October 16

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Events

• 456 – Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.
• 1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.
• 1780 – Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War.
• 1781 – George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.
• 1793 – Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
• 1793 – The Battle of Wattignies ends in a French victory.
• 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.
• 1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt to the ground.
• 1841 – Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
• 1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
• 1846 – William TG Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.
• 1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.
• 1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".
• 1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women.
• 1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
• 1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
• 1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.
• 1906 – The Captain of Köpenick fools the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.
• 1916 – Margaret Sanger founds Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic.
• 1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.
• 1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.
• 1939 – World War II: First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe.
• 1940 – Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.
• 1940 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
• 1945 – The Food and Agriculture Organization is founded in Quebec City, Canada.
• 1946 – Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
• 1949 – Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.
• 1949 – The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic are established.
• 1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.
• 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba begins.
• 1964 – The People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
• 1964 – Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively.
• 1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the USA's team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.
• 1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
• 1970 – In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act.
• 1973 – Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1975 – The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.
• 1975 – Rahima Banu, a 2-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, is the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.
• 1975 – The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, vote to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government's annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.
• 1978 – Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave.
• 1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1986 – Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.
• 1986 – Ron Arad, Israeli Weapons System Officer, is captured by Lebanese Shi'ite militia Amal
• 1987 – Great Storm of 1987: Hurricane force winds hit much of the South of England killing 23 people.
• 1991 – Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
• 1993 – Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.
• 1995 – The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C.
• 1995 – The Skye Bridge is opened.
• 1996 – Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
• 1998 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.
• 2002 – Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.
• 2006 – A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport. See 2006 Hawaii Earthquake.

Births

• 1396 – William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, English soldier (d. 1450)
• 1430 – King James II of Scotland (d. 1460)
• 1483 – Gasparo Contarini, Italian diplomat and cardinal (d. 1542)
• 1535 – Niwa Nagahide, Japanese warlord (d. 1585)
• 1663 – Prince Eugene of Savoy, French-born Austrian general (d. 1736)
• 1710 – Andreas Hadik, Austro-Hungarian general (d. 1790)
• 1714 – Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist (d. 1795)
• 1726 – Daniel Chodowiecki, Polish painter (d. 1801)
• 1751 – Frederika Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, Queen of Prussia (d. 1805)
• 1752 – Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, German theologian (d. 1827)
• 1754 – Morgan Lewis, Governor of New York (1804-07) (d. 1844)
• 1758 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (d. 1843)
• 1762 – Paul Hamilton, Governor of South Carolina (1804–06) and U.S. Secretary of Navy (1809–12) (d. 1816)
• 1789 – William Burton, Governor of Delaware (1859–63) (d. 1866)
• 1795 – William Buell Sprague, American clergyman and author (d. 1876)
• 1802 – Isaac Murphy, Governor of Arkansas (1864-68) (d. 1882)
• 1806 – William Pitt Fessenden, U.S. Secretary of Treasury (1864-65) (d. 1869)
• 1815 – Francis Lubbock, Governor of Texas (d. 1905)
• 1819 – Austin F. Pike, American politician from New Hampshire (d. 1886)
• 1840 – Kuroda Kiyotaka, 2nd Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1900)
• 1841 – Hirobumi Ito, Japanese governor of Korea, 1st Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1909)
• 1854 – Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d. 1900)
• 1854 – Karl Kautsky, Marxist theoretician (d. 1938)
• 1855 – Samedbey Mehmandarov, Russian general (d. 1931)
• 1861 – J. B. Bury, Irish historian (d. 1927)
• 1863 – Austen Chamberlain, English statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1937)
• 1876 – Jimmy Sinclair, South African cricketer, rugby union and soccer player (d. 1913)
• 1878 – Maxey Long, American athlete (d. 1959)
• 1883 – Vasiliki Maliaros, Greek actress (d. 1973)
• 1884 – Rembrandt Bugatti, Italian sculptor (d. 1916)
• 1886 – David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel (d. 1973)
• 1888 – Eugene O'Neill, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)
• 1888 – Paul Popenoe, American activist (d. 1979)
• 1890 – Michael Collins, Irish patriot (d. 1922)
• 1890 – Maria Goretti, Italian saint (d. 1902)
• 1890 – Paul Strand, American photographer (d. 1975)
• 1897 – Louis de Cazenave, French supercentenarian (d. 2008)
• 1898 – William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1980)
• 1900 – Edward Ardizzone, artist and illustrator (d. 1979)
• 1900 – Primo Conti, Italian painter (d. 1988)
• 1900 – Goose Goslin, American baseball player (d. 1971)
• 1903 – Cecile de Brunhoff, French storyteller (d. 2003)
• 1906 – León Klimovsky, Argentine film director (d. 1996)
• 1908 – Enver Hoxha, Albanian dictator (d. 1985)
• 1912 – Clifford Hansen, American politician (d. 2009)
• 1914 – Mohammed Zahir Shah, Shah of Afghanistan (d. 2007)
• 1916 – George Turner, Australian author (d. 1997)
• 1917 – Alice Pearce, American actress (d. 1966)
• 1918 – Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher (d. 1990)
• 1919 – Kathleen Winsor, American writer (d. 2003)
• 1922 – Max Bygraves, English singer/songwriter
• 1922 – Leon Sullivan, American civil rights leader and pastor (d. 2001)
• 1923 – Bert Kaempfert, German orchestra leader and songwriter (d. 1980)
• 1923 – Linda Darnell, American film actress (d. 1965)
• 1923 – Bill McLaren MBE, Scottish rugby commentator (d. 2010)
• 1925 – Angela Lansbury, English-born actress
• 1927 – Günter Grass, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1928 – Mary Daly, American feminist philosopher and theologian (d. 2010)
• 1928 – Ann Morgan Guilbert, American actress
• 1929 – Fernanda Montenegro, Brazilian actress
• 1930 – Carmen Sevilla, Spanish actress
• 1931 – Charles Colson, American Watergate conspirator
• 1931 – Rosa Rosal, Filipino actress and humanitarian
• 1931 – Valery Klimov, Russian violinist
• 1932 – John Grant, British politician (d. 2000)
• 1932 – Henry Lewis, American musician and conductor (d. 1996)
• 1934 – Peter Ashdown, British racing driver
• 1936 – Andrei Chikatilo, Russian serial killer (d. 1994)
• 1936 – Akira Machida, Japanese judge
• 1936 – Peter Bowles, English actor
• 1938 – Nico (born Christa Päffgen; singer-songwriter, fashion model, actress) (d. 1988)
• 1938 – Carl Gunter Jr, Louisiana State Representative (d. 1999)
• 1940 – Barry Corbin, American actor
• 1940 – Dave DeBusschere, American basketball player (d. 2003)
• 1940 – Ivan Della Mea, Italian singer-songwriter (d. 2009)
• 1941 – Tim McCarver, baseball player and commentator
• 1943 – Fred Turner, Canadian bass player (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
• 1946 – Suzanne Somers, American actress
• 1947 – Terry Griffiths, Welsh snooker player
• 1947 – Bob Weir, American musician (Grateful Dead)
• 1947 – David Zucker, American film director
• 1948 – Leo Mazzone, American baseball coach
• 1948 – Hema Malini, Indian Actress
• 1952 – Boogie Mosson, American musician (P Funk)
• 1952 – Ron Taylor, American actor (d. 2002)
• 1953 – Paulo Roberto Falcão, Brazilian footballer
• 1953 – Tony Carey, American-born rock keyboardist, producer (Rainbow, Planet P Project)
• 1953 – Al Sobotka, Zamboni driver
• 1954 – Stephen Mellor, American actor
• 1956 – John Chavis, American football coach
• 1958 – Tim Robbins, American actor, director, and writer
• 1958 – Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Greek singer
• 1959 – Gary Kemp, British musician and actor
• 1959 – Erkki-Sven Tüür, Estonian composer
• 1959 – Brian Harper, baseball player
• 1960 – Bob Mould, American musician
• 1961 – Randy Vasquez, American actor
• 1961 – Marc Levy, French novelist
• 1962 – Flea, Australian-born American musician (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
• 1962 – Ken Chinn, American musician (SNFU)
• 1962 – Manute Bol, Sudanese-born basketball player for the NBA
• 1962 – Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Russian baritone
• 1963 – Brendan Kibble, Australian musician
• 1965 – Steve Lamacq, British journalist and disc jockey
• 1965 – Tom Tolbert, American basketball player
• 1967 – Davina McCall, British television presenter
• 1968 – Randall Batinkoff, American actor
• 1968 – Elsa Zylberstein, French actress
• 1969 – Roy Hargrove, American jazz trumpeter
• 1969 – Terri J. Vaughn, American actress
• 1969 – Wendy Wilson, American pop singer (Wilson Phillips)
• 1969 – Takao ÅŒmori, Japanese professional wrestler
• 1970 – Mehmet Scholl, German footballer
• 1970 – Kazuyuki Fujita, Japanese professional wrestler and mixed martial arts fighter
• 1971 – Chad Gray, American singer
• 1972 – Tomas Lindberg, Swedish musician (At the Gates)
• 1972 – Darius Kasparaitis, Russian Super League player
• 1972 – Kordell Stewart, American football player
• 1973 – María Eugenia Larraín, Chilean model, engineer and socialite
• 1973 – Peter Polaco, American professional wrestler
• 1973 – David Unsworth, English professional footballer
• 1974 – Paul Kariya, Canadian hockey player
• 1975 – Kellie Martin, American actress
• 1975 – Brynjar Gunnarsson, Icelandic footballer
• 1975 – Jacques Kallis, South African cricketer
• 1976 – Ryan Fitzgerald, Australian football (AFL) player and media personality
• 1977 – John Mayer, American musician
• 1978 – Ethan Luck, American musician (The O.C. Supertones, Demon Hunter, Relient K)
• 1979 – Erin Brown, American actress, model, filmmaker, and musician
• 1980 – Sue Bird, American basketball player
• 1980 – Jeremy Jackson, American actor
• 1980 – Timana Tahu, Australian Rugby League player
• 1981 – Caterina Scorsone, Canadian actress
• 1981 – Anthony Reyes, American baseball player
• 1981 – Martin Halle, Danish footballer
• 1982 – Vincy Chan, Hong Kong singer
• 1982 – Frédéric Michalak, French rugby player
• 1982 – Pippa Black, Australian actress
• 1983 – Jennifer Hurt, model
• 1984 – Trevor Blumas, Canadian actor
• 1984 – Melissa Lauren, French pornographic actress
• 1984 – Shayne Ward, British singer
• 1985 – Casey Stoner, Australian motorcycle racer
• 1986 – Craig Pickering, British sprinter
• 1988 – Zoltán Stieber, Hungarian footballer
• 1991 – John and Edward Grimes, Irish twin entertainers

Deaths

• 1355 – Louis, King of Sicily, felled by the Black Death (b. 1337)
• 1553 – Lucas Cranach the Elder, German painter (b. 1472)
• 1555 – Hugh Latimer, English Protestant (martyred)
• 1555 – Nicholas Ridley, English Protestant (martyred)
• 1591 – Pope Gregory XIV (b. 1535)
• 1594 – William Cardinal Allen, English Catholic cardinal (b. 1532)
• 1621 – Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Dutch composer (b. 1562)
• 1628 – François de Malherbe, French poet and critic (b. 1555)
• 1649 – Isaac van Ostade, Dutch painter (b. 1621)
• 1655 – Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, Italian physician, mathematician, and music theorist (b. 1591)
• 1680 – Raimondo Montecuccoli, Italian-Austrian general
• 1750 – Sylvius Leopold Weiss, German composer and lutenist (b. 1687)
• 1755 – Saint Gerard Majella, Catholic saint (b. 1725)
• 1774 – Robert Fergusson, Scottish poet (b. 1750)
• 1781 – Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke, British naval officer (b. 1705)
• 1791 – Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin, Russian general and statesman (b. 1739)
• 1793 – Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (executed) (b. 1755)
• 1793 – John Hunter, eminent doctor and philosopher (b. 1728)
• 1796 – Victor Amadeus III of Savoy (b. 1726)
• 1810 – Nachman of Breslov, founder of Breslov Hasidut (b. 1772)
• 1822 – Eva Marie Veigel, Austrian ballet dancer (b. 1724)
• 1865 – Andrés Bello, Venezuelan poet, lawmaker, philosopher, and sociologist (b. 1781)
• 1877 – Theodore Barrière, French dramatist (b. 1823)
• 1888 – John Wentworth, Mayor of Chicago (b. 1815)
• 1893 – Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, President of France (b. 1808)
• 1908 – Father Ignatius, a restorer of religious life in the Church of England (b. 1837)
• 1909 – Jakub Bart-ĆiÅ¡inski, Sorbian writer (b. 1856)
• 1937 – Jean de Brunhoff, French writer (b. 1899)
• 1946 – Nuremberg trial executions of the Main Trial:
  • Hans Frank, German war criminal (b. 1900)
  • Wilhelm Frick, German war criminal (b. 1877)
  • Alfred Jodl, German military officer (b. 1890)
  • Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Austrian SS officer (b. 1903)
  • Wilhelm Keitel, German military officer (b. 1882)
  • Joachim von Ribbentrop, German politician (b. 1893)
  • Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi ideologist (b. 1893)
  • Fritz Sauckel, German war criminal (b. 1894)
  • Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Austrian Nazi leader (b. 1892)
  • Julius Streicher, German propagandist (b. 1887)
• 1951 – Liaqat Ali Khan, first Prime Minister of Pakistan (b 1895/10/02)
• 1952 – Syed Ghulam Bhik Nairang, Indian/Pakistani Muslim leader and poet (b. 1876)
• 1956 – Jules Rimet, president of FIFA (b. 1873)
• 1959 – Minor Hall, American jazz musician (b. 1897)
• 1959 – George Marshall, United States Secretary of State, Nobel laureate (b. 1880)
• 1962 – Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher and poet (b. 1884)
• 1964 – Patsy Callighen, Canadian Hockey Player (b. 1906)
• 1966 – George O'Hara, American actor (b. 1899)
• 1968 – Ellis Kinder, baseball player (b. 1914)
• 1972 – Hale Boggs, U.S. Congressman from Louisiana (b. 1914)
• 1972 – Leo G. Carroll, English actor (b. 1886)
• 1973 – Gene Krupa, American jazz drummer (b. 1909)
• 1974 – Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, noted Carnatic musician (b. 1895)
• 1978 – Dan Dailey, American actor (b. 1913)
• 1979 – Johan Borgen, Norwegian author (b. 1903)
• 1981 – Moshe Dayan, Israeli general (b. 1915)
• 1982 – Mario del Monaco, Italian tenor (b. 1915)
• 1983 – Jakov Gotovac, Croatian composer (b. 1895)
• 1983 – Kelso, American racehorse (b. 1957)
• 1986 – Arthur Grumiaux, Belgian violinist (b. 1921)
• 1989 – Cornel Wilde, American actor (b. 1915)
• 1990 – Jorge Bolet, Cuban-American classical pianist (b. 1914)
• 1990 – Art Blakey, American jazz drummer (b. 1919)
• 1992 – Shirley Booth, American actress (b. 1898)
• 1994 – Raúl Juliá, Puerto Rican actor (b. 1940)
• 1996 – Eric Malpass, English novelist (b. 1910)
• 1996 – Jason Bernard, American actor (b. 1938)
• 1997 – James Michener, American writer (b. 1907)
• 1997 – Audra Lindley, American actress (b. 1918)
• 1998 – Jon Postel, American Internet pioneer (b. 1943)
• 1999 – Jean Shepherd, American writer and actor (b. 1921)
• 2000 – Mel Carnahan, American politician (b. 1934)
• 2002 – Dawson family, American murder victims
• 2003 – Avni Arbas, Turkish artist (b. 1919)
• 2003 – Stu Hart, Canadian professional wrestler (b. 1915)
• 2003 – László Papp, Hungarian boxer (b. 1926)
• 2004 – Pierre Salinger, John F. Kennedy's White House Press Secretary (b. 1925)
• 2005 – "Len" Dresslar, American singer and voice actor (b. 1925)
• 2005 – Eugene "Porky" Lee, American child actor (b. 1933)
• 2005 – David Reilly, American singer (God Lives Underwater) (b. 1971)
• 2005 – Ursula Howells, English actress (b. 1922)
• 2006 – Valentín Paniagua Corazao, Ex President of Peru (b. 1936)
• 2006 – John Murra, Ukranian-american anthropologist (b. 1916)
• 2006 – Ross Davidson, Scottish actor (b. 1949)
• 2006 – Tommy Johnson, American tubist (b. 1935)
• 2006 – Lister Sinclair, Canadian broadcaster and playwright (b. 1921)
• 2007 – Deborah Kerr, Scottish actress (b. 1921)
• 2007 – ToÅ¡e Proeski, Macedonian music star and humanitarian (b. 1981)
• 2007 – Barbara West, Second to last living Titanic survivor (b. 1911)

Holidays and observances

• Boss's Day in the United States
• Pope John Paul II Day in Poland
• World Food Day
• R.C. Saints – Gerard Majella, Hedwig, Fortunatus of Casei, Silvanus of Ahun
• International Credit Union Day

External links

• »BBC: On This Day
• »On This Day in Canada