24 Mehr 1490

Events

• 1891 (135 years ago) A diplomatic incident between the United States and Chile occurred after U.S. sailors were attacked in Valparaíso, nearly leading to war.
• 1909 (117 years ago) William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold the first summit between a U.S. and a Mexican president. They narrowly escape assassination.
• 1923 (103 years ago) Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, today known as The Walt Disney Company.
• 1939 (87 years ago) World War II: No. 603 Squadron RAF intercepts the first Luftwaffe raid on Britain.
• 1953 (73 years ago) Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro delivers his "History Will Absolve Me" speech, and is sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment by the Fulgencio Batista government for leading an attack on the Moncada Barracks.
• 1964 (62 years ago) Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the Soviet Communist Party, while Alexei Kosygin becomes the head of government.
• 1973 (53 years ago) Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1978 (48 years ago) Cardinal Karol Wojtyła is elected to the papacy as Pope John Paul II, he becomes the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523.

Births

• 1854 (172 years ago) Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, and poet (died 1900)
• 1886 (140 years ago) David Ben-Gurion, Polish-Israeli soldier and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Israel (died 1973)
• 1888 (138 years ago) Eugene O'Neill, American playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1953)
• 1908 (118 years ago) Enver Hoxha, Albanian general and politician, Prime Minister of Albania (died 1985)
• 1918 (108 years ago) Louis Althusser, Algerian-French philosopher and academic (died 1990)
• 1927 (99 years ago) Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2015)
• 1983 (43 years ago) Loreen, Swedish singer
• 1997 (29 years ago) Naomi Osaka, Japanese tennis player

Deaths

• 1591 (435 years ago) Gregory XIV, pope of the Catholic Church (born 1535)
• 1793 (233 years ago) Marie Antoinette, Austrian-born queen consort of Louis XVI of France (born 1755)
• 1959 (67 years ago) George Marshall, American general and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Defense, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1880)
• 1981 (45 years ago) Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and politician, 5th Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel (born 1915)
• 2007 (19 years ago) Deborah Kerr, Scottish actress (born 1921)
• 2023 (3 years ago) Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and Nobel Prize laureate (born 1937)
• 2024 (2 years ago) Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas (born 1962)
• 2024 (2 years ago) Liam Payne, English singer-songwriter from One Direction (born 1993)

All 454 events, births and deaths of October 16