Historical Events On October 16 - On This Day

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• 456 Magister militum Ricimer defeats the Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the western Roman Empire
• 1311 Council of Vienne (15th ecumenical council) opens
• 1384 Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland at the age of nine, despite being female

• 1418 Milan Cathedral's high altar consecrated by Pope Martin V

1492 Christopher Columbus' fleet anchors at "Fernandina" (Long Island, Bahamas)

• 1502 Storm ravages Frisian coast
• 1551 English Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and former Lord Protector, is rearrested for treason and executed three months later

1579 Francis Drake sights land in the Philippines after crossing the Pacific Ocean aboard the "Golden Hind" [1]

• 1600 Olivier van Noort's Dutch ships reach the Philippines during their circumnavigation of the world
• 1674 Emperor Leopold I fires chancellor Fürst Wenzel Lobkowitz

1690 English demand the surrender of Quebec, and French Governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac replies, "I have no reply to make to your general other than from the mouths of my cannon and muskets"

• 1710 British troops occupy Port Royal, Nova Scotia
• 1757 Austrian troops occupy Berlin
• 1775 Portland, Maine, is burned by the British
• 1780 Royalton and Tunbridge, Vermont, experience the last major raid of the American Revolutionary War
• 1793 Battle of Wattignies: French defeat Allied forces and lift siege of Maubeuge
• 1795 M. von Böhm's "Oorlogscantate" premieres

1813 Battle of Leipzig begins; the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I, sees Napoleon's forces defeated by Prussia, Austria, and Russia after 3 days [1]

• 1829 Tremont Hotel, designed by Isaiah Rogers and considered the first US modern hotel, opens in Boston
• 1834 Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster (Parliament) in London burns down
• 1839 Joseph Saxton, a machine inspector at the US Mint, takes the first daguerreotype photograph in the US of the Central High School building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• 1841 Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is chartered
• 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers
• 1846 American physician William T. G. Morton gives the first public demonstration of the use of ether, allowing surgeon John Collins Warren to remove a tumor painlessly from the neck of Edward Abbott at Massachusetts General Hospital
• 1848 First US homeopathic medical college opens in Pennsylvania
• 1849 Avery College is established in Allegheny, Pennsylvania
• 1849 British seize Tigre Island in the Gulf of Fonseca from Honduras
• 1852 Dutch government recognizes Catholics' right to organize

1854 Abraham Lincoln delivers his Peoria Speech denouncing recent federal legislation extending slavery on the lawn of the Peoria County Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois [1]

1859 Abolitionist John Brown leads 21 men in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia

• 1861 Confederacy starts selling postage stamps
• 1863 Grant is given command of Union forces in the West

1867 Alaska adopts the Gregorian calendar and crosses the International Date Line

1875 Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah

• 1875 First Quebec vs. Ontario football game; Ontario wins
• 1876 Race riot in Cainhoy, South Carolina; 5 white people and 1 black person are killed
• 1882 The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business
• 1900 Great Britain and Germany sign the Yangtze Agreement, agreeing to maintain the territorial integrity of China and support the "Open Door" policy called for by the US Secretary of State
• 1901 Baron Hayashi of Japan begins negotiations in London to form an alliance with the British and strengthen Japan's position against Russia

1901 Booker T. Washington and his family are invited to dine at the White House with Teddy and Edith Roosevelt, prompting condemnation from the South

• 1903 Homel, the first Jewish self-defense organization, is founded in Russia
• 1904 Russian Baltic Fleet departs for Port Arthur
• 1905 The Partition of Bengal (India) announced by Lord Curzon
• 1907 Belasco Theatre opens at 111 W 44th St, New York City
• 1907 David Belasco's "Grand Army Man" premieres in New York City
• 1908 Edmonton Rugby Football Club reorganizes as Esquimaux

1909 In his fourth title defense, Jack Johnson knocks out Stanley Ketchel in the 12th round at Mission Street Arena, Colma, California, to retain his heavyweight boxing crown

• 1912 Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire," sung by Albertine Zehme, premieres at the Berlin Choralion-Saal
• 1913 Booth Theater opens at 222 W 44th St, New York City

1913 George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" premieres at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna, Austria

• 1915 Great Britain declares war on Bulgaria

1916 Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the US at 46 Amboy St, Brooklyn

1916 T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) meets with Faisal I of Iraq

• 1921 Jim Conzelman takes over as coach of the Rock Island Independents from Frank Coughlin, the only mid-game coaching change in NFL history

1922 Influential modernist poem "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot is first published in the UK in the magazine "The Criterion"

• 1923 Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio is founded by brothers Walt and Roy Disney in Los Feliz, California, beginning what becomes the Walt Disney Company
• 1923 John Harwood patents the self-winding watch in Switzerland
• 1925 Peace Accord of Locarno is signed (Rhine Pact)
• 1925 Texas School Board prohibits the teaching of evolution
• 1926 Mohammed Nadir Khan begins a coup in Afghanistan, resulting in 1,200 people being killed
• 1926 Troop ship sinks in Yangtze River, killing 1,200 people
• 1931 Winnie Ruth Judd murders two friends and then dismembers one of them in Phoenix

1934 Mao Zedong and 25,000 troops begin their 6,000-mile Long March from the south of China to the north and west

1936 Jean Batten reaches Auckland, New Zealand, after flying solo from Kent, England, in a record 11 days and 45 minutes

• 1938 Aaron Copland's and Eugene Loring's ballet "Billy the Kid" premieres in Chicago, Illinois
• 1939 Sugar rationing begins in the Netherlands
• 1940 Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. is promoted to brigadier general, becoming the first African American to become a general in the US military

1940 Warsaw Ghetto is formed by German Governor-General Hans Frank

• 1941 Germany advances within 60 miles (96 km) of Moscow
• 1941 Gordo comic strip by Gus Arriola first appears in newspapers

1941 Romanian Legionnaires enter Odessa, Soviet Union, during the Siege of Odessa, part of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union

1942 Aaron Copland and Agnes de Mille's ballet "Rodeo" premieres in NYC

• 1942 Cyclone in Bay of Bengal kills approximately 40,000 people south of Calcutta, India
• 1942 National Boxing Association freezes titles of those serving in armed services
• 1943 Anti-Jewish riot in Rome
• 1943 Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly opens the city's new subway system
• 1943 The Jewish quarter of Rome is surrounded by Nazis, and the inhabitants are sent to Auschwitz
• 1943 US 1st Army establishes headquarters in Bristol
• 1944 Hungary's government under Miklós Horthy falls as Nazi German general Döme Sztójay becomes prime minister
• 1945 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations comes into existence

1946 Ten Nazi leaders, including Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Alfred Jodl, are hanged as war criminals after the Nuremberg war trials

1948 Demonstration by Moscow Jews honoring Israeli Ambassador Golda Meir

• 1949 WDAF-TV Channel 4 in Kansas City, MO (NBC) begins broadcasting

1950 The first edition of C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is released in London

• 1951 The first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated by Said Akbar in Rawalpindi
• 1952 Pakistan's first Test cricket match starts against India in Delhi
• 1952 Woolworth's at Powell & Market (San Francisco) opens

1953 Fidel Castro is sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in the hospital wing of the Model Prison for leading the attack on the Moncada Barracks. In his own defense, he gives the famous two-hour speech "History Will Absolve Me."

• 1957 British Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip visit Williamsburg, Virginia [1]
• 1958 Benjamin Britten's song cycle "Nocturne" premieres at Leeds Town Hall during the centenary Leeds Festival
• 1958 Children's program "Blue Peter," created by John Hunter Blair, premieres on the BBC
• 1958 US performs a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1960 The National League votes to admit Houston and New York to the league
• 1962 Byron R. White becomes a Supreme Court Justice

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis begins as US President John F. Kennedy is shown photos confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba

1962 Feature film adaptation of Rod Serling's award-winning teleplay "Requiem for a Heavyweight" is released, starring Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney, and Julie Harris

• 1962 KTXT TV channel 5 in Lubbock, Texas (PBS) begins broadcasting
• 1963 New York newspaper "Mirror" publishes its last edition
• 1963 Two secret US military satellites launch from Cape Canaveral
• 1964 American swimmer Sharon Stouder sets a world record of 1:04.7 to beat Ada Kok of the Netherlands by 0.9 seconds and win the women's 100 m butterfly at the Tokyo Olympics
• 1964 China becomes the world's fifth nuclear power

1964 Harold Wilson's Labour Party wins the British election

• 1964 In an incredibly close women's 100 m final at the Tokyo Olympics, American sprinter Wyomia Tyus runs 11.4 seconds to beat teammate Edith McGuire by 0.2 seconds; Ewa Kłobukowska of Poland takes bronze with the same time as McGuire
• 1964 Indians' directors vote to keep the franchise in Cleveland, rejecting bids by Seattle, Oakland, and Dallas

1964 New York Yankees fire manager Yogi Berra, one day after losing the World Series [1]

• 1964 US men's 4 × 100 m medley relay team of Thompson Mann, Bill Craig, Fred Schmidt, and Steve Clark swims a world record of 3:58.4 to beat Germany by 3.2 seconds and win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics
• 1967 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris ends after redefining the second using a cesium-beam atomic clock [1]

1967 Joan Baez and 123 other anti-draft protesters are arrested in Oakland, California

• 1967 WETK TV channel 33 in Burlington, VT (PBS) begins broadcasting
• 1967 WGNO TV channel 26 in New Orleans, LA (ABC) begins broadcasting
• 1968 American Bob Seagren, Claus Schiprowski of West Germany, and East German Wolfgang Nordwig all record 5.40 m in the final of the pole vault at the Mexico City Olympics; Seagren is awarded gold on countback

1968 Americans Tommie Smith (gold, 19.83, WR) and John Carlos (bronze) famously give the Black Power salute on the 200 m medal podium during the Mexico City Olympics to protest racism and injustice against African Americans

• 1968 China reports the removal of President Liu Shaoqi
• 1968 Czechoslovakia and Russian "accord" rules allies Soviet forces
• 1968 Jim Dorey sets Toronto Maple Leafs penalty records with 48 minutes on 9 penalties in a game and 44 minutes on 7 penalties in a period
• 1968 Milwaukee Bucks play their first game, losing 89-84 to the Chicago Bulls
• 1968 The People's Democracy (PD), formed on October 9, organizes a march of 1,300 students from Queen's University Belfast to City Hall in the center of the city, Northern Ireland

1969 Soyuz 6 returns to Earth

1970 Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act as a response to the October Crisis, the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act in Canadian history

• 1971 Amphitheater in McLaren Park is dedicated in San Francisco
• 1972 A Protestant youth member (15) of the Ulster Defence Association and a UDA member (26) are run over by British Army vehicles during riots in East Belfast
• 1972 American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival breaks up
• 1972 Two members of the Official Irish Republican Army are shot dead by the British Army in County Tyrone

1973 "The Way We Were," directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, premieres in New York City

• 1973 Israeli tanks under General Sharon move through the Suez Canal
• 1973 Maynard Jackson is elected as the first Black mayor of Atlanta
• 1973 Monks Heng Yo and Heng Ju start a 1,000-mile pilgrimage from San Francisco to Seattle
• 1973 The Gulf Six (Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar) unilaterally raise the posted price of Saudi Light marker crude oil by 17 percent

1973 US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho controversially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam that later failed

• 1976 Soyuz 23 returns to Earth
• 1976 Toronto Maple Leaf Lanny McDonald scores a hat trick in 2 minutes 54 seconds, setting a Toronto Maple Leaf record for the fastest three goals by a single player

1978 Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded to American political scientist Herbert A. Simon [1]

1978 Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla is elected Pope John Paul II

• 1978 Test debut of Kapil Dev, India vs. Pakistan at Faisalabad

1979 Comedy sketch show "Not the Nine O'Clock News," starring Rowan Atkinson, Chris Langham, Pamela Stephenson, and Mel Smith, debuts on BBC 2

• 1979 First global telenovela, Mexican "Los ricos también lloran" (The Rich Also Cry), premieres as the second foreign series to be screened in the Soviet Union
• 1979 Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded to Theodore Schultz and William Arthur Lewis for their research on economic development, particularly in developing countries [1]
• 1980 China performs a nuclear test at Lop Nor, China
• 1981 Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy" premieres in New York City
• 1981 The second Dutch government of Van Agt resigns
• 1982 Mt. Palomar Observatory is the first to detect Halley's Comet on its 13th return

1982 Secretary of State George P. Shultz warns that the US will withdraw from the UN if it votes to exclude Israel

• 1982 USSR performs an underground nuclear test
• 1984 Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican Archbishop, wins the Nobel Peace Prize
• 1985 Challenger vehicle moves to launch pad for STS-61-A mission

1985 Intel introduces the 32-bit 80386 microprocessor chip

• 1985 KC Royals and St. Louis Cardinals win their league championships
• 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Herbert Hauptman and Jerome Karle
• 1986 Armand Hammer returns to the US with Jewish refusenik David Goldfarb
• 1986 Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards organizes a concert celebrating rock and roll legend Chuck Berry's 60th birthday at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri; performers include Richards, Berry, Johnnie Johnson, Eric Clapton, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Cray, and Julian Lennon, among others

1986 US government shuts down due to disputes between President Reagan and the House

• 1986 US performs a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

1986 Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and poet, becomes the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature

• 1987 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued 58 hours after falling 22 ft (6.7 m) into a well shaft in Midland, Texas
• 1987 A record 338,500,000 shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange

1987 Defending champion Mike Tyson beats Tyrell Biggs by TKO in round 7 at Convention Center, Atlantic City, New Jersey; retains unified heavyweight boxing title

• 1987 Dow Jones Industrial Average falls more than 100 points to 108.35 for the first time
• 1987 Great Storm of 1987: 175 km/h hurricane-force winds hit London and much of the south of England, killing 23 people and causing widespread blackouts
• 1987 USSR performs a nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeastern Kazakhstan
• 1988 "Smile Jamaica" concert for Hurricane Gilbert victims is held in London
• 1989 Bikenibeu Paeniu is installed as premier of Tuvalu
• 1989 Jan Syse becomes Prime Minister of Norway
• 1990 Reds beat A's 7-0, ending Oakland's 10-game postseason winning streak
• 1990 US forces reach 200,000 in the Persian Gulf

1990 Warner Bros. Records releases "The Rhythm of the Saints," the eighth solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Paul Simon

• 1991 Dallas Mavericks' Roy Tarpley becomes the seventh player to be banned from the NBA for life under the league's anti-drug agreement
• 1991 George Jo Hennard, 35, kills 23 people, wounds 20, and then kills himself in Texas
• 1991 Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India
• 1991 US Supreme Court begins to hear the Joseph Doherty case
• 1992 1,700th David Letterman Show

1992 Gilligan's Island TV pilot, filmed in 1963, is first shown on TV (TBS)

• 1993 Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling, Kent, after police stop protesters from approaching the British National Party headquarters

1993 General Omar al-Bashir is appointed President of Sudan after leading a military coup d'état against the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Ahmed al-Mirghani

• 1993 IRA bomb attack on fish and chips restaurant in Belfast kills 10 people
• 1994 "Addams Family" actor Raul Julia suffers a stroke
• 1994 Shreveport Pirates win their first Canadian Football League game 24-12 at home against the Sacramento Gold Miners; fold in 1995
• 1995 Allan Donald takes 8-71 as South Africa defeats Zimbabwe
• 1995 Brian Lara scores 169 in a Sharjah ODI against Sri Lanka
• 1995 Million Man March is held in Washington, D.C., with over 830,000 African American men attending
• 1995 ODI in Sharjah: West Indies score 7-333 in 50 overs and beat Sri Lanka, who are all out for 329
• 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 Spanish warrant requesting his extradition on murder charges

• 2001 The US Coast Guard lifts a ban on liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers entering Boston Harbor to make deliveries to Distrigas' Everett LNG terminal, imposed on September 26 in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11

2002 "28 Days Later," directed by Danny Boyle and starring Cillian Murphy, premieres in London

• 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated

2004 Seventeen-year-old Lionel Messi makes his league debut for FC Barcelona in a 1-0 win against cross-town rivals Espanyol at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Barcelona

2005 Renault driver Fernando Alonso wins the season-ending Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai International Circuit, becoming the first Spanish Formula 1 World Drivers' Champion, winning by 21 points from Kimi Räikkönen

• 2012 Conflict in Maiduguri, Nigeria, leads to 24 militant deaths and several structures set ablaze
• 2013 18 people are killed after Typhoon Wipha strikes Japan
• 2013 21 people are killed after a minibus hits a land mine in Nawa, Syria
• 2013 49 people are killed after Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes into the Mekong River in Laos
• 2013 The United States ends its 16-day government shutdown and avoids default in a bipartisan deal in the Senate
• 2014 New Zealand, Malaysia, Angola, Spain, and Venezuela are elected to the United Nations Security Council
• 2016 Ed Whitlock (85) becomes the oldest person to complete a marathon under 4 hours at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 3 hours and 56 minutes
• 2017 Findings are published of a neutron star collision that occurs two months prior on August 17, the first cosmic event observed in both gravitational waves and light, confirming that heavy elements such as gold result from such collisions
• 2017 Iraqi army seizes control of oil-rich Kirkuk from Kurdish Peshmerga
• 2017 Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is killed in a suspicious car bomb in Malta
• 2017 Storm formed from Hurricane Ophelia lashes Ireland, killing three people
• 2018 Anna Burns wins the Man Booker Prize for her novel "Milkman," becoming the first author from Northern Ireland to receive the award

2018 Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex begin their first royal tour visiting Australia and New Zealand

• 2018 Chairman of China's Xinjiang government defends its detention camps for Uighur Muslims, saying they provide “vocational education and training”
• 2019 Egyptian archaeologists announce the discovery of more than 20 painted wooden coffins from the Theban necropolis of Asasif
• 2019 First plant-powered selfie taken by Pete the Fern as part of research into the use of microbial fuel cells at London Zoo, London, England
• 2019 Netflix reveals its most popular original movie was Sandra Bullock's "Bird Box" and its most popular TV series was "Stranger Things" for the year
• 2020 French teacher Samuel Paty is beheaded by an 18-year-old Islamist militant in the Paris suburb of Éragny
• 2021 Camden County Commissioners unveil a statue of boxing champion Jersey Joe Walcott at Wiggins Waterfront Park in Camden, New Jersey
• 2021 NASA probe Lucy launches on a mission to fly by eight Trojan asteroids circling the Sun [1]
• 2022 More than 600 people have died in Nigeria's worst floods in a decade and displaced more than 1.3 million people, according to a government minister [1]
• 2023 Amazon's largest tributary, the Negro River, records its lowest-ever level, confirming the rainforest is in the midst of its most significant drought [1]
• 2023 Model of a Star Wars X-wing Starfighter used in a "Star Wars" film sells for over $3 million from the collection of Hollywood model maker Greg Jein [1]
• 2024 Italian fashion house Prada and aerospace company Axiom Space unveil the new spacesuit for NASA's Artemis III mission to the Moon in Milan [1]
• 2025 US military launches sixth known strike of boat in the Caribbean suspected of drug trafficking; two survivors are returned to home countries of Ecuador and Colombia for prosecution [1]

• 15 Oct
• Historical Events Calendar
• Oct 17

• 

  Grim History of London's Speakers' Corner

  October 14, 1855
• 

  Hurricane on the Way? Don't Worry

  October 15, 1987
• 

  Lenient Lion Remembered for 375 Years

  October 16, 1643
• 

  Chopin: The Day the Music Died

  October 17, 1849

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