October 16
October 16 is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 76 days remaining until the end of the year.
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.
- 1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d'Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.
- 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, widow 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 burns 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 Harpers 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 – In Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States.
- 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 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
- 1944 – Wally Walrus, Woody Woodpecker's first steady foil, was debuted at the The Beach Nut, a Walter Lantz's cartoon.
- 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 and the USSR, begins.
- 1964 – The People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
- 1964 – Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively and the collective leadership is established.
- 1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the US 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 two-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.
- 1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
- 1984 – The Bill debuted on ITV, eventually becoming the longest-running police procedural in British television history.
- 1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 1986 – Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.
- 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 – Hawaii Earthquake: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport.
- 2011 Nikki Reed weds Paul McDonald in Malibu
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, American politician (d. 1816)
- 1789 – William Burton, American politician (d. 1866)
- 1795 – William Buell Sprague, American clergyman and author (d. 1876)
- 1802 – Isaac Murphy, American politician (d. 1882)
- 1804 – Benjamin Russell, American artist (d. 1885)
- 1806 – William Pitt Fessenden, 26th United States Secretary of the Treasury (1864–65) (d. 1869)
- 1815 – Francis Lubbock, American politician (d. 1905)
- 1819 – Austin F. Pike, American politician (d. 1886)
- 1840 – Kuroda Kiyotaka, Japanese politician (d. 1900)
- 1841 – Hirobumi Ito, Japanese politician (d. 1909)
- 1854 – Karl Kautsky, Czech-born German theoretician (d. 1938)
- 1854 – Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d. 1900)
- 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 – Maxie Long, American athlete (d. 1959)
- 1883 – Vasiliki Maliaros, Greek actress (d. 1973)
- 1884 – Rembrandt Bugatti, Italian sculptor (d. 1916)
- 1886 – David Ben-Gurion, Israeli statesman (d. 1973)
- 1888 – Eugene O'Neill, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)
- 1888 – Paul Popenoe, American activist (d. 1979)
- 1890 – Michael Collins, Irish politician (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, American jurist (d. 1980)
- 1900 – Edward Ardizzone, Vietnamese-born British writer 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)
- 1905 – Ernst Kuzorra, German footballer (d. 1990)
- 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)
- 1921 – MacKenzie Miller, American horse trainer and breeder (d. 2010)
- 1922 – Max Bygraves, English singer and songwriter
- 1922 – Leon Sullivan, American civil rights leader and pastor (d. 2001)
- 1923 – Linda Darnell, American film actress (d. 1965)
- 1923 – Bert Kaempfert, German orchestra leader and songwriter (d. 1980)
- 1923 – Bill McLaren, 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 figure
- 1931 – Valery Klimov, Russian violinist
- 1931 – Rosa Rosal, Filipino actress and humanitarian
- 1932 – John Grant, British politician (d. 2000)
- 1932 – Henry Lewis, American musician and conductor (d. 1996)
- 1934 – Peter Ashdown, British racing driver
- 1936 – Peter Bowles, English actor
- 1936 – Andrei Chikatilo, Russian serial killer (d. 1994)
- 1936 – Akira Machida, Japanese judge
- 1938 – Carl Gunter Jr, American state legislator (d. 1999)
- 1938 – Nico, German musician, fashion model and actress (d. 1988)
- 1939 – Joe Dolan, Irish singer (d. 2007)
- 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, American baseball player and commentator
- 1943 – Fred Turner, Canadian bass player (Bachman–Turner Overdrive)
- 1944 – Kaizer Motaung, Southafrican footballer and footballmanager
- 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 – Hema Malini, Indian Actress
- 1948 – Leo Mazzone, American baseball coach
- 1952 – Boogie Mosson, American musician (P Funk)
- 1952 – Ron Taylor, American actor (d. 2002)
- 1953 – Tony Carey, American musician (Rainbow, Planet P Project)
- 1953 – Paulo Roberto Falcão, Brazilian footballer
- 1953 – Al Sobotka, American sports facility operations manager
- 1954 – Serafino Ghizzoni, Italian rugby player
- 1954 – Stephen Mellor, American actor
- 1955 – Ellen Dolan, American actress
- 1956 – John Chavis, American football coach
- 1956 – Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah, Bangladeshi poet (d. 1992)
- 1958 – Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Greek singer
- 1958 – Tim Robbins, American actor, director, and writer
- 1959 – Marc Collins-Rector, American businessman and sex offender
- 1959 – Brian Harper, American baseball player
- 1959 – Gary Kemp, British musician and actor
- 1959 – Erkki-Sven Tüür, Estonian composer
- 1960 – Bob Mould, American musician
- 1961 – Marc Levy, French novelist
- 1961 – Randy Vasquez, American actor
- 1962 – Manute Bol, Sudanese basketball player (d. 2010)
- 1962 – Ken Chinn, American musician (SNFU)
- 1962 – Flea, Australian-born American musician (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
- 1962 – Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Russian baritone
- 1962 – Nico Lazaridis, German footballer
- 1963 – Brendan Kibble, Australian musician
- 1965 – Steve Lamacq, British journalist and disc jockey
- 1965 – Tom Tolbert, American basketball player
- 1968 – Randall Batinkoff, American actor
- 1968 – Mark Lee, Singaporean actor & comedian
- 1968 – Elsa Zylberstein, French actress
- 1969 – Roy Hargrove, American jazz trumpeter
- 1969 – Danny Hesp, Dutch footballer
- 1969 – Takao Ōmori, Japanese professional wrestler
- 1969 – Terri J. Vaughn, American actress
- 1969 – Wendy Wilson, American pop singer (Wilson Phillips)
- 1970 – Kazuyuki Fujita, Japanese professional wrestler and mixed martial arts fighter
- 1970 – Mehmet Scholl, German footballer
- 1971 – Chad Gray, American singer
- 1972 – Adrianne Frost, American comedian and author
- 1972 – Darius Kasparaitis, Russian ice hockey player
- 1972 – Tomas Lindberg, Swedish musician (At the Gates)
- 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 footballer
- 1974 – Paul Kariya, Canadian hockey player
- 1975 – Brynjar Gunnarsson, Icelandic footballer
- 1975 – Jacques Kallis, South African cricketer
- 1975 – Kellie Martin, American actress
- 1975 – Ernesto Noel Aquino, Honduran footballer
- 1976 – Ryan Fitzgerald, Australian footballer 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 – Ali B, Dutch rapper
- 1981 – Martin Halle, Danish footballer
- 1981 – Anthony Reyes, American baseball player
- 1981 – Caterina Scorsone, Canadian actress
- 1981 – Gregory Sedoc, Dutch athlete
- 1982 – Vincy Chan, Hong Kong singer
- 1982 – Prithviraj Sukumaran, Indian Film Actor
- 1982 – Frédéric Michalak, French rugby player
- 1982 – Pippa Black, Australian actress
- 1982 – Cristian Riveros, Paraguayan footballer
- 1983 – Philipp Kohlschreiber, German tennis player
- 1984 – Melissa Lauren, French pornographic actress
- 1984 – Shayne Ward, British singer
- 1985 – Verena Sailer, German sprinter
- 1985 – Casey Stoner, Australian motorcycle racer
- 1986 – Nicky Adams, Welsh footballer
- 1986 – Derk Boerrigter, Dutch footballer
- 1986 – Inna, Romanian singer
- 1986 – Craig Pickering, British sprinter
- 1988 – Zoltán Stieber, Hungarian footballer
- 1990 – Yohanna, Icelandic singer
- 1991 – John and Edward Grimes, Irish singers
- 1992 – Bryce Harper, American baseball player
- 2003 – Princess Kritika of Nepal, daughter of Crown Prince Paras
Deaths
- 1355 – Louis, King of Sicily (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 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, English 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, Scottish 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 – Joseph Leycester Lyne (Father Ignatius), a restorer of monastic life in the Church of England (b. 1837)
- 1909 – Jakub Bart-Ćišinski, 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)
- 1952 – 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)
- 1971 – Robin Boyd, Australian architect (b.1919)
- 1972 – Hale Boggs, US Congressman from Louisiana (b. 1914)
- 1972 – Nick Begich, US Congressman from Alaska (b. 1932)
- 1972 – Leo G. Carroll, English actor (b. 1886)
- 1973 – Gene Krupa, American jazz drummer (b. 1909)
- 1974 – Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, Carnatic musician (b. 1895)
- 1975 – Vittorio Gui, Italian conductor (b. 1885)
- 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)
- 1991 – Ole Beich, Guns n Roses bass player (b.1955)
- 1992 – Shirley Booth, American actress (b. 1898)
- 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, Ukrainian-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 – Toše Proeski, Macedonian music star and humanitarian (b. 1981)
- 2007 – Barbara West, second-to-last living Titanic survivor (b. 1911)
- 2010 – Barbara Billingsley, American actress (b. 1915)
- 2010 – Eyedea, American rapper (Eyedea & Abilities) (b. 1981)
- 2011 – Dan Wheldon, English auto racer (b. 1978)
Holidays and observances
External links