On October 16, 1781, George Washington captured Yorktown, Virginia, after the Siege of Yorktown.
October 16 is a traditional date to award Nobel Peace Prizes, good (Desmond Tutu, 1984), and bad (Henry Kissinger, 1973). Two Nobel laureates were born on October 16, as well: Austen Chamberlain, English statesman, saw daylight first in 1863; Eugene O’Neill, American playwright and Nobel Laureate for Literature, made his debut in 1888.
On October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was arrested for spying: The Dreyfus Affair begins.
On October 14, 1644, Willliam Penn was born. An English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania (the English North American colony and future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), he was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians.
On October 13, 1870, American social critic and education theorist Albert Jay Nock was born. Nock was the author of a number of books, including “Jefferson, the Man” and “Our Enemy, The State,” but was probably most famous for his intellectual autobiography, “Memoirs of a Superfluous Man,” which was widely read and admired amongst conservatives in the 1950s and 1960s.
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, thinking he had reached India.
Exactly two hundred years later, a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips ended the Salem Witch Trials.
On October 12, 1823, Charles Macintosh of Scotland sold his first raincoat.
On October 11, 1811, the Juliana began its maiden voyage on its regular route, between New York City, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey. It was the world’s first steam-powered ferry, invented by John Stevens (pictured). His earlier steam-powered boat, the Phoenix, marked the pages of history as the first steam-powered boat to navigate the open ocean, two years earlier.
October 11, 1890 marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations. John J. Pershing is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.
On October 10, 1714, the French economist Pierre le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert or Boisguillebert (pictured) died. On the same date in 1973, Austrian-born American economist, Ludwig von Mises died. Both economists were known for their defenses of freer markets: le Pesant for pioneering the critique of mercantilism; Mises for systematizing economic theory and advancing the critique of both socialism and latter-day mercantalism (what he called “interventionism”).
On October 9, 1635, Protestant theologian Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he spoke out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land. He moved south, founding Providence Plantations, where he fought for separation of church and state, the rights of aboriginal Americans, and against slavery.
The date October 8, 1582, does not exist in the records of Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, the result of that year’s implementation of the Gregorian calendar.
Fearing a Catholic plot, Protestant countries adopted the calendar much later. By the time Britain and its colonies got on board in 1752, eleven days had to be “disappeared.” This caused riots in some places, as people suspected some horrible chicanery — and in actual fact the inspiration for the “Give us our eleven days” protest had something to do with taxes, so it might not have been as idiotic as it now seems.
On October 7, 1792, George Mason — “The Father of the Bill of Rights” — died. He had drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and, at the time of the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, had insisted on the addition of articles to solidify state’s and individual rights within the new order.
George Mason has been honored in numerous ways, including by the United States Postal Service with an 18¢ Great Americans series postage stamp; a bas-relief in the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives as one of 23 honoring great lawmakers; and with an annual award named for him presented to a person who has made significant, lasting contribution to the practice of journalism in the Commonwealth, awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists, Virginia Pro Chapter.