On Oct. 31, 1926, magician Harry Houdini died in Detroit of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix.

Ten years ago

A fire at a residential hotel in Reno, Nev., killed 12 people. (A hotel resident who set the fire was sentenced to 12 consecutive life terms.) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the lifting of joint U.S.-Iraqi military checkpoints around the Shiite militant stronghold of Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad. P.W. Botha, South Africa’s apartheid-era president, died on the southern Cape coast at age 90.

Five years ago

Palestinians won their greatest international endorsement yet with full membership in UNESCO, but the move prompted the U.S. to cut off payments to the Paris-based cultural agency. The United Nations estimated that the world’s population had surpassed 7 billion.

One year ago

A Russian passenger airliner crashed in a remote part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula 23 minutes after taking off from a popular Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board. Four people were killed, including the gunman, following a shooting rampage in Colorado Springs that ended in a gunbattle between police and the shooter. The Kansas City Royals rallied for three runs in the eighth inning and beat the New York Mets 5-3 for a 3-1 lead in the World Series.

— By The Associated Press