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“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
~ Oscar Wilde
Wikipedia (Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) an Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.)
October 16th, 456
Roman Empire:
456 - Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire:
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
October 16th, 1384
Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.
Wikipedia Painting: Jadwiga, King of Poland.
October 16th, 1780
American Revolutionary War:
1780 - Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the War.
1781 - Siege of Yorktown; George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
● Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumbull, depicting the British surrendering to French (left) and American (right) troops. Oil on canvas, 1820.
October 16th, 1793
French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette of France, widow of Louis XVI is guillotined at the height of the Revolution.
Wikipedia Painting: Marie Antoinette, credit Marie-antoinette.org.
October 16th, 1793
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1793 - Battle of Wattignies; ends in a French victory.
1813 - Battle of Leipzig; The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of Wattignies; Lazare Carnot at Wattignies by Georges Moreau de Tours.
Battle of Leipzig.
October 16th, 1859
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry: John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
Wikipedia.org Image: John Brown as he appears at the National Portrait Gallery; Harpers Ferry, West Virginia; John Brown (1800-1859), a white American abolitionist, was hanged for treason, murder and insurrection after his failed attempt to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to gain arms for a slave uprising.
October 16th, 1916
Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States.
Wikipedia Photo: Thomas Edison / First Edison Jumbo Dynamo, credit National Museum of American History.
October 16th, 1934
Chinese Civil War:
1934 - Chinese Communists begin the Long March - it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.
Wikipedia Photo: In 1934, Mao Zedong headed the Long March. The Long March was when the Chinese Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, forced the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Zedong, on a march to the caves of Shaanxi. (colorized); Government soldiers train with modern machine guns; People's Liberation Army attacking government defensive positions in Shangtang; US diplomat Patrick J. Hurley, Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek, Chang Ch'ün, Wang Shi Jie (王世杰), Mao Zedong; A Communist leader addressing Long March survivors; The PLA enters Beijing in the Pingjin Campaign and control the later capital of PRC.
October 16th, 1939
World War II:
1939 - First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
October 16th, 1940
World War II: Holocaust;
1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
Wikipedia Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.
October 16th, 1944
Woody Woodpecker and Wally Walrus's first steady foil, was debuted at the at the The Beach Nut, a Walter Lantz's cartoon.
Wikipedia Photo: Woody Woodpecker, from the opening title sequence for the 1951 short Puny Express. This logo sequence was used on many Woody cartoons of the time.
October 16th, 1946
Post World War II: Nuremberg Trials; Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
Wikipedia Photo: Auschwitz Concentration Camp; Nuremberg Trials - View of the defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg; Chief American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson addresses the Nuremberg court, November 20, 1945.
October 16th, 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis: between the United States, and Cuba and the Soviet Union begins.
Wikipedia Photo: Cuban Missile Crisis: Fidel Castro and Nikita Khruschev; President John F. Kennedy; U-2 reconnaissance plane; U2 Image of Cuban Missile Crisis; Missile silo.
October 16th, 1964
People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
Wikipedia Photo: A huge cloud forms after a test of an atom bomb. U.S. Air Force—Time Life Pictures / Getty Images
October 16th, 1978
Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave.
Wikipedia Photo: Pope John Paul II at Vatican City
October 16th, 1995
Skye Bridge connecting mainland Highland with the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Wikipedia Photo: Skye Bridge.
October 16th, 2012
The extrasolar planet Alpha Centauri Bb is discovered.
Wikipedia Image: Milky Way Galaxy, National Geographic
October 16th, 2013
Aviation accidents and incidents:
2013 - Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes on approach to Pakse International Airport in Laos, killing 49 people.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP