Skip to content
★Maps of History Start free

THE DAY IN HISTORY · OCTOBER 16

October 16 in history

What happened on October 16: 3 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1905, 1946 and 1964, each linked to the map that shows it.

— Swadeshi movement

16 Oct 1905 — The day partition takes effect, Bengal answers with mourning and boycott: foreign cloth burned, British salt and sugar refused, national schools founded. Rabindranath Tagore leads crowds tying rakhi threads — Hindu and Muslim wrists bound in protest.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE INDIAN INDEPENDENCE & PARTITION MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

Ten leaders of the Third Reich are hanged at Nuremberg, convicted under a new idea: that individuals answer for state crimes.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE WW2 MAP →

— China’s first nuclear test

16 Oct 1964 — China explodes its first atomic bomb in the Xinjiang desert. The device was codenamed 596, after June 1959, the month Moscow reneged on its promise to supply a sample bomb. It came two days after Khrushchev’s fall, and it made China the fifth nuclear power, largely without the help it had been promised.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

THE FREE PRINTABLE STUDY GUIDE

Join the Dispatch — a short welcome series, then a letter when a new atlas opens — and a printable atlas study guide of your choice is yours now, free.

NO TRACKING · YOUR ADDRESS IS USED FOR THE DISPATCH AND NOTHING ELSE · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME