October 16

Nachman of Breslov, Hasidic teacher and founder of the Breslov movement, died of tuberculosis in Uman at age 38.

Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake in Oxford during the Marian persecutions.

Giovanni Belzoni entered the deep, richly painted tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings on this day in 1817.

Ahmed Shawqi, the Egyptian poet later crowned Amir al-Shu'ara ('Prince of Poets') and a pioneer of Arabic poetic drama, was born in Cairo.

The conclave elected Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, who took the name John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in over four centuries.

On 16 October 1843, walking along Dublin's Royal Canal, William Rowan Hamilton grasped the algebra of quaternions and carved the defining relation into Broom Bridge.

On 16 October 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, William Morton publicly demonstrated ether anesthesia as surgeon John Warren painlessly removed a patient's neck tumour.