This Day in History – October 16, 2011

1780 Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War. 1781 George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown. 1793 Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution. 1829 Tremont Hotel, 1st US modern hotel opens (Boston) 1834 Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt to the ground. 1841 Queen’s University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. 1846 William TG Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome. 1859 John Brown leads a raid on Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. 1861 Confederacy starts selling postage stamps 1867 Alaska adopts the Gregorian calendar, crosses intl date line 1869 Hotel in Boston becomes the 1st to have indoor plumbing 1869 The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is “discovered”. 1869 Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England’s first residential college for women. 1875 Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. 1916 Margaret Sanger founds Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic. 1921 Jim Conzelman takes over as coach of Rock Island Independents from Frank Coughlin-only mid-game coaching change in NFL history 1923 The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney. 1925 Texas School Board prohibits teaching of evolution 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. 1939 World War II: First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe. 1940 Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army. 1940 Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established. 1940 Lottery for 1st US WW II draftees held; #158 drawn 1st 1942 Natl Boxing Assn freezes titles of those serving in armed services 1945 The Food and Agriculture Organization is founded in Quebec City, Canada. 1946 Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial. 1949 Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a “temporary cease-fire”, effectively ending the Greek Civil War. 1949 The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic are established. 1956 William J Brennan Jr becomes a Supreme Court Justice 1962 Byron R White becomes a Supreme Court Justice 1962 Cuban missile crisis began as JFK becomes aware of missiles in Cuba 1964 The People’s Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon. 1968 United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the USA’s team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. 1968 Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country. 1970 In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act. 1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1975 The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops. 1975 Rahima Banu, a 2-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, is the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox. 1975 The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, vote to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government’s annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. 1978 Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave. 1984 Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1986 Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders. 1991 Luby’s massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby’s Cafeteria. 1995 The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C. 1996 Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City. 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated. 2006 Hawaii Earthquake: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport.]]]]> ]]>