On This Day:
Wednesday October 16, 2013 This is the 289th day of the year, with 76 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: dictionary The word dictionary comes from the Latin dictio "the act of speaking, and dictionarius "a collection of words." The first example found so far is a short Akkadian word list, from central Mesopotamia, which has survived from the 7th century BC. The tradition of dictionary making really began among the Greeks when the language had changed so much that explanations and commentaries were needed. Generally, a dictionary lists a set of words with information about them. The list may attempt to be a complete inventory of a language or only of a specific part of it. The word dictionary is also extended to other reference or word books with entries in alphabetical order.
Holidays Feast day of Saints Martinian and Maxima, St. Margaret-Mary, St. Anastasius of Cluny, St. Hedwig, St. Bertrand of Comminges, St. Becharius, St. Mommolinus, St. Lull, St. Gerard Majella, and St. Gall.
Dictionary Day.
National Boss Day.
United Nations: World Food Day.
Events 1555 - Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake for heresy in England.
1846 - Ether was first used in an operation, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
1853 - Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, starting the Crimean War.
1859 - Abolitionist John Brown led a group in a raid on Harper's Ferry, intending to seize the arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. John Brown was later hanged in Virginia for treason.
1868 - America's first department store "ZCMI" (Zion's Co-Operative Mercantile Institution) opened in Salt Lake City, Utah.
1916 - Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic, in New York City.
1922 - The Simplon II railway tunnel, under the Alps, linking Switzerland and Italy, was completed.
1934 - Mao Zedong started his march with 10,000 followers, battling forces for 6000 miles until he reached Yenan in 1935 and established Chinese Communist headquarters.
1943 - Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly officially opened the city's new subway system.
1946 - At Nuremberg, Germany, ten high-ranking Nazi officials were hung for their war crimes during World War II.
1962 - The Cuban missile crisis began when 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, at Lop Nor.
1970 - Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt, succeeding the late Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1978 - Sacred College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church chose Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as the new pope (John Paul II).
1984 - Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize as a unifying figure in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa.
1987 - Jessica McClure, 18 months old, was trapped in an abandoned well in Midland, Texas, but rescued after 58.5 hours.
2002 - The White House announced that North Korea had disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program.
2002 - U.S. President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq.
Births 1758 - Noah Webster, American lexicographer, patriot, educator, and author.
1854 - Oscar Wilde, Irish dramatist.
1886 - David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister.
1888 - Eugene O'Neill, American Nobel Prize (1936) and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.
1898 - William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
1927 - Günter Grass, German novelist.
1947 - Bob Weir, American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead.
Deaths 1793 - Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of the late King Louis XVI, beheaded during the French Revolution for treason.
1959 - General George Marshall, General of the Army and U.S. Army Chief of Staff during World War II, Secretary of State (1947-1949), and Secretary of Defense (1950-1951).
1981 - Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and politician
1997 - James Michener, American short-story writer and novelist.
2004 - Pierre Emil George Salinger, White House Press Secretary to U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
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