On This Day: October 15

Back in Edmonton, where he had played his first nine NHL seasons, Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings tied Gordie Howe's record of 1,850 points with a first-period assist. Then, with 53 seconds left in the third period, he flipped a backhand past Oilers goalie Bill Ranford to tie the game and pass Howe. The crowd gave him a three-minute standing ovation.

Nelson Mandela and South African President F. W. de Klerk were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward the peaceful end of apartheid. A year later, Mandela became South Africa's first Black president, with de Klerk serving as one of his deputy presidents.

China became the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to launch a crewed spaceflight. Aboard Shenzhou 5, astronaut Yang Liwei orbited Earth 14 times in about 21 hours before landing safely in Inner Mongolia.

The first episode of I Love Lucy aired on CBS. Starring Lucille Ball and her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, the comedy became one of the most popular and influential sitcoms in television history, and its reruns are still watched around the world.

Charlie Chaplin's comedy The Great Dictator premiered in New York City. Chaplin played both a persecuted Jewish barber and Adenoid Hynkel, a ruthless dictator modelled on Adolf Hitler, at a time when the United States was not yet at war. It became Chaplin's biggest box-office success.

Some four days after leaving Germany, the airship Graf Zeppelin landed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, completing its first transatlantic flight. The giant airship went on to make the first round-the-world flight by an airship the following year.

Mata Hari, the Dutch-born dancer whose name became synonymous with the femme fatale spy, was executed by firing squad near Paris. A French military court had convicted her of spying for Germany during the First World War, though historians still debate how much real intelligence she ever passed on.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Prussia. The classical scholar and philosopher, known for ideas such as “God is dead” and the Übermensch, became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers.