On Oct. 20, 1803, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1936, Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy, died in Forest Hills, N.Y., at age 70.

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist infiltration in the U.S. motion picture industry.

In 1968, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

In 1977, three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed along with three others in the crash of a chartered plane.

In 1994, actor Burt Lancaster died at age 80.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia announced that journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul; there was immediate skepticism over the Saudi account that Khashoggi had died during a “fistfight.”