Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 16
- 456 - Magister militum Ricimer defeated the Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became master of the western Roman Empire. He spent the rest of his life as the Patrician, ruling through a number of puppet emperors.
- 1813 - The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1940 - Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland, was established by the German Generalgouverneur Hans Frank.
- 1978 - Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first ever from a Slavic country.
- 2002 - Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria in Egypt, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, was officially inaugurated.
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