Wikipedia: On This Day

October 16

This is a list of selected October 16 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 16: World Food Day

456 – Magister militum Ricimer defeated Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became master of the Western Roman Empire.
1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon and the First French Empire in the Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic Wars with over 500,000 troops involved.
1843 – William Rowan Hamilton first wrote down the fundamental formula for quaternions, carving the equation into the side of Broom Bridge (pictured) in Cabra, Dublin, Ireland.
1940 – World War II: Nazi Governor-General Hans Frank established the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest Jewish ghetto in occupied Poland.
1978 – Karol Józef Wojtyła, a cardinal from Kraków, Poland, became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century and the first ever from a Slavic country.

More events: October 15 – October 16 – October 17

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October 15

This is a list of selected October 15 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 15: Global Handwashing Day; White Cane Safety Day in the United States

1582 – Spain, Portugal, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Italy became the first countries to replace the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar.
1917 – Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (pictured) was executed by a firing squad for spying for Germany.
1951 – Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesized the first oral contraceptive.
1966 – The Black Panther Party, a Marxist/Maoist African-American organization that promoted Black Power and self-defense in the United States, was founded in Oakland, California.
2003 – Chinese space program: Shenzhou 5, China's first manned space mission was launched, carrying astronaut Yang Liwei.

More events: October 14 – October 15 – October 16

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October 14

This is a list of selected October 14 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 14: Teachers' Day in Poland

1773 – The first recorded ministry of education, the Commission of National Education, was formed in Poland.
1888 – French inventor Louis Le Prince filmed Roundhay Garden Scene, the earliest surviving motion picture, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
1926 – The first book featuring English author A. A. Milne's fictional bear Winnie-the-Pooh was first published.
1947 – Flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13.7 km) in an experimental Bell X-1 rocket-powered aircraft, American test pilot Chuck Yeager (pictured) became the first person to break the sound barrier.
1953 – Qibya massacre: Israeli military commander Ariel Sharon and his Unit 101 special forces were ordered to "inflict heavy damage on the inhabitants" of a village on the West Bank.

More events: October 13 – October 14 – October 15

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October 13

This is a list of selected October 13 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 13: Sukkot begins at sunset (Judaism, 2008); Columbus Day in the United States (2008); Health and Sports Day in Japan (2008); Thanksgiving in Canada (2008)

54 – Claudius was fatally poisoned by his wife Agrippina the Younger, making her 16-year-old son Nero the next Roman Emperor.
1307 – Agents of King Philip IV of France launched a dawn raid, simultaneously arresting many members of the Knights Templar, and subsequently torturing them into "admitting" heresy.
1773 – French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy (pictured), an interacting, grand-design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici.
1843 – The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, the oldest continually operating Jewish service organization in the world, was founded in New York City.
1972 – Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed into a remote area in the Andes mountains near the border of Chile and Argentina; the last of 16 survivors were not rescued until December 23.

More events: October 12 – October 13 – October 14

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October 12

This is a list of selected October 12 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 12: Columbus Day/Día de la Raza in various countries; Hispanic Day in Spain; Our Lady Aparecida's Day and Children's Day in Brazil

1398 – The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Konrad von Jungingen signed the Treaty of Salynas, the third attempt to cede Samogitia to the Knights.
1492 – Believing he had reached East Asia, Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean, sparking a series of events that led to the European colonization of the Americas.
1915 – A German firing squad executed British nurse Edith Cavell (pictured) for helping Allied soldiers to escape occupied Belgium.
1928 – An iron lung medical ventilator, designed by Philip Drinker and colleagues at Children's Hospital, Boston, was used for the first time in the treatment of polio victims.
1984 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army failed in its attempt to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and most of her cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.

More events: October 11 – October 12 – October 13

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October 11

This is a list of selected October 11 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 11: National Coming Out Day

1138 – A massive earthquake, one of the deadliest in recorded history, struck Aleppo, Syria.
1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia's oldest university, was inaugurated in Sydney two years after the New South Wales Legislative Council established it with the passage of the University of Sydney Act.
1865 – The Morant Bay rebellion, led by Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, began in Jamaica, but eventually it was brutally suppressed by Governor Edward John Eyre.
1962 – Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, the first Roman Catholic ecumenical council in 92 years.
1968 – Apollo 7 (lift-off pictured), the first manned mission of NASA's Apollo program, and the first three-man American space mission, launched from Complex 34 in present-day Cape Canaveral, Florida.

More events: October 10 – October 11 – October 12

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October 10

This is a list of selected October 10 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 10: National Day in Fiji (1970); Double Ten Day in the Republic of China

732 – Battle of Tours (pictured): Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a large Andalusian Muslim army led by Abd er Rahman near Tours and Poitiers, stopping the northward advance of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula.
1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780: One of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record struck the Caribbean, killing at least 22,000 people over the next several days.
1868 – Carlos Manuel de Céspedes made the Grito de Yara, declaring Cuban independence from Spain, sparking the Ten Years' War.
1943 – World War II: The Kempeitai, the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army, arrested and tortured over 50 civilians and civilian internees on suspicion of their involvement in a raid on Singapore Harbour during Operation Jaywick.
1982 – St. Maximilian Kolbe, who had volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland, was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

More events: October 9 – October 10 – October 11

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October 9

This is a list of selected October 9 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 9: Yom Kippur ends at sunset (Judaism, 2008); Independence Day in Uganda; Hangul Day in South Korea; Leif Erikson Day in the United States

1831 – Ioannis Kapodistrias, the Greek head of state, was assassinated in Nafplion.
1874 – The Universal Postal Union, then known as the General Postal Union, was established with the signing of the Treaty of Bern to unify disparate postal services and regulations so that international mail could be exchanged freely.
1888 – The Washington Monument (pictured) in Washington, D.C., at the time the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public.
1942 – World War II: American forces defeated the Japanese at the Third Battle of the Matanikau in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, avenging the Japanese victory at the Second Battle of the Matanikau a couple of weeks earlier.
1963 – A landslide displaced large amounts of water from the Vajont Dam in northern Italy, causing waves and floods that quickly swept away several villages and killed almost 2,000 people.

More events: October 8 – October 9 – October 10

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October 8

This is a list of selected October 8 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 8: Yom Kippur begins at sunset (Judaism, 2008); Independence Day in Croatia

451 – The Council of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council in Christianity, opened. It repudiated the Eutychian doctrine of monophysitism, and set forth the Chalcedonian Creed.
1600 – San Marino, the world's oldest constitutional republic, adopted its written constitution.
1879 – The Chilean Navy defeated the Peruvian Navy in the Battle of Angamos (pictured), a decisive encounter during the War of the Pacific.
1985 – The musical Les Misérables, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, opened in London's Barbican Centre, starting its run as the longest-running West End musical in history.
2005 – A major earthquake centred in Kashmir killed over 74,500 people and injured at least 106,000 others in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.

More events: October 7 – October 8 – October 9

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October 7

This is a list of selected October 7 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 7: Double Ninth Festival in the Chinese calendar (2008); Feast Day of St. Osyth

1542 – Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo became the first European to set foot on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California.
1571 – The Ottoman Empire was decisively defeated by the Christian West for the first time, as a multinational fleet led by Don John of Austria crushed the Turkish navy near the Gulf of Corinth in the Battle of Lepanto (painting by Paolo Veronese pictured).
1868 – Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA opened, with an initial enrollment of 412 students the next day.
1949 – East Berlin and the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany became the German Democratic Republic.
1958 – Attempting to control the political instability in Pakistan, President Iskander Mirza suspended the 1956 constitution, imposed martial law, and cancelled the elections scheduled for January 1959.

More events: October 6 – October 7 – October 8

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October 6

This is a list of selected October 6 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 6: Labour Day in New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and South Australia (2008); German-American Day in the United States

105 BC – The Cimbri and the Teutons inflicted a major defeat on the Roman Republic in the Battle of Arausio.
1849 – In Arad, present-day Romania, 13 Hungarian rebel honvéd generals who became known as the 13 Martyrs of Arad were executed by Austrian authorities for their part in the Hungarian Revolution.
1854 – The Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead in North East England began, destroying a substantial amount of property, killing over 50 people, and injuring hundreds of others.
1973 – Egyptian troops under President Anwar Sadat (pictured) crossed the Suez Canal and destroyed the fortified Israeli Bar Lev Line, starting the Yom Kippur War.
1995 – In an article published by the scientific journal Nature, astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz reported the discovery of a planet orbiting 51 Pegasi as the first known extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star.

More events: October 5 – October 6 – October 7

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October 5

This is a list of selected October 5 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 5: Republic Day in Portugal (1910); International World Teachers' Day

869 – The Fourth Council of Constantinople, the eighth Catholic Ecumenical Council, was convened to discuss the patriarchate of Photios I of Constantinople.
1877 – After battling the U.S. Army for more than three months, retreating over 1,000 miles across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and enduring a five-day siege, Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce band finally surrendered.
1903 – Samuel Griffith (pictured) became the first Chief Justice of Australia, while Edmund Barton and Richard O'Connor became the first Puisne Justices of the High Court of Australia.
1908 – Prince Ferdinand became the first Tsar of Bulgaria since the Ottoman invasion in the 14th century.
1948 – The International Union for Conservation of Nature was founded at a congress sponsored by UNESCO director Julian Huxley in Fontainebleau, France.

More events: October 4 – October 5 – October 6

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October 4

This is a list of selected October 4 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 4: Independence Day in Lesotho (1966); Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi (Catholicism); World Animal Day

1830 – A provisional government in Brussels declared the creation of the independent and neutral state of Belgium, in revolt against the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
1910 – Manuel II, the last King of Portugal, fled to Gibraltar when a revolution erupted in Lisbon and his palace was shelled. The Portuguese First Republic was proclaimed the next day.
1957 – Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1 (pictured), the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR.
1985 – Software developer Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation to support the free software movement.
2003 – A suicide bomber killed 21 people and injured over 50 others inside the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, Israel.

More events: October 3 – October 4 – October 5

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October 3

This is a list of selected October 3 anniversaries that appears on the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

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October 3: German Unity Day; National Foundation Day in South Korea

1283 – Dafydd ap Gruffydd the Prince of Wales, the last native ruler of Wales to resist English domination, was executed by drawing and quartering.
1908 – The original incarnation of the Pravda newspaper was founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles in Vienna.
1918 – World War I: Following his armed forces' defeat to the Allied Powers, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria abdicated in favor of his son Boris III.
1981 – The Hunger Strike by Irish Republican Army prisoners at the Maze jail in Belfast ended after seven months and 10 deaths (memorial in Derry's Bogside pictured).
1993 – Soldiers from Malaysian, Pakistani and U.S. armed forces attempted to capture Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in the Battle of Mogadishu.

More events: October 2 – October 3 – October 4

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