October 16, 1649
The British colony of Maine granted religious freedom to all citizens the same year that King Charles I was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church. |
October 16, 1859
Abolitionist John Brown led a group of 21 other men, five black and sixteen white, in a raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
They had hoped to set off a slave revolt — throughout the south — with the weapons they had planned to seize.
 John Brown
Virtually all his compatriots were killed or captured by General Robert E. Lee’s troops; Brown was wounded and arrested, and hanged for treason within two months.
Read more
The Tragic Prelude (John Brown)mural by John Steuart Curry (1937-1942)
Former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said of Brown that he was a white man “in sympathy a black man, as deeply interested in our cause as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” |
October 16, 1901
 President Theodore Roosevelt
President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute and the most prominent African American of his time, to a meeting in the White House. The meeting went long and the president asked Washington to stay for dinner, the first black person ever to do so. Newspapers in the both the South and North were critical, but the South with more venom. The Memphis “Scimiter” said that it was “the most damnable outrage that has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States.” Roosevelt claimed he had invited a friend to dinner with his family and it was no one else’s business.
 Booker T. Washington |
October 16, 1934
Dick Sheppard, who volunteered and joined the Army as a chaplain in World War I, started the Peace Pledge Union in England. In a letter published in The Guardian newspaper and elsewhere, Sheppard, a well-known priest in the Church of England, invited those who would be willing to join a public demonstration against war to send him a postcard. Within a few weeks he had received 30,000 replies. Members of the Peace Pledge Union vowed to “renounce war and never again to support another.”
 
Reverend Sheppard had been the first ever to broadcast religious services on the radio and, when Vicar of St. Martin-in-the Fields, Trafalgar Square, he had opened the building to the homeless of London.“Up to now the peace movement has received its main support from women, but it seems high time now that men should throw their weight into the scales against war.” -Dick Sheppard
Read more about the Peace Pledge Union |
October 16, 1964
China detonated its first atomic bomb, becoming the fifth nuclear-armed nation. The 20-kiloton fission device (equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT) was detonated in the vicinity of Lop Nor, a lake in a remote region of the Central Asian province of Sinkiang.
” To defend oneself is the inalienable right of every sovereign State. And to safeguard world peace is the common task of all peace-loving countries. China cannot remain idle and do nothing in the face of the ever-increasing nuclear threat posed by the United States.China is forced to conduct nuclear tests and develop nuclear weapons . . . In developing nuclear weapons, China’s aim is to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear Powers and to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
Chou En-lai, the Chinese Prime Minister, sent messages to all heads of government for a world summit conference on nuclear disarmament. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a news conference that the United States did not regard Communist China’s proposal “as having any practical value.” Deng Jiaxian. The father of the chinese bomb.
TRINITY AND BEYOND™ (The Atomic Bomb Movie), a documentary by Peter Kuran |
October 16, 1967
Joan Baez the day after the arrest
Folksinger Joan Baez was arrested in a peace demonstration as rallies took place across America during “Stop the Draft Week.” 1158 young men returned their draft cards in eighteen U.S. cities. Baez was among 122 anti-draft protesters arrested for sitting down at the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California; she was sentenced to 10 days in prison.
Read more |
October 16, 1968
During medal presentations at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, winning sprinters Tommie Smith (Gold) and John Carlos (Bronze) raised their black-gloved fists while the U.S. national anthem was played. They were suspended from the team at the insistence of the International Olympic Committee, and expelled from the Games two days later.
Smith later told the media that he raised his right fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos’s left fist represented unity in black America.
They were wearing just socks to represent
world poverty.
Peter Norman (silver medalist, left) from Australia also wears an OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge in solidarity with Smith and Carlos. He was castigated upon return to Australia and throughout his life for his support of these two brave athletes.
Read more |
October 16, 1973
 Henry Kissinger
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, though accused of war crimes by some for the massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho (who refused the honor) for the cease-fire agreement they had negotiated. This occurred just a month after the bloody military coup, fully supported by the Nixon administration and aided by the CIA, that overturned the democratically elected government of Chile, and installed General Augusto Pinochet as military dictator for the next 17 years. |
October 16, 1984
Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of South Africa, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in fighting apartheid. He has gone on to be a relentless advocate for justice around the world.
Desmond Tutu – Nobel peace prize recipient |
October 16, 1998
In a human rights and international law breakthrough, British authorities, after receiving an extradition request from Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, placed former Chilean dictator, and senator-for-life, General Augusto Pinochet under arrest for “crimes of genocide and terrorism that include murder.”
Augusto Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher
Chronology of Pinochet’s rule |
October 16th every year
United Nations’ World Food Day is recognized every year.
About the annual day of hunger awareness |
Sadako Sasaki
Langston Hughes
Allende and supporters
Archibald Cox 
Richard Nixon
Scottie's Playtime 