16 October History
- 1555 - The Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley are burned at the stake for heresy in England.
- 1701 - Yale University is founded as The Collegiate School of Kilingworth, Connecticut by Congregationalists who consider Harvard too liberal.
- 1793 - Queen Marie Antoinette is beheaded by guillotine during the French Revolution.
- 1846 - Ether was first administered in public at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston by Dr. William Thomas Green Morton during an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren.
- 1859 - Abolitionist John Brown, with 21 men, seizes the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. U.S. Marines capture the raiders, killing several. John Brown is later hanged in Virginia for treason.
- 1901 - President Theodore Roosevelt incites controversy by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to the White House.
- 1908 - The first airplane flight in England is made at Farnsborough, by Samuel Cody, a U.S. citizen.
- 1934 - Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base in Kiangsi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. With his pregnant wife and about 30,000 Red Army troops, he sets out on the "Long March."
- 1938 - Billy the Kid, a ballet by Aaron Copland, opens in Chicago.
- 1940 - Benjamin O. Davis becomes the U.S. Army's first African American Brigadier General.
- 1946 - Ten Nazi war criminals are hanged in Nuremberg, Germany.
- 1969 - The New York Mets win the World Series four games to one over the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles.
- 1973 - Israeli General Ariel Sharon crosses the Suez Canal and begins to encircle two Egyptian armies.
- 1978 - The college of cardinals elects 58-year-old Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, a Pole, the first non-Italian Pope since 1523.
- 1984 - A baboon heart is transplanted into 15-day-old Baby Fae–the first transplant of the kind–at Loma Linda University Medical Center, California. Baby Fae lives until November 15.
- 1995 - The Million Man March for 'A Day of Atonement' takes place in Washington, D.C.
16 October Birthdays
- 1758 - Noah Webster, U.S. teacher, lexicographer and publisher who wrote the American Dictionary of the English Language.
- 1797 - Lord Cardigan, leader of the famed Light Brigade.
- 1849 - George Washington Wiliams, historian, clergyman and politician.
- 1854 - Oscar Wilde, dramatist, poet, novelist and critic.
- 1886 - David Ben-Gurion, Israeli statesman.
- 1888 - Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Prize-winning playwright (A Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh).
- 1898 - William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
- 1906 - Cleanth Brooks, Kentucky-born writer and educator.
- 1919 - Kathleen Winsor, writer Forever Amber.
- 1925 - Angela Lansbury, stage, screen, and TV actress
- 1927 - Gunther Grass, novelist, playwright, painter and sculptor best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum.
- 1930 - Dan Pagis, Romanian-born Israeli poet.