Today in History....October 16

* 1781, George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia

* 1793, Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution

* 1834, much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt down

* 1843, Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers

* 1869, Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is discovered

* 1939, in World War II, first attack on British territory by German Luftwaffe

* 1946, 10 war criminals of the Second World War, condemned in the Nuremberg trials are hanged

* 1949, Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War

* 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba began, as U.S. President John Kennedy was informed of bases in Cuba were equipped with Soviet missiles

* 1987, rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl who had been trapped in an abandoned well for 58 hours in Midland, Texas

* 1998, British police arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London

* 2001, 12 Senate offices were closed and hundreds of staffers were tested for anthrax

* 2002, President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq. ALSO: The White House announced that North Korea had disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program