October 2:

• 1836 - The HMS Beagle, carrying Charles Darwin on its second voyage, finally returned home to Falmouth, England.
• 1848 - Georg August Goldfuss died in Bonn, Germany.
• 1891 - Erik Stensiö was born in Stensjö , Sweden.
• 1958 - Marie Stopes died of breast cancer in Dorking, England at age 77.
• 1964 - Excavations on the site of Stanford University's campus in California, USA uncovered the remains of an aquatic desmostyle mammal called Neoparadoxia. The discovery was considered one of the most significant finds in North American paleontology at the time.
• 1966 - Yuri Alexandrovich Orlov died Moscow, USSR at age 73.