Also on this day
Lead Story
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.
Civil war in China between the...
American Revolution
1773
The first public statement against the British Parliament’s Tea Act was a document printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette on this day in 1773. The document became known as the “Philadelphia Resolutions.”
The Tea Act of 1773 was a bill designed to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering...
Automotive
1958
On October 16, 1958, Chevrolet begins to sell a car-truck hybrid that it calls the El Camino. Inspired by the Ford Ranchero, which had already been on the market for two years, the El Camino was a combination sedan-pickup truck built on the Impala body, with the same “cat’s eye”...
Civil War
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. Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly...
Cold War
1964
The People’s Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability, after a successful nuclear test on this day in 1964. China is the fifth member of this exclusive club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.
U.S. officials were not terribly surprised...
Crime
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...
Disaster
1996
A stampede of soccer fans before a World Cup qualifying match in Guatemala City kills 84 people and seriously injures more than 100 on this day in 1996.
The Guatemala national team was set to face off against Costa Rica on a Wednesday night in Guatemala City. Approximately 60,000 fans, most...
General Interest
1793
Nine months after the execution of her husband, the former King Louis XVI of France, Marie-Antoinette follows him to the guillotine.The daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, she married Louis in 1770 to strengthen the French-Austrian alliance. At a time of economic turmoil in France, she lived extravagantly...
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.Two weeks earlier, the 10 were found guilty by the International War Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death along with two other Nazi officials. Among...
1987
On this day in 1987, in an event that had viewers around the world glued to their televisions, 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued after being trapped for 58 hours in an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas.
The drama unfolded on the morning of October 14, 1987, when McClure fell through...
Hollywood
1925
On this day in 1925, the stage and screen actress Angela Lansbury, who starred in the TV series Murder, She Wrote and earned Oscar nominations for her performances in such films as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, is born in London, England. In Hollywood, a place...
Literary
1854
Oscar Wilde is born on this day in Dublin, Ireland. He grew up in Ireland and went to England to attend Oxford, where he graduated with honors in 1878. A popular society figure known for his wit and flamboyant style, he published his own book of poems in 1881. He...
Music
1976
The job description of a drive-time DJ on local radio back in 1976 was fairly straightforward: take some phone calls, be funny between records, give the call sign several times an hour and greet the public every so often at a local sporting event or auto-dealership opening. But as satisfying...
Old West
1851
The sadistic and murderous western gunman William Preston Longley is born on this day in 1815 in Austin County, Texas.
Little is reliably known of the youth of William Longley, or “Wild Bill” as he was later aptly called. But it is certain that before he was even 20 years...
Presidential
1854
On this day in 1854, an obscure lawyer and Congressional hopeful from the state of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech regarding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which Congress had passed five months earlier. In his speech, the future president denounced the act and outlined his views on slavery, which he...
Sports
1912
On October 16, 1912, New York Giants outfielder Fred Snodgrass drops an easy pop-up in the 10th inning of the tiebreaking eighth game of the World Series against the Red Sox.His error led to a two-run Boston rally and cost the Giants the championship.
Snodgrass, who had been a catcher for...
2011
On this day in 2011, 33-year-old Dan Wheldon, a popular, two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, dies following a fiery, 15-car crash during the IndyCar World Championship at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Nevada. Wheldon’s death marked the first on-track IndyCar fatality since 2006, when 30-year-old driver Paul Dana perished in...
Vietnam War
1968
In a series of meetings with U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu insists that North Vietnam assent to three conditions prior to a bombing halt. He said the North Vietnamese had to (1) agree to respect the neutrality of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), (2) stop...
World War I
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.
After joining the BEF in 1914, Farr was sent to the front in France;...
World War II
1946
On this day in 1946, Alfred Rosenberg, the primary fabricator and disseminator of Nazi ideology, is hanged as a war criminal.
Born in Estonia in 1893, Rosenberg studied architecture at the University of Moscow. After receiving his degree, he stayed in Russia through the early days of the Russian Revolution and...
