October 1

After days of relentless rain, a steep, rapidly developed hillside in El Cambray II — a suburb just east of Guatemala City — collapsed in the early hours of October 1, 2015. A fast-moving mass of saturated volcanic soils and debris swept through the neighborhood, burying homes and cutting short lives. Rescue teams, neighbors and national responders raced against unstable ground and continuing rain; the disaster exposed how informal development on fragile slopes multiplies natural hazards and forced renewed debate over risk, relocation and urban planning.

On the evening of October 1, 2012 — China’s National Day, a public holiday in Hong Kong — two passenger vessels collided near the approaches to Yung Shue Wan on Lamma Island. The impact and the fire that followed left the larger ferry badly damaged, threw passengers into dark water, and resulted in 39 dead and scores injured. Emergency crews, volunteer boats and hospitals mounted a rapid response; subsequent investigations found failures of watchkeeping and navigation and prompted changes to ferry safety and oversight in Hong Kong.

On October 1, 2001, a car bomb exploded outside the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly complex in Srinagar, killing 38 people and injuring around 60 more. The blast tore through a heavily guarded symbol of state authority in a valley already accustomed to violence, prompting tightened security, investigations that pointed to Pakistan‑based militant networks, and a long, unresolved legacy that fed the region's cycle of fear and politics.

In October 1996 a powerful gas explosion leveled a multi‑story building in the Río Piedras district of San Juan, Puerto Rico, destroying homes and businesses, killing multiple people and injuring dozens. Survivors later said they had smelled gas and reported it before the blast; investigators concluded the detonation was caused by accumulated flammable gas and a subsequent ignition, while the event spurred legal claims and renewed scrutiny of gas infrastructure and oversight in dense urban neighborhoods.

Operation Pawan was the Indian Peace Keeping Force’s major combat campaign to seize control of the Jaffna Peninsula and disarm the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after the Indo–Sri Lanka Accord. Indian forces moved into northern Sri Lanka in July–October 1987; the named Jaffna offensive most sources date to October 1987. The campaign began as a peace‑enforcement mission and quickly became prolonged urban and counter‑insurgency warfare with heavy costs for soldiers and civilians and lasting political consequences in both countries.

In October 1950, during a wave of anti‑communist purges that swept through reclaimed territory after the Incheon landing, dozens of civilians from Goyang and nearby villages were detained and taken to Geumjeong Cave. There they were executed and their bodies hidden. For decades the killings were unacknowledged; only in the 2000s did truth‑seeking bodies, exhumations, and local memorials begin to name victims and pull the event into South Korea’s public memory.

In the early hours of October 1–2, 1942, the Japanese merchant ship Lisbon Maru, carrying about 1,816 British and Commonwealth prisoners taken after the fall of Hong Kong, was torpedoed off the Zhejiang coast near the Zhoushan archipelago. The vessel sank after night attacks by the U.S. submarine USS Grouper; overcrowded, locked holds and confused rescue efforts left roughly 842 POWs dead and hundreds more returned to captivity. The episode stands as one of the worst maritime losses of Allied prisoners in the Pacific War and a stark example of the danger of unmarked POW transports in contested waters.

In the early hours of October 1, 1910, an explosive device ripped through the Los Angeles Times building at Broadway and First Street, destroying the paper’s printing plant, killing 21 people—mostly night-shift employees—and injuring many more. The attack, traced to members of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers and exposed by a private detective-led manhunt, reshaped public opinion about militant labor tactics and hardened anti-union campaigns across the nation.