On October 2
No pivotal events are recorded on exactly October 2 in the Human Saga — here is the surrounding week in history.
This week in history (Sep 29 – Oct 5)
On 1 October 331 BCE, Alexander the Great decisively defeated Darius III on the plain of Gaugamela, near modern Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China from the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, with Zhou Enlai as premier.
On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, from the Baikonur (Tyuratam) site in the Kazakh Republic.
On 3 October 1990, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) ceased to exist and joined the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), restoring a single German state for the first time since 1945.
On 30 September 2015 Russia launched a military intervention in Syria at the request of President Bashar al-Assad, whose government then controlled only a fraction of the country and was losing ground to rebel and jihadist forces.