On This Day: October 23

With the Blue Jays trailing in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6, Joe Carter hit a home run that drove in the winning runs and clinched Toronto's second straight World Series title. It was only the second time a World Series had ended on a home run, and the first time the title was won on Canadian soil.

Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, then a star of the Negro American League's Kansas City Monarchs, to the club's top farm team, the Montreal Royals. Robinson spent the 1946 season in Montreal before breaking Major League Baseball's colour barrier with Brooklyn in 1947.

Apple unveiled the iPod, a portable music player that promised to put 1,000 songs in your pocket. Tied to the company's iTunes software and praised for its simple, clean design, it became one of the most successful and revolutionary products of the early 2000s, and it paved the way for the iPhone.

Walt Disney's Dumbo, the story of a baby circus elephant mocked for his enormous ears until he learns they let him fly, had its world premiere. Short and made on a modest budget after the costly Fantasia, it became one of the studio's best-loved classics.

A massive student-led demonstration in Budapest grew into a nationwide uprising against Hungary's Soviet-backed government. For a few days, it seemed the revolt might succeed. But in early November, Soviet tanks rolled into the capital and crushed it, and thousands fled the country. About 37,000 of those refugees found a new home in Canada in 1956 and 1957.

In the Egyptian desert, British forces led by Bernard Montgomery launched their attack on Erwin Rommel's German and Italian army at El Alamein. The victory that followed was a turning point of the war in North Africa. Winston Churchill later said that before Alamein the Allies never had a victory, and after it they never had a defeat.

Great Britain declared war on Spain in a conflict remembered by one of history's strangest names: the War of Jenkins' Ear. It took its name from Robert Jenkins, a British captain who claimed Spanish coast guards had cut off his ear in 1731. He reportedly displayed the ear, preserved in a jar, before Parliament.

Johnny Carson was born in Corning, Iowa. As host of The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992, he set the standard format for television talk shows, from the opening monologue to the desk-and-couch interview, and became one of the most influential figures in American television.