On Oct. 3, 1951, the New York Giants captured the National League pennant by a score of 5-4 as Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the “shot heard ‘round the world.”

Ten years ago

North Korea triggered global alarm by saying it would conduct a nuclear test, but the North also said it was committed to nuclear disarmament, suggesting a willingness to negotiate. A Turkish man hijacked a jetliner traveling from Albania to Istanbul, forcing it to land in southern Italy, where he surrendered and released all the passengers unharmed. Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the Nobel Prize in physics.

Five years ago

An Italian appeals court freed Amanda Knox of Seattle after four years in prison, tossing murder convictions against Knox and an ex-boyfriend in the stabbing of their British roommate, Meredith Kercher. Three scientists, Bruce Beutler of the U.S., Jules Hoffmann of France and Canadian-born Ralph Steinman (who had died three days earlier), won the Nobel Prize in medicine.

One year ago

Vice President Joe Biden, addressing the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington, threw his unequivocal support behind letting transgender people serve openly in the U.S. military, as the Obama administration considered whether and when to lift the longstanding ban (which it did in June 2016). A U.S. airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghanistan city of Kunduz killed 14 staff and 28 patients and caretakers.

— By The Associated Press