December 16 in history

On December 16:

1431  Henry VI of Englandwas crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris.

1485  Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, was born.

1497  Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the point where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1653  Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1707  Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.

1770  Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer was born.

 Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

1773  Boston Tea Party – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

 This iconic 1846 lithograph by Nathaniel Currier was entitled “The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor

1775 Jane Austen, English writer, was born.

 A watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen, believed to be drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)^[A]

1787  – Mary Russell Mitford, English writer, was born.

1790  King Léopold I of Belgium, was born.

1850 The Charlotte-Jane and the Randolph brought the firs tsettlres to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1882   Sir Jack Hobbs, English cricketer, was born.

 Jack Hobbs (left) walks out to the SCG with his opening partner Herbert Sutcliffe.

1883 Max Linder, French pioneer of silent film, was born.

Max Linder

1888  King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, was born.

 

1893  Antonín Dvořák‘s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From The New World” was given its world première at Carnegie Hall.

1899  Sir Noel Coward, English playwright, actor and composer, was born.

Noël Coward, c. 1920s

 1905  Piet Hein, Danish mathematician and inventor

Piet Hein (Kumbel) in front of the H.C. Andersen statue in Copenhagen

1905 A great rugby rivalry was born when a last-minute try to All Black Bob Deans was disallowed, handing the Welsh victory.

1907 The Great White Fleet (US Naval Battle fleet) began its circumnavigation of the world.

 Map of the Great White Fleet’s voyage.

1915  – Turk Murphy, American trombonist, was born.

1917  Sir Arthur C. Clarke, English writer, was born.

1920 The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, in  Gansu province in China, killed an estimated 200,000.

1938  Adolf Hitler institutd the Cross of Honor of the German Mother.

 Mutterkreuz

1943 Tony Hicks, English guitarist (The Hollies), was born.

1944 The Battle of the Bulge began with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1946 Benny Andersson, Swedish musician, singer and songwriter (ABBA), was born.

1947 Ben Cross, English actor, was born.

1947  William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain built the first practical point-contact transistor.

1949 Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, later knons as SAAB, was founded in Sweden.

1952 Joel Garner, Barbadian West Indies cricketer, was born.

1955 – Prince Lorenz of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este, was born.

1960  1960 New York air disaster: While approaching New York’s Idlewild Airport, a United Airlines Douglas DC-8 collided with a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation in a blinding snowstorm over Staten Island, killing 134.

1971  Bangladesh War of Independence and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: The surrender of the Pakistan army brings an end to both conflicts.

1971 – Independence Day of the State of Bahrain from British Protectorate Status.

1972  Angela Bloomfield, New Zealand actress, was born.

1991 Independence of The Republic of Kazakhstan.

1997  Dennō Senshi Porygonan episode of Pokémon, was aired in Japan, inducing seizures in hundreds of Japanese children.

2003  President George W. Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 into law. The law established the United States’ first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.