What happened on October 16 ?
Events
456 - Magister militum Ricimer defeats the Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the western Roman Empire
1775 - Portland, Maine burned by the British
1780 - Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War
1781 - George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia
1793 - Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
1793 - Battle of Wattignies
1813 - The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.
1834 - Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt down
1841 - Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1843 - Sir William Rowan Hamilton invents the concept of quaternions.
1859 - John Brown leads raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia
1869 - Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, discovered.
1869 - England's first residential college for women, Girton College, Cambridge, is founded.
1882 - The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
1890 - Michael Collins born: Irish Patriot and Commander-in-Chief, Irish Free State Army.
1906 - The Partition of Bengal (India) occurred.
1906 - The Captain of Köpenick fools the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.
1912 - Bulgarian pilots Radul Milkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the first bombing with an airplane in history.
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.
1940 - Benjamin O. Davis Sr. named first African American general in the United States Army
1940 - Warsaw Ghetto established
1946 - Ten war criminals of the Second World War, condemned in the Nuremberg trials hanged.
1949 - Nikos Zakhiariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.
1951 - The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi
1964 - People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon
1968 - United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked out of the USA's team for performing a Black Power salute during a medal ceremony.
1968 - Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
1969 - United States - The "miracle" New York Mets win the World Series.
1970 - Anwar Sadat elected President of Egypt
1970 - Canada - In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act.
1972 - Rainbow, a British television programme for children, debuts.
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.
1978 - Karol Józef Wojty?a becomes Pope John Paul II
1984 - Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
1987 - Great Storm of 1987: hurricane force winds to 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 19 in Luby's Cafeteria.
1991 - Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India.
1992 - Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson files a 1.4 million USD lawsuit against French tabloids for running topless photos taken of her on the French Riviera, including some of Texas millionaire John Bryan suckling on her toes.
1995 - The Million Man March occurs in Washington, DC.
1996 - 84 are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 soccer fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Mateo Flores Stadium in Guatemala City.
2001 - U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: U.S. warplanes mistakenly bomb International Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan.
2002 - Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.
2003 - The Red Sox and Yankees face off in a historical ALCS game 7 at Yankee Stadium. The game ends in dramatic fashion with an Aaron Boone walk off home run.
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