Today in History: Tuesday, October 16, 2012
On Oct. 16, 1859 Abolitionist John Brown, hoping to start an anti-slavery rebellion, led a raid on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry in present-day West Virginia.
1793 Marie Antoinette was beheaded during the French Revolution.
1888 Playwright Eugene O'Neill was born in New York City.
1962, the Cuban missile crisis began as President John F. Kennedy was informed that reconnaissance photographs had revealed the presence of missile bases in Cuba.
1964 China detonated its first atomic bomb.
1969 The New York Mets, a previously hapless expansion team, won the World Series 4 games to 1 over American League powerhouse the Baltimore Orioles.
1970 Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt, succeeding the late Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who negotiated a cease-fire in the Vietnam War, were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize; Tho declined the award.
1978 Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected pope by the Roman Catholic Church's College of Cardinals; he took the name John Paul II.
1984 Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
1987 Rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl who had been trapped in an abandoned well for 58 hours in Midland, Texas.
1995 A vast throng of black men gathered in Washington for the "Million Man March" led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
2002 President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq.
2011 The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was formally dedicated in Washington, D.C.