October 2 is the 275th day of the year (276th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 90 days remain until the end of the year.
1958 – Guinea declares its independence from France.
1967 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court.
1968 – Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz orders soldiers to suppress a demonstration of unarmed students, ten days before the start of the 1968 Summer Olympics.
1970 – An aircraft carrying the Wichita State University football team, administrators, and supporters crashes in Colorado, killing 31 people.
1971 – South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu is re-elected in a one-man election.
1990 – Xiamen Airlines Flight 8301 is hijacked and lands at Guangzhou, where it crashes into two other airliners on the ground, killing 132.
1996 – Aeroperú Flight 603 crashes into the ocean near Peru, killing all 70 people on board.
1996 – The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments are signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
2004 – The first parkrun, then known as the Bushy Park Time Trial, takes place in Bushy Park, London, UK.
2016 – Ethiopian protests break out during a festival in the Oromia region, killing dozens of people.
2018 – The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
2019 – A privately-owned Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress conducting a living history exhibition flight crashes shortly after takeoff from Windsor Locks, Connecticut, killing seven.
