heavily on innuendo and conspiracy.

Hundreds perish in the Monmouth steamship disaster // 1837

“With strict propriety of language, we might call the awful catastrophe about to be particularized, a massacre, a wholesale assassination, or anything else but an accident,” began an account of the Monmouth’s demise in Lloyd’s Steamboat Directory, And Disasters on the Western Waters (1856).

The situation was already dire for the 700 or so Muscogee Creek people crammed onto the small steamship Monmouth on a very dark October 31, 1837. After most of Muscogee Creek community had been forcibly deported from their homelands in the southern United States following the Second Creek War, a few had been allowed to stay behind while their families were helping fight the Seminole in Florida. After the fighters returned, the remaining Muscogee Creek were put on boats, including one called the Monmouth, to take them up the Mississippi River.

As the overcrowded Monmouth steamed north of Baton Rouge, it crashed into another steamship, the Warren, which was towing another boat called the Trenton. According to Lloyd’s Steamboat Disasters, “such was the violence of the concussion, that the Monmouth immediately sunk.” At least half of the Monmouth’s passengers perished in the catastrophe, though records are scarce because no government agencies ever investigated the incident.

Nevada becomes the 36th state // 1864

The states that left the Union during the American Civil War tend to get more attention than the ones that joined the United States during the conflict. Nevada is one of only two—West Virginia, which was previously part of Virginia, is the other—to attain statehood while the North and South were fighting.

One common explanation for Nevada’s admission is that Abraham Lincoln and the Union needed the Silver State’s mineral wealth. Not exactly—Nevada was already a Union territory, so Lincoln had the silver. What Lincoln actually needed were Nevada’s votes, both in the upcoming 1864 presidential election and for the push to end slavery with ratification of the 13th Amendment.

The “last great cavalry charge” secures an Allied victory during World War I // 1917

One of the Great War’s lesser-known clashes, the Battle of Beersheba is revered by cavalry enthusiasts and Australian World War I buffs. That’s because, as the sun set on a day of fierce skirmishes in the Negev Desert, a brigade of Aussie light horsemen staged the “last great cavalry charge” and helped secure a pivotal victory for the Allied Powers.

After three years of bloody stalemate and fruitless conflict across Europe, the Allied Powers had almost nothing to show for it. The recent introduction of American troops had failed to break the deadlock on the continent, and in fall 1917, it looked like another year of fighting with no measurable gain. But the offensive at Beersheba, 50 miles south of Ottoman-controlled Jerusalem, ended the stalemate in the Middle Eastern theater and breathed new life into the British war effort.

After the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force—comprised of troops from England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, and India—broke the Turkish lines at Beersheba, the Allies pushed deeper into Palestine and eventually captured Jerusalem in December.

The deadliest month of the flu pandemic concludes // 1918

With a worldwide death toll of up to 50 million people, the influenza pandemic of 1918 (a.k.a. the Spanish flu) is remembered as one of the most devastating disease outbreaks in human history. In the United States, where an estimated 675,000 Americans perished, no single month was more deadly than October 1918. No one knows exactly what caused the so-called spike in fatalities, but nearly 200,000 people died during that gruesome October. A 2009 study suggested that toxic doses of aspirin administered to treat flu may have also caused deadly symptoms in some patients.

Mussolini celebrates Fascist Party power in Rome // 1922

Benito Mussolini instigated a political insurrection in Italy that culminated with the March on Rome, a movement of 20,000 of his followers on the capital to finalize his seizure of power. Mussolini himself didn’t actually march anywhere; he took an overnight train from Milan. By the time his followers, called Blackshirts, reached the Eternal City, Mussolini was already in control. On October 29, King Victor Emmanuel III summoned the 39-year-old to Rome to form a government. Ostensibly the head of a coalition government, the empowered Mussolini set about consolidating his power and building his own personal mythology. On October 31, to showcase the growing strength of his Fascist Party, the newly appointed premier conducted a parade of Blackshirts through the streets of Rome.

Harry Houdini dies under mysterious circumstances // 1926

In late October 1926, Harry Houdini visited McGill University in Montreal and gave a lecture on fraudulent spiritualism to students and faculty. On Friday, October 22, Houdini invited several McGill students to his dressing room at the Princess Theater, and while eyewitness accounts differ on the matter of what came next, this much is clear: A student named Joselyn Gordon Whitehead delivered several heavy body blows to the famed magician’s midsection. A little over a week later, the 52-year-old Houdini was dead.

The official cause of death was diffuse peritonitis, an abdominal infection associated with a ruptured appendix, and at first, the doctors blamed the punch for Houdini’s sudden demise. Later researchers generally agree that, at worst, it prevented Houdini from going to the hospital for his stomach pains, and it was largely a case of bad timing.

A German U-boat sinks the Reuben James // 1941

As the folk music icon Woody Guthrie once sang:

“Have you heard of a ship called the good Reuben James
Manned by hard fighting men both of honor and fame?
She flew the Stars and Stripes of the land of the free
But tonight she’s in her grave at the bottom of the sea.”

In almost every way, the USS Reuben James was an unremarkable destroyer assigned to protect supply shipments on the Atlantic after the start of World War II. The 22-year-old warship had sailed the seven seas, but mostly in the form of peacetime patrols and low stakes operations. Nothing flashy or fraught. So how exactly did it end up in Woody Guthrie’s song?

On October 31, 1941, just over a month before the Pearl Harbor attack and America’s formal entry into World War II, the Reuben James became the first U.S. Navy ship sunk during the conflict. Of the nearly 150 crew aboard, only 44 survived.

Sammy Baugh plays the best individual game of the best individual football season of all time // 1943

Slingin’ Sammy Baugh did it all on the gridiron. And in 1943, he did it all better than anyone had ever done it before—leading the league in passing, punting, and interceptions—as part of a campaign football historians consider the single greatest individual season in the history of the sport. Baugh, who played for Washington, D.C.’s football team, registered some incredible performances that season. His four touchdown/four interception game against Detroit was remarkable for its gaudy symmetry. But none demonstrated his dominance as a passer more than his massive day against the Brooklyn Dodgers on Halloween 1943.

The final score that day was 48-10, with Baugh producing an NFL-record 376 yards and six touchdown passes, the first time in pro football history that a quarterback threw six TDs in a single game. Baugh and Washington would go on to win the NFL’s Eastern Division before losing to Sid Luckman and the Chicago Bears in the title game. Incredibly, Luckman would also go on to edge out Baugh for the 1943 MVP award, too.

“Monster Mash” remains at the top of the Billboard 100 // 1962

More than a half-century after it debuted, Bobby Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers’ “Monster Mash” remains the undisputed anthem of the spooky season. (Very close second: “Thriller.”) We may take it for granted these days, but there was a time when the “graveyard smash” wasn’t on repeat at every Halloween party in the land. Released in August 1962, this now-evergreen holiday hit was actually the product of two early-1960s fads: Twist-style dance records and the movie monster craze. The song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 20 and stayed there for two weeks.

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A version of this story was published in 2015; it has been updated for 2024.