Monday, Oct. 16 1758 Noah Webster born; the U.S. lexicographer published the dictionary in 1828 which now bears his name.
1793 Marie Antoinette, queen of France and wife of King Louis XVI, was guillotined for treason.
1813 The battle of Leipzig began. In the three-day battle, the Allied armies won a decisive victory against the French.
1846 For the first time, a major operation was carried out using ether as an anesthetic.
Dr. John Warren performed the removal of a tumor at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
1854 Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, poet, novelist, and renowned wit, born.
1859 U.S. antislavery activist John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia and seized the armory to provide for his militia. Brown was captured and later hanged.
1888 Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill born. The playwright became the first U.S. dramatist to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. Best known for his "Long Day's Journey Into Night".
1890 Michael Collins, Irish politician and revolutionary leader, born.
He signed the treaty which led to the Irish Free State in December 1921 and became its chairman.
1927 Guenter Grass born. Leading German writer he also became a speech writer for Willy Brandt. His reputation grew enormously with the publication (1959) of "The Tin Drum".
1945 The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations was established, with the main aims of raising levels of nutrition and improving standards of living.
1946 Top Nazi war criminals were hanged at Nuremburg.
Among them were Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
1951 Liaquat Ali Khan, prime minister of Pakistan, was shot dead while addressing a public meeting in Rawalpindi.
1959 George C. Marshall, U.S. army chief of staff during World War II, died.
The European recovery program he proposed in 1947 became known as the Marshall Plan. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
1963 Ludwig Erhard was elected chancellor of West Germany in succession to Konrad Adenauer.
1968 Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union signed a treaty concerning eventual withdrawal of Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia.
1995 In a huge demonstration near the U.S. Capitol, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan offered a thunderous sermon portraying America as a white supremacist society.
1996 78 people were crushed to death in an avalanche of bodies at an overcrowded Guatemalan stadium after fans without tickets barged in to see a world cup soccer qualifying game.
1998 Jonathan Postel, one of a handful of people who built the global computer network that is today's Internet, died aged 55.