On Oct. 5, 1986, in an incident that helped expose the Iran-Contra affair, a plane secretly ferrying supplies to Nicaraguan Contra rebels was shot down over southern Nicaragua by Sandinista forces. One of the plane’s occupants, Eugene Hasenfus, parachuted to safety while three other men were killed. Hasenfus was captured, tried and convicted in Nicaragua, but then was pardoned and allowed to return to the United States.

Ten years ago

The House ethics committee opened an investigation into the unfolding congressional page sex scandal that resulted in the resignation of U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, RFla. NATO took over eastern Afghanistan from U.S.-led forces, assuming control of 12,000 American troops and extending its military role to the entire country.

Five years ago

Steve Jobs, 56, the Apple founder and former chief executive who’d invented and master-marketed ever sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died in Palo Alto, California. Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, 89, a civil rights activist who endured arrests, beatings and injuries from fire hoses while fighting for racial equality in the segregated South of the 1960s, died in Birmingham, Alabama.

One year ago

The United States, Japan and 10 other nations in Asia and the Americas reached agreement on the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. The Coast Guard concluded that El Faro, a container ship that went missing during Hurricane Joaquin off the Bahamas, had sunk. Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi Omura of Japan and Tu Youyou of China won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and infections caused by roundworm parasites.

— By The Associated Press