On October 16th...

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1430 King James II of Scotland was born.

1730 Antoine de Lamother, Sieur de Cadillac, French adventurer and founder of Detroit, Michigan, died.

1758 Noah Webster, creator of the first dictionary of American English, was born.

1793 Physiologist-surgeon John Hunter died.
1793 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was executed.

1815 French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to St. Helena.

1845 Businessman Pleasant Hanes was born.

1846 William Morton publicly demonstrated the use of sulfuric ether as an anesthetic.

1848 The first homeopathic hospital in the United States opened in Philadelphia.

1854 Dramatist Oscar Wilde was born.

1859 Abolitionist John Brown led a raid against the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1861 The Confederate States of America began issuing postage stamps.

1863 Ulysses Grant was given command of all Union armies in the West.

1869 A hotel in Boston became the first to have indoor plumbing.

1886 David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, was born.

1888 Playwright Eugene O'Neill was born.

1898 U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was born.

1900 Baseball player Goose Goslin was born.

1908 Albanian President Enver Hoxha was born.

1916 Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic, in Brooklyn, New York.

1919 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, was born.

1923 Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio was founded.

1925 The Texas School Board prohibited the teaching of evolution.
1925 Actor Michael Conrad was born.
1925 Actress Angela Lansbury was born.

1927 Author Günter Grass was born.

1931 Charles Colson, U.S. presidential adviser, was born.

1937 Actor-producer Tony Anthony was born.

1940 The first lottery for World War II draftees was held; #158 was the first number drawn.
1940 Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. became the first black General in the U.S. Army.
1940 The Warsaw Ghetto was established.
1940 Actor Barry Corbin was born.

1942 The National Boxing Association froze titles of those serving in the armed services.

1943 Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly opened the city's new subway system.
1943 Rock musician C.F. Turner was born.

1945 The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization was established.

1946 Ten Nazi war criminals condemned during the Nuremberg War Crime Trials were hanged.
1946 Actress Suzanne Somers was born.

1947 Bob Weir, founding member of the rock band Grateful Dead, was born.
1947 Movie producer-director David Zucker was born.

1948 Record company executive Jim Ed Norman was born.

1951 Actor Daniel Gerroll was born.

1955 The first "Ann Landers" column penned by Esther Pauline Lederer was published in the Chicago Sun-Times.

1958 Actor-director Tim Robbins was born.

1959 Actor-musician Gary Kemp was born.
1959 George C. Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, died.

1960 Singer-musician Bob Mould was born.

1961 Actor Randy Vasquez was born.

1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis began as President John F. Kennedy was informed that reconnaissance photographs had revealed the presence of missile bases in Cuba.
1962 Rock musician Flea was born.

1963 The New York Mirror published its last edition.

1964 China set off its first atomic bomb.

1969 Jazz musician Roy Hargrove was born.
1969 Actress Terri J. Vaughn was born.
1969 Singer Wendy Wilson was born.

1971 Rapper B-Rock was born.

1972 The rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival formally disbanded.

1973 Maynard Jackson became the first black to be elected mayor of Atlanta, Georgia.

1975 Actress Kellie Martin was born.

1977 Singer John Mayer was born.

1978 The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be the new pope; he took the name John Paul II.

1980 Actor Jeremy Jackson was born.

1981 Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan died.

1982 Mount Palomar Observatory became the first to detect Halley's Comet on its 13th return.

1986 The government of the United States shut down due to budget problems.

1988 Orel Hershiser became the first to pitch shutouts in both a playoff and World Series game in the same season.

1992 The 1964 pilot of Gilligan's Island was shown on television for the first time, by TBS.

1997 A Georgia woman gave birth after being implanted with previously frozen eggs.
1997 Author James Michener died.

2002 U.S. President George Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq.
2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, was officially inaugurated.

2004 Television journalist Pierre Salinger died.

2010 Actress Barbara Billingsley died.

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This page was last updated on October 15, 2018.