October
16
World
Food Day
The
theme of this year’s observance is United
against hunger, chosen to recognize the
efforts made in the fight against world
hunger at national, regional and international
levels.
Uniting
against hunger becomes real when state and
civil society organizations and the private
sector work in partnership at all levels
to defeat hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition.
In
2009, the critical threshold of one billion
hungry people in the world was reached in
part due to soaring food prices and the
financial crisis, a “tragic achievement
in these modern days", according to
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. On the
eve of the hunger summit, Dr Diouf launched
an online petition to reflect the moral
outrage of the situation. The “1 billion
hungry project” reaches out to people through
online social media to invite them to sign
the anti-hunger petition at www.1billionhungry.org.
On
this World Food Day 2010, when there have
never been so many hungry people in the
world, let us reflect on the future. With
willpower, courage and persistence – and
many players working together and helping
each other – more food can be produced,
more sustainably, and get into the mouths
of those who need it most.
About
World Food Day
The
Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations celebrates World Food Day
each year on 16 October, the day on which
the Organization was founded in 1945.
The
objectives of World Food Day are to:
encourage
attention to agricultural food production
and to stimulate national, bilateral, multilateral
and non-governmental efforts to this end;
encourage economic and technical cooperation
among developing countries;
encourage the participation of rural people,
particularly women and the least privileged
categories, in decisions and activities
influencing their living conditions;
heighten public awareness of the problem
of hunger in the world;
promote the transfer of technologies to
the developing world; and
strengthen international and national solidarity
in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition
and poverty and draw attention to achievements
in food and agricultural development
Events
456
– Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor
Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of
the Western Roman Empire.
1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland,
although she is a woman.
1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince
of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his
wife, Donna Maria d'Avalos, and her lover
Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the
Palazzo San Severo in Naples.
1780 – Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge,
Vermont are the last major raids of the
American Revolutionary War.
1781 – George Washington captures Yorktown,
Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown.
1793 – Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis
XVI, is guillotined at the height of the
French Revolution.
1793 – The Battle of Wattignies ends in
a French victory.
1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon
Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.
1834 – Much of the ancient structure of
the Palace of Westminster in London burns
to the ground.
1841 – Queen's University is founded in
Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes
up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative
extension of complex numbers.
1846 – William TG Morton first demonstrated
ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General
Hospital in the Ether Dome.
1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers
Ferry, West Virginia.
1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most
famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".
1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded,
becoming England's first residential college
for women.
1875 – Brigham Young University is founded
in Provo, Utah.
1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for
business.
1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India
takes place.
1906 – The Captain of Köpenick fools the
city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers
by impersonating a Prussian officer.
1916 – In Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger
opens the first family planning clinic in
the United States.
1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded
by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.
1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long
March; it ended a year and four days later,
by which time Mao Zedong had regained his
title as party chairman.
1939 – World War II: First attack on British
territory by the German Luftwaffe.
1940 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
1944 – Wally Walrus, Woody Woodpecker's
first steady foil, was debuted at the The
Beach Nut, a Walter Lantz's cartoon.
1945 – The Food and Agriculture Organization
is founded in Quebec City, Canada.
1946 – Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the
convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
1949 – Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the
Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary
cease-fire", effectively ending the
Greek Civil War.
1949 – The diplomatic relations between
the Soviet Union and the German Democratic
Republic are established.
1951 – The first Prime Minister of Pakistan,
Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi.
1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis between the
United States, and Cuba and the USSR, begins.
1964 – The People's Republic of China detonates
its first nuclear weapon.
1964 – Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and
Alexei Kosygin are inaugurated as General
Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively
and the collective leadership is established.
1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith
and John Carlos are kicked off the US team
for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black
Power salute.
1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the
Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of
Walter Rodney from the country.
1970 – In response to the October Crisis
terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures
Act.
1973 – Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1975 – The Balibo Five, a group of Australian
television journalists based in the town
of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now
East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.
1975 – Rahima Banu, a two-year old girl
from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh,
is the last known person to be infected
with naturally occurring smallpox.
1975 – The Australian Coalition opposition
parties using their senate majority, vote
to defer the decision to grant supply of
funds for the Whitlam Government's annual
budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional
crisis.
1978 – Pope John Paul II is elected after
the October 1978 Papal conclave.
1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole
and the first European woman to reach the
summit of Mount Everest.
1984 – The Bill debuted on ITV, eventually
becoming the longest-running police procedural
in British television history.
1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.
1986 – Reinhold Messner becomes the first
person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders.
1991 – Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs
amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding
20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
1993 – Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling
in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching
the British National Party headquarters.
1995 – The Million Man March occurs in Washington,
D.C.
1995 – The Skye Bridge is opened.
1996 – Eighty-four people are killed and
more than 180 injured as 47,000 football
fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat
Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
1998 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto
Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant
from Spain requesting his extradition on
murder charges.
2002 – Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian
city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the
Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity,
is officially inaugurated.
2006 – Hawaii Earthquake: A magnitude 6.7
earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property
damage, injuries, landslides, power outages,
and the closure of Honolulu International
Airport.
Holidays
and observances
Air
Force Day (Bulgaria)
Boss's Day (United States and Canada)
Christian Feast Day:
Fortunatus of Casei
Gall
Gerard Majella
Hedwig of Andechs
Marguerite Marie Alacoque
Marie-Marguerite d'Youville
Silvanus of Ahun
October 16 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of Pope John Paul II (Poland)
Death anniversary of Liaquat Ali Khan (Pakistan)
Teacher's Day (Chile)
World Food Day (International)
For details, contact Datacentre
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