If you happen to glimpse a "shooting star" before dawn during the next several days, there's a good chance that what you saw was a fragment left behind in space by the famous Halley's Comet. For it is during the third week of October that a meteor display spawned by the debris shed by Halley reaches its peak: the Orionid meteor shower.
The Orionids aren't one of the year's richest meteor displays. If the August Perseids and December Geminids can be considered the "first string" among the annual meteor showers in terms of brightness and reliability, then the Orionids are on the junior varsity team.
