October 5 in history

October 5 opens with hunger and rain. In 1789 the market women of Paris, furious at the price of bread, marched to Versailles and brought Louis XVI back to the capital, a turning point in the French Revolution. Nearly two centuries later, in 1962, a young Liverpool band released “Love Me Do”, a harmonica-led song that reached number 17 in Britain and introduced the Beatles to record buyers.

The later anniversaries move from the street and the studio to the screen. In 2000 Gilmore Girls brought a fast-talking mother and daughter to The WB and built a following that streaming would later multiply. In 2011 Steve Jobs died in Palo Alto, weeks after leaving the helm of Apple, the company whose computers and phones changed daily life. Ten years to the day after his death, in 2021, Microsoft released Windows 11 with a redesigned look and strict new hardware rules. Across these years, the date gathers crowds, chart climbers, small-town dinners, and the people who decided what a computer should look like.