Events on December 16 46
Year 714
Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the Merovingian palace, dies at Jupille (modern Belgium). He is succeeded by his infant grandson Theudoald while his wife Plectrude holds actual power in the Frankish Kingdom.
Year 755
An Lushan revolts against Chancellor Yang Guozhong at Yanjing, initiating the An Lushan Rebellion during the Tang dynasty of China.
Year 1431
Hundred Years' War: Henry VI of England is crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris.
Year 1497
Vasco da Gama passes the Great Fish River, where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.
Year 1598
Seven-Year War: Battle of Noryang: The final battle of the Seven-Year War is fought between the China and the Korean allied forces and Japanese navies, resulting in a decisive allied forces victory.
Year 1653
English Interregnum: The Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Year 1689
Convention Parliament: The Declaration of Right is embodied in the Bill of Rights.
Year 1761
Seven Years' War: After a four-month siege, the Russians under Pyotr Rumyantsev take the Prussian fortress of Kołobrzeg.
Year 1773
American Revolution: 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.
Year 1811
The first two in a series of four severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri.
Year 1826
Benjamin W. Edwards rides into Mexican-controlled Nacogdoches, Texas, and declares himself ruler of the Republic of Fredonia.
Year 1838
Great Trek: Battle of Blood River: Voortrekkers led by Andries Pretorius and Sarel Cilliers defeat Zulu impis, led by Dambuza (Nzobo) and Ndlela kaSompisi in what is today KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.[1]
Year 1850
The Charlotte Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand.
Year 1863
American Civil War: Joseph E. Johnston replaces Braxton Bragg as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.
Year 1864
American Civil War: Battle of Nashville: Major General George Thomas's Union forces defeat Lieutenant General John Bell Hood's Confederate Army of Tennessee.
Year 1880
Outbreak of the First Boer War between the Boer South African Republic and the British Empire.
Year 1912
First Balkan War: The Royal Hellenic Navy defeats the Ottoman Navy at the Battle of Elli.
Year 1914
World War I: Admiral Franz von Hipper commands a raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby.
Year 1918
Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas declares the formation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic; it is dissolved in 1919.
Year 1920
The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000.
Year 1922
President of Poland Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated by Eligiusz Niewiadomski at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 1942
The Holocaust: Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz.
Year 1944
World War II: The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.
Year 1947
William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 1968
Second Vatican Council: Official revocation of the Edict of Expulsion of Jews from Spain.
Year 1971
Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: The surrender of the Pakistan Army brings an end to both conflicts. This is commemorated annually as Victory Day in Bangladesh, and as Vijay Diwas in India.
Year 1971
The United Kingdom recognizes Bahrain's independence, which is commemorated annually as Bahrain's National Day.
Year 1978
Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.
Year 1979
Libya joins four other OPEC nations in raising crude oil prices, which has an immediate, dramatic effect on the United States.
Year 1985
Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of New York's Gambino crime family.
Year 1989
Romanian Revolution: Protests break out in Timișoara, Romania, in response to an attempt by the government to evict dissident Hungarian pastor László Tőkés.
Year 1989
U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Smith Vance is assassinated by a mail bomb sent by Walter Leroy Moody, Jr.
Year 2013
A bus falls from an elevated highway in the Philippines capital Manila killing at least 18 people with 20 injured.
Year 2014
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militants attacked an Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 145 people, mostly schoolchildren.