On This Day: October 19

Taking a pass from Jean Béliveau, Maurice “Rocket” Richard beat Chicago goalie Glenn Hall with a wrist shot to become the first player in NHL history to score 500 goals. The Montreal crowd responded with a thunderous ovation. Richard retired in 1960 with 544 regular-season goals, then an NHL record, plus 82 more in the playoffs.

Rookie defenceman Bobby Orr, from Parry Sound, Ontario, played his first NHL game and picked up an assist as the Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings 6–2. Orr went on to revolutionize the position. Fittingly, exactly 12 years later, on October 19, 1978, he recorded the 645th and final assist of his career.

During the American Civil War, a band of Confederate soldiers who had been based in Canada rode into St. Albans, Vermont, robbed the town's three banks and killed a man before fleeing back across the border. Several of the raiders were later arrested in Canada, and the attack became one of the strangest episodes of the war.

In their first-ever playoff run, the Montreal Expos reached the deciding fifth game of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. With the game tied in the ninth inning, Rick Monday hit a home run that sent the Dodgers to the World Series. In Expos lore, the day is forever known as Blue Monday.

Justin Trudeau led the Liberal Party from third place in the House of Commons to a majority government, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper. Trudeau, the son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, went on to serve as prime minister until 2025.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 23 per cent in a single day, the largest one-day percentage drop in its history. The crash, which became known as Black Monday, sent shock waves through stock markets around the world.

Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa, the nun who had won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor of Calcutta (now Kolkata). Beatification is a key step toward sainthood, and she was canonized in 2016.

After weeks in a burned and largely abandoned Moscow, Napoleon began the retreat of his Grande Armée from Russia. Harassed by Russian forces and battered by the winter, the army that had invaded with hundreds of thousands of men was all but destroyed by the time it left Russian soil.