16th November

Events

• 1532 - Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Incan Emperor Atahualpa and his nobles.
• 1776 - American Revolutionary War: Hessian mercenaries under Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen capture Fort Washington from the Patriots.
• 1821 - American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and sells his merchandise for a huge profit (he immediately planned to return the following year over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail).
• 1849 - A Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group, but his execution is canceled at the last minute.
• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Campbell Station - Near Knoxville, Tennessee, Confederate troops led by General James Longstreet unsuccessfully attack Union forces under General Ambrose Burnside.
• 1885 - Canadian rebel leader of the Métis, Louis Riel is executed for high treason.
• 1907 - Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory become Oklahoma and are admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
• 1914 - A year after being created by passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens for business.
• 1957 - Serial killer Edward Gein murders Bernice Worden of Plainfield, Wisconsin (this was his last murder).
• 1933 - The United States and the Soviet Union establish formal diplomatic relations.
• 1940 - World War II: In response to Germany leveling Coventry two days before, the Royal Air Force begins to bomb Hamburg (by war's end, 50,000 Hamburg residents died from Allied attacks).
• 1940 - Holocaust: In Poland, Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world (during the next three years starvation, disease and relocations to concentration camps dropped the population from 350,000 to 70,000).
• 1943 - World War II: After flying from Great Britain, 160 American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vermork, Norway.
• 1945 - Cold War: The United States controversially imports 88 German scientists to help in the production of rocket technology.
• 1965 - Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe from Baikonur, Kazakhstan toward Venus (on March 1, 1966 it became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet).
• 1969 - The first episode of The Clangers (a British stop motion animated television program for children) is broadcast by the BBC.
• 1973 - Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.
• 1973 - US President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
• 1979 - The first line of Bucharest Metro (Line M1) is opened from Timpuri Noi to Semanatoarea in Bucharest, Romania.
• 1988 - The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR declares that the Estonia was "sovereign" but stopped short of declaring independence.
• 1988 - In the first open election in more than a decade, voters in Pakistan choose populist candidate Benazir Bhutto to be Prime Minister.
• 1996 - Mother Teresa receives honorary US citizenship.
• 1997 - After nearly 18 years of incarceration, the People's Republic of China releases Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident, from jail for medical reasons.
• 2000 - Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting US President to visit Vietnam.
• 2001 - The first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is released, grossing $US 975.8 million, and becoming the second highest grossing film around the world of all time, behind Titanic.
• 2002 - A Campaign Against Climate Change march takes place in London from Lincoln's Inn Fields, past Esso offices to the United States Embassy.

Births

• 42 BC - Tiberius, Roman emperor (d. 37)
• 1717 - Jean le Rond d'Alembert, mathematician and encyclopædist
• 1720 - Carlo Antonio Campioni, composer (d. 1788)
• 1766 - Rodolphe Kreutzer, violinist (d. 1831)
• 1873 - W.C. Handy, blues composer (d. 1958)
• 1889 - George Kaufman, playwright (d. 1961)
• 1894 - Richard Coudenhove Kalergi, politician (d. 1972)
• 1895 - Paul Hindemith, composer (d.1963)
• 1896 - Lawrence Tibbett, American actor and singer (d. 1960)
• 1896 - Oswald Mosley, British fascist (d. 1980)
• 1905 - Eddie Condon, jazz musician (d. 1973)
• 1907 - Burgess Meredith, actor (d. 1997)
• 1916 - Daws Butler, voice actor (d. 1988)
• 1922 - José Saramago, author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1998
• 1922 - Gene Amdahl, computer scientist
• 1928 - Clu Gulager, American actor
• 1937 - Lothar Späth, German politician
• 1938 - Robert Nozick, philosopher
• 1943 - Michael Cimino, film director
• 1952 - Shigeru Miyamoto, video game legend
• 1964 - Diana Krall, singer
• 1958 - Marg Helgenberger, American actress
• 1967 - Lisa Bonet, actress
• 1975 - Andrew Howard, physicist/astronomer
• 1977 - Oksana Baiul, figure skating champion

Deaths

• 1632 - Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, in the Battle of Lützen
• 1724 - Jack Sheppard, notorious burglar hanged at Tyburn, London
• 1802 - André Michaux, French botanist (* 1746)
• 1885 - Louis Riel, Canadian Metis political leader
• 1960 - Clark Gable, actor
• 1961 - Sam Rayburn, U.S. Speaker of the House
• 1980 - Louis Althusser's wife murdered
• 1981 - William Holden, actor
• 1997 - Russ Meyer, pornographic film producer
• 2003 - Bettina Goislard, UNHCR relief worker

Holidays and observances

See also

November 15 - November 17 - October 16 - December 16 -- listing of all days

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December