Today in History: Topkapı Palace Opened to Visit as a Museum

October 16 is the 289th (290th in leap years) day of the year according to the Gregorian calendar. The number of days left until the end of the year is 76.

Railways

• 16 October 1830 Projects were prepared for the first railway construction in the Ottoman Empire.

Events 

• 1793 - Marie Antoinette, accused of treason in the French Revolution, is executed by guillotine.
• 1529 – The Ottoman Army, commanded by Suleiman I, lifted the Siege of Vienna.
• 1730 – Grand Vizier Nevşehirli İbrahim Pasha, in line with the wishes of those who caused the Patrona Halil Rebellion, Sultan III. He was strangled by Ahmet.
• 1916 - Margaret Sanger founded the first birth control clinic in New York.
• 1924 – Topkapi Palace was opened as a museum.
• 1940 - The Warsaw ghetto was established by Nazi SS troops.
• 1945 – The murder, which went down in history as the Ankara Murder, took place in which high-level bureaucrats were involved.
• 1949 – The Greek Civil War ends.
• 1951 – Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in Rawalpindi.
• 1964 - China detonated its first atomic bomb, becoming the world's 4th nuclear power.
• 1978 - Polish cardinal Karol Wojtla, II. John Paul was elected Pope.
• 1990 - Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, free market economyexplained what to do.
• 1992 – Turkish Armed Forces launched a cross-border operation in the Haftanin region in northern Iraq.
• 1995 – Garry Kasparov defeated his rival Viswanathan Anand in a month-long chess tournament.
• 2002 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein received all the votes in the popular vote for his new 7-year term.
• 2002 – United States President George W. Bush signs a resolution approved by the US Congress authorizing war on Iraq.

Births 

• 1430 – II. James, King of Scots from 1437 (d. 1460)
• 1622 – Pierre Puget, French painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer (d. 1694)
• 1714 – Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist (d. 1795)
• 1752 – Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, German historian and theologian, covenant critic (d. 1827)
• 1758 – Noah Webster, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific writer (d. 1843)
• 1841 – Itō Hirobumi, Japanese politician and soldier who became Japan's first prime minister (d. 1909)
• 1854 - Karl Kautsky, German socialist leader and World War II. One of the leading theorists of the International (b. 1938)
• 1854 - Oscar Wilde Portrait of Dorian Gray Irish-born English writer (d. 1900), best known for his novel
• 1855 – Samet bey Mehmandarov, Azerbaijani artillery general (d. 1931)
• 1861 – JB Bury, Irish historian, medieval Roman historian, and philologist (d. 1927)
• 1863 – Austen Chamberlain, British politician who served as Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1924 to 1929 (d. 1937)
• 1884 – Rembrandt Bugatti, Italian sculptor (d. 1916)
• 1886 – David Ben-Gurion, founder and first prime minister of the state of Israel (d. 1973)
• 1888 – Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Prize-winning American playwright (d. 1953)
• 1890 – Michael Collins, Irish independence struggle hero (d. 1922)
• 1890 – Paul Strand, American photographer (d. 1976)
• 1891 – Behzat Butak, Turkish theater artist (d. 1963)
• 1898 – William O. Douglas, legal educator and U.S. Supreme Court judge (d. 1980)
• 1898 – Othmar Pferschy, Austrian photographer who first documented and promoted the Republic of Turkey in a versatile way with his photographs (d. 1984)
• 1906 – León Klimovsky, Argentine screenwriter and filmmaker (d. 1996)
• 1908 – Enver Hoxha, President of Albania (d. 1985)
• 1918 – Louis Althusser, French Marxist thinker (d. 1990)
• 1925 - Angela Lansbury, English actress
• 1927 – Günter Grass, German author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2015)
• 1928 – Mary Daly, American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian (d. 2010)
• 1928 – Ann Morgan Guilbert, American film and television actress (d. 2016)
• 1930 – Patricia Jones, Canadian athlete
• 1936 – Andrey Chikatilo, Soviet serial killer (d. 1994)
• 1940 - Barry Corbin, American actor
• 1940 – Dave DeBusschere, American professional basketball player (d. 2003)
• 1946 – Geoff Barnett, English professional football player (d. 2021)
• 1946 – Suzanne Somers is an American actress, singer, and businesswoman.
• 1952 – Crazy Mohan, Indian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright (d. 2019)
• 1952 – Coşkun Sabah, Turkish musician
• 1953 – Giuliano Terraneo, Italian football player
• 1953 – Paulo Roberto Falcão, Brazilian former football player and manager
• 1954 – Corinna Harfouch, German actress
• 1958 – Tim Robbins, American actor, screenwriter, and director
• 1961 – Konca Kuriş, Turkish Muslim feminist writer
• 1962 – Manute Bol, Sudanese-born American basketball player and political activist (d. 2010)
• 1962 – Flea, US-Australian bass guitarist
• 1962 – Dmitri Hvorostovski, Russian baritone (d. 2017)
• 1962 – Umut Oran, Turkish politician
• 1968 - Randall Batinkoff, American actor
• 1968 – Elsa Zylberstein, French film, television and theater actress
• 1970 – Mehmet Scholl, German football player
• 1971 – Chad Gray, American musician
• 1974 – Aurela Gache, Albanian singer
• 1975 - Kellie Martin is an American actress.
• 1977 – John Mayer, American musician
• 1978 – Ahmet Kutalmış Türkeş, Turkish politician
• 1979 – İlker Ayrık, Turkish actor, presenter and director
• 1981 - Brea Grant is an American actress.
• 1982 – Gamze Karaman, Turkish handball player, model, actress and presenter
• 1982 – Cristian Riveros, Paraguayan national football player
• 1983 – Loreen, Moroccan-Swedish Singer-Music producer (2012 Eurovision winner)
• 1983 – Kenny Omega, Canadian professional wrestler
• 1985 – Verena Sailer, former German sprinter
• 1985 - Casey Stoner, Australian 2007 and 2011 MotoGP champion, retired professional motorcyclist
• 1986 – Bart Buysse, Belgian football player
• 1986 – Inna, Romanian singer
• 1988 – Zoltan Stieber, Hungarian national football player
• 1992 – Kostas Fortunis, Greek national football player
• 1997 – Charles Leclerc, Formula 1 driver from Monaco
• 1997 - Naomi Osaka is a Japanese professional tennis player.

Deaths 

• 976 – II. Referee, Caliph of Cordoba between 961-976 (b. 915)
• 1284 – Şemseddin Juveyni, lived during the reign of Ilkhanid ruler Abaka Khan, is one of the viziers of his time.
• 1591 – XIV. Gregory, 5 December 1590 – 16 October 1591, Pope of the Catholic church (b. 1535)
• 1660 – John Cooke, first Attorney General of the Commonwealth of England after the English Civil War (b. 1608)
• 1680 – Raimondo Montecuccoli, Italian general (b. 1609)
• 1730 – Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, Ottoman grand vizier (b. 1660)
• 1791 – Grigori Potyomkin, Russian general, statesman, and Tsarina II. He is Katerina's lover (b. 1739)
• 1793 – Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (executed by guillotine) (b. 1755)
• 1909 – Jakub Bart Cisinski, German writer (b. 1856)
• 1937 – Jean de Brunhoff, French writer and illustrator (b. 1899)
• 1939 – Mehmet Ali Bey, interior minister of Damat Ferit Pasha's cabinet (b. 1919)
• 1941 – Gabriele Reuter, German literary scholar (b. 1859)
• 1946 – Hans Frank, German lawyer who worked for the National Socialist German Workers' Party in the 1920s and 1930s (b. 1900)
• 1946 – Wilhelm Frick, Nazi Germany's Minister of the Interior (b. 1877)
• 1946 – Alfred Jodl, German Generaloberst
• 1946 – Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Professor Doctor, General, and Nazi Party leader in Nazi Germany (b. 1903)
• 1946 – Wilhelm Keitel, German officer (b. 1882)
• 1946 – Alfred Rosenberg, German politician (b. 1893)
• 1946 - Fritz Sauckel, II. German war criminal in World War II (b. 1894)
• 1946 – Arthur Seyß-Inquart, Austrian national socialist politician (b. 1892)
• 1946 – Julius Streicher, anti-Semitic ideologue and demagogue in Nazi Germany (b. 1885)
• 1946 – Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Germany's Foreign Minister and diplomat (b. 1893)
• 1951 – Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first Prime Minister (assassinated) (b. 1895)
• 1956 – Jules Rimet, French FIFA president (b. 1873)
• 1956 – Jack Southworth, English football player (b. 1866)
• 1959 – George Catlett Marshall, American soldier and statesman (b. 1880)
• 1962 – Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher, author (b. 1884)
• 1973 – Gene Krupa, American jazz drummer (b. 1909)
• 1978 - Dan Dailey, was an American dancer and actress (b. 1915)
• 1981 – Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and politician (b. 1915)
• 1988 – Güneri Tecer, Turkish classical music artist (b. 1933)
• 1989 – Cornel Wilde, American actor (b. 1915)
• 1992 – Shirley Booth, American stage, film, radio and television actress (b. 1898)
• 1994 – Raúl Juliá, Puerto Rican actor (b. 1940)
• 1996 – Eric Malpass, English novelist (b. 1910)
• 1997 – James A. Michener, American author (b. 1907)
• 2003 – Avni Arbaş, Turkish painter (b. 1919)
• 2003 – Stu Hart, Canadian professional wrestler and trainer (b. 1915)
• 2006 – Füsun Sayek, ophthalmologist who was the president of the Turkish Medical Association (b. 1947)
• 2007 – Toşe Proeski, Macedonian singer (b. 1981)
• 2007 – Deborah Kerr, Scottish-English film and stage actress (b. 1921)
• 2010 – Barbara Billingsley, American actress, voice actor (b. 1915)
• 2011 – Dan Wheldon, British racing driver (b. 1978)
• 2013 – Ed Lauter, American actor (b. 1938)
• 2015 – Memduh Ün, Turkish football player, film director, actor, screenwriter, producer (b. 1920)
• 2017 – Daphne Caruana Galizia, Maltese journalist and blogger (b. 1964)
• 2017 – Sean Hughes, British actor, comedian and writer (b. 1965)
• 2018 – Walter Huddleston, American politician (b. 1926)
• 2018 – Dimitar Petrov, Bulgarian film director (b. 1924)
• 2019 – Ed Beck, American professional basketball player (b. 1936)
• 2019 – Ángel Pérez García, Spanish professional football player and manager (b. 1957)
• 2020 – László Branikovits, Hungarian professional football player (b. 1949)
• 2020 – Johnny Bush, American country singer, songwriter, and musician (b. 1935)
• 2020 – Anthony Chisholm, American actor (b. 1943)
• 2020 – Markar Esayan, Turkish writer, journalist and politician of Armenian-Circassian descent (b. 1969)
• 2020 – Itzhak Ilan, Georgian-born Israeli intelligence specialist (b. 1956)
• 2020 – James Redford, American documentary filmmaker, director, screenwriter, and environmental activist (b. 1962)

Holidays and special occasions 

• World Food Day
• World Anesthesia Day