ON OCT. 16 ...

In 1758, Noah Webster, the lexicographer and author, was born in Hartford, Conn.

In 1790 Congress established the District of Columbia as the permanent seat of the government.

In 1793 leaders of the French Revolution beheaded the queen, Marie Antoinette.

In 1859 Kansas abolitionist

John Brown led 20 men in a raid on the U.S. arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va.

In 1943 Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly officially opened the subway system.

In 1946, 10 Nazis were hanged in Germany following the famed Nuremberg war-crimes trial.

In 1964 China became the world’s fifth atomic power as it announced it had tested its first nuclear bomb.

In 1969 the New York Mets, which started the season as 100-1 longshots but overtook the Cubs in the National League Eastern Division, completed their “miracle” year by defeating Baltimore 5-3 to win the World Series in five games.

In 1978 Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland was elected pope, making him the first non-Italian pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in 465 years. (He would take the name John Paul II.)

In 1984 Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of nonviolent struggle for racial equality in South Africa.

In 1987, a58 ½-hour drama in Midland, Texas, ended happily as rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl trapped in a narrow, abandoned well.

In 1991 George Hennard crashed into a cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and began firing, killing 23 people before taking his own life.

In 1995 Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan presided over a gathering estimated at more than 800,000 African-Americans on the National Mall in Washington as part of his Million Man March to demonstrate unity among black men.

the White House announced North Korea had disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program.