Today is Thursday, Oct. 16, the 289th day of 2025. There are 76 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Oct. 16, 1962, the Cuban missile crisis began as President John F. Kennedy was informed that reconnaissance photographs had revealed the presence of Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba.

Also on this date:

In 1758, American lexicographer Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1793, Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, was beheaded during the French Revolution.

In 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown led an unsuccessful raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry in what was then western Virginia. The raid failed to spark Brown’s intended slave rebellion, but deepened North-South animosities leading to the Civil War. (Ten of Brown’s men were killed, others fled, and

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