This is a list of selected October 16 anniversaries that appear in 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 might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
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Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Hans Frank -
Jadwiga of Poland -
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France -
Marie Antoinette -
Girton College -
William Rowan Hamilton -
Broom Bridge -
Million Man March -
John Brown -
Walt Disney -
Mushroom cloud of the Project 596 test -
Bibliotheca Alexandrina -
Mushroom cloud of the Project 596 test
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Walt Disney
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| : World Food Day | unreferenced section |
| 456 – Magister militum Ricimer defeated Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became master of the Western Roman Empire. | refimprove section |
| 955 – The German forces of Otto the Great defeated the Obotrite federation at the Battle on the Raxa, marking the high point of Otto's reign. | date not referenced, a couple of other cites needed, and "high point of Otto's reign" needs rewording as that is a subjective opinion |
| 1590 – Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo caught his wife having an extramarital affair with Duke Fabrizio Carafa of Andria and killed them both on the spot. | refimprove section |
| 1793 – Marie Antoinette, queen consort of Louis XVI, was guillotined at the Place de la Révolution in Paris at the height of the French Revolution. | uncited sections |
| 1843 – William Rowan Hamilton first wrote down the fundamental formula for quaternions, carving the equation into the side of Broom Bridge in Cabra, Dublin, Ireland. | unreferenced section |
| 1846 – American dentist William T. G. Morton made a widely publicized demonstration of ether as a general anaesthetic. | lots of CN tags in one section |
| 1859 – Hoping to start an armed slave revolt, American abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory in Virginia. | essay-like |
| 1869 – Workers in Cardiff, New York, uncovered a 10 ft (3.0 m) tall petrified man, which was later revealed to be a hoax. | refimprove section |
| 1869 – Girton College (pictured), one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge and England's first residential college for women, was founded. | updated needed tag |
| 1934 – Surrounded by Kuomintang troops, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu, and Otto Braun led 130,000 Red Army soldiers and civilians on a "Long March" from Jiangxi. | refimprove section |
| 1940 – World War II: Nazi governor-general Hans Frank established the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland. | refimprove section for list of people |
| 1945 – The Food and Agriculture Organization was founded in Quebec City, Canada, to lead international efforts to defeat hunger. | refimprove section |
| 1951 – The first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. | section needs to be rewritten |
| 1968 – To protest racism in the United States, African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos performed the Black Power salute during a medal ceremony at the Mexico City Summer Olympics. | refimprove section |
| 1972 – Emmerdale Farm, the United Kingdom's second-oldest soap opera, was first broadcast in the daytime on ITV. | Unreffed parts |
| 1975 – Five journalists for Australian television networks based in the town of Balibo were killed by Indonesian special force soldiers prior to their invasion of East Timor. | unreferenced section |
| 1984 – The Bill debuted on ITV, eventually becoming the longest-running police procedural in British television history. | refimprove section |
| 1986 – Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner made his ascent of Lhotse, making him the first person to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders". | refimprove section |
| 1995 – Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam convened the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., in an effort to unite in self-help and self-defense against economic and social ills plaguing the African American community. | citation formatting issues |
| 1996 – At least 83 people were killed and more than 140 injured in a stampede at Guatemala City's Estadio Mateo Flores during a World Cup qualification match between Guatemala and Costa Rica. | unreferenced sections |
| 2002 – The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (pictured) in Alexandria, Egypt, a commemoration of the ancient library that was lost in antiquity, was officially inaugurated. | Primary sources |
Eligible
- 1384 – Jadwiga was officially crowned as "King of Poland" instead of "Queen" to reflect the fact that she was a sovereign in her own right.
- 1793 – War of the First Coalition: The two-day Battle of Wattignies concluded with Jean-Baptiste Jourdan leading French forces to victory over Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.
- 1841 – The Church of Scotland established Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario, in Canada.
- 1875 – Brigham Young University, the largest religious university in the United States, was founded in Provo, Utah.
- 1905 – Authorities of the British Raj partitioned the Bengal Presidency, separating the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas.
- 1923 – Roy and Walt Disney (pictured) founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood, which eventually grew to become one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world.
- 1964 – With the success of Project 596, China became the world's fifth nuclear power.
- 1973 – The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize would be jointly awarded to Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ, sparking international controversy.
- 1991 – A man drove his vehicle through the window of a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and opened fire, killing 23 people before fatally shooting himself.
- 2017 – The Maltese journalist and anti-corruption activist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb attack in Bidnija.
- Born/died this day: | Shams al-Din Juvayni |d|1284| Johann Rudolf Stadler |d|1637| John Cook |d|1660| John Hunter |d|1793|Veerapandiya Kattabomman |d|1799| Lucy Stanton |b|1831| Kathleen Winsor |b|1919| Paul Monette |b|1945| Hema Malini |b|1948| Tessa Munt |b|1959 | Pamela C. Rasmussen |b|1959| Naomi Osaka|b|1997
Notes
- Bob Beamon appears on October 18, so Black Power salute should not appear in the same year.
- Luzhniki disaster (another human stampede) appears on October 20, so Estadio Mateo Flores should not appear in the same year
Margaret Sanger
- 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacked French forces led by Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic Wars, with over 500,000 troops involved.
- 1834 – Most of the Palace of Westminster in London was destroyed in a fire caused by the burning of wooden tally sticks.
- 1916 – Margaret Sanger (pictured) established the United States' first family planning clinic in Brooklyn, New York.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: The Gestapo conducted a raid on the Roman Ghetto, capturing 1,259 members of the Jewish community, most of whom were sent to Auschwitz.
- 2013 – In Laos's deadliest air accident, Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashed into the Mekong River, resulting in the deaths of all 49 people aboard.
- Pedro González de Lara (d. 1130)
- Angela Lansbury (b. 1925)
- Linda November (b. 1944)
- Naomi Osaka (b. 1997)
More anniversaries: