This Day in History

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December 16

There are 15 days remaining in 2016.

There are 8 days until Christmas.



Events

1431 – Hundred Years' War: Henry VI of England is crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris.

1497 – Vasco da Gama passes the Great Fish River, where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1653 – English Interregnum: The Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

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

1811 – The first two in a series of four severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri. [<--Very interesting read. The Mississippi river flowed backwards, sand geysers erupted, Tennessee's Reelfoot Lake was formed, soil liquifaction...It was a helluva thing, a helluva thing.]

1850 – The Charlotte Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1880 – Outbreak of the First Boer War between the Boer South African Republic and the British Empire.

1907 – The American Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world.

1920 – The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

1930 – Bank robber Herman Lamm and members of his crew are killed by a 200-strong posse, following a botched bank robbery, in Clinton, Indiana.

1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempt to escape from the American federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay; neither is ever seen again.

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

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

1950 – Korean War: U.S. President Harry S Truman declares a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight in support of communist North Korea.

1960 – A United Airlines Douglas DC-8 and a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation collide over Staten Island, New York and crash, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft and six more on the ground.

1965 – Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland sends U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a request for 243,000 more men by the end of 1966.

1978 – Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.

1979 – Libya joins four other OPEC nations in raising crude oil prices, which has an immediate, dramatic effect on the United States.

1985 – Big Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of New York's Gambino crime family.

Births

1485 – Catherine of Aragon; 1770 – Ludwig van Beethoven; 1775 – Jane Austen; 1899 – Noël Coward; 1917 – Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey); 1928 – Terry Carter (McCloud, Battlestar Galactica); 1928 – Philip K. Dick; 1936 – Morris Dees (co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center); 1937 – Joyce Bulifant (The Mary Tyler Moore Show); 1938 – Liv Ullmann; 1941 – Lesley Stahl; 1943 – Steven Bochco; 1945 – Patti Deutsch (Match Game panelist); 1945 – Tony Hicks♪ ♫(The Hollies); 1946 – Benny Andersson♪ ♫(ABBA); 1947 – Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire); 1949 – Billy Gibbons(ZZ Top); 1951 – Robben Ford; 1955 – Xander Berkeley (24, The Mentalist, Nikita); 1961 – Shane Black (screenwriter Lethal Weapon, co-wrote & directed Iron Man 3, director Kiss Kiss Bang Bang); 1961 – Bill Hicks; 1961 – Jon Tenney (The Closer, Major Crimes); 1962 – William 'Refrigerator' Perry:devil:; 1963 – Benjamin Bratt; 1963 – James Mangold (director Walk The Line, Girl Interrupted, 3:10 To Yuma (2007)); 1971 – Michael McCary♪ ♫(Boyz II Men); 1988 – Anna Popplewell (The Chronicles of Narnia film series)

Deaths

1263 – Haakon IV of Norway; 1859 – Wilhelm Grimm (the younger of The Bros Grimm); 1965 – W. Somerset Maugham; 1980 – Colonel Harland Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken); 1982 – Colin Chapman (founded Lotus Cars); 1985 – Thomas Bilotti (mobster); 1985 – Paul Castellano (mob boss); 1989 – Lee Van Cleef; 1993 – Moses Gunn; 2003 – Gary Stewart♪ ♫; 2007 – Dan Fogelberg♪ ♫; 2013 – Ray Price♪ ♫