Monday, October 16, 2017

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― 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. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56). 

NATIONAL FERAL CAT DAY  


1384 – Jadwiga (also know as Hedwig) is crowned King of Poland, although a woman. She was a member of the Capetian House of Anjou, the daughter of king Louis I of Hungary and Elizabeth of Bosnia. Queens regnant being relatively uncommon in Europe at the time, Jadwiga was officially crowned a "king" (rex) rather than "queen" (regina). She is an important link in the transition of the Polish monarchy from the extinguished House of Piast to the Jagiellon dynasty (Lithuanian in origin).


1781 – Washington takes Yorktown. The Yorktown or Virginia campaign was a series of military maneuvers and battles during the American Revolutionary Warthat culminated in the decisive Siege of Yorktown in October 1781.


1793 – Nine months after the execution of her husband, the former King Louis XVI of France, Marie-Antoinette follows him to the guillotine.


1859 – Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery.

1916 – At dawn on October 16, 1916, Private Henry Farr of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) is executed for cowardice after he refused to go forward into the front-line trenches on the Western Front during World War I.

1934 – The embattled Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China. Known as Ch'ang Cheng—the "Long March"—the retreat lasted 368 days and covered 6,000 miles, nearly twice the distance from New York to San Francisco.

1946 – At Nuremberg, Germany, 10 high-ranking Nazi officials are executed by hanging for their crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes during World War II.

1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.

1968 – Czechoslovakia & Russian "accord" rules allies Soviet force.

1970 – Anwar Sadat elected president of Egypt, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1973 – Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Paris peace accords. Kissinger accepted, but Tho declined the award until such time as "peace is truly established."

1978 – Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla elected Pope John Paul II. Also known as Saint John Paul the Great, was pope of the Catholic Church from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005. He was the second longest-serving pope in modern history after Pope Pius IX who served for nearly 32 years from 1846 to 1878. Born in Poland, John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI who served from 1522 to 1523.

1982 – Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz, warns United States will withdraw from the United Nations if they vote to exclude Israel.

1991 – George Jo Hennard drives his truck through a window in Luby’s Cafeteria in Kileen,Texas, and then opens fire on a lunch crowd of over 100 people, killing 23 and injuring 20 more. Hennard then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. The incident was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.

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


1998 – Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.

2012 – The extrasolar planet Alpha Centauri Bb is discovered.



TODAY'S BIRTHS

1758 Noah Webster, American lexicographer (d. 1843)

1854 Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, and poet (d. 1900)

1888 Eugene O'Neill, American playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)

1927 Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2015)

1950 Károly Horváth, Romanian-Hungarian cellist, flute player, and composer (d. 2015)


From Wikipedia and Googleexcept as noted.

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