April 16

April 16 is the 106th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (107th in leap years). There are 259 days remaining.

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2004 day arrangement
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Table of contents

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and observances

Events

1178 BC - A solar eclipse may mark the return of Odysseus, legendary King of Ithaca to his Kingdom after the Trojan War.
1071 - Bari falls to Robert Guiscard, ending Byzantine rule in Italy.
1746 - Second Jacobite Rebellion: Battle of Culloden - In Scotland, the last battle of the Jacobite Rising; the destruction of the Highland clans
1799 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Mount Tabor - Napoleon drives Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre.
1863 - American Civil War: Siege of Vicksburg - 12 ships lead by Union Admiral David Dixon Porter move through heavy Confederate artillery fire on approach to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Only one ship was lost.
1881 - In Dodge City, Kansas, Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle.
1912 - Harriett Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.
1917 - Vladimir Lenin returns to Petrograd (present-day Saint Petersburg) from exile in Finland.
1919 - Gandhi organizes a day of "prayer and fasting" in response to the British slaughter of Indian protestors during the Amritsar Massacre. By organizing this event, Gandhi indirectly opposed the British government by temporarily halting the economy (as no Hindus worked on that day).
1922 - The Treaty of Rapallo, in which Germany and the Soviet Union re-establish diplomatic relations between Berlin and Moscow, is signed.
1926 - Lolly Willows by Sylvia Townsend Warner is distributed as the first Book-of-the-Month Club selection
1935 - Radio program Fibber McGee and Molly debuts.
1943 - Dr. Albert Hofmann discovers the psychedelic effects of LSD
1945 - WWII: The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin
1947 - Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas to catch fire, killing almost 600.
1947 - Bernard Baruch coins the term "Cold War" to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.
1949 - Dave Garroway moves to television from radio to host the musical-variety show Garroway at Large.
1963 - Valentina Tereshkova lifts off in the Vostok-6 space capsule to become the first woman in space.
1972 - Apollo program: Apollo 16 launches toward the Moon from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1972 - Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive - Prompted by the North Vietnamese offensive, the United States resumes bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.
1992 - The Katina P runs aground off of Maputo, Mozambique. 60,000 tons of crude oil spill into the ocean.
1996 - France Telecom introduces its Wanadoo Internet service
1997 - Doris McGowen Beck Angleton, a Houston, Texas socialite, is murdered in her River Oaks home. Robert Nicholas Angleton, Doris' husband, was found innocent of the crime by a Texas jury. His brother, Roger Nicholas Angleton would later admit to killing her in a suicide note.
1998 - One of the most serious urban tornadoes in history does significant damage to downtown Nashville, Tennessee.

Births

1660 - Hans Sloane, British collector and physician (d. 1753)
1755 - Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, painter (d. 1842)
1844 - Anatole France, narrator and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1921 (d. 1924)
1867 - Wilbur Wright, pioneer pilot (d. 1912)
1871 - John Millington Synge, playwright (d. 1909)
1886 - Ernst Thälmann, politician (d. 1944)
1889 - Charlie Chaplin, actor, writer and film producer (d. 1977)
1897 - Frederick William Winterbotham, code breaker (d. 1990)
1904 - Fifi D'Orsay, actress (d. 1983)
1918 - Spike Milligan, comedian (d. 2002)
1919 - Merce Cunningham, dancer, choreographer
1921 - Peter Ustinov, writer, actor and film director (d. 2004)
1922 - Kingsley Amis, author (d. 1995)
1924 - Henry Mancini, film and TV composer, "Moon River", Peter Gunn (d. 1994)
1927 - Joseph Ratzinger, cardinal
1930 - Herbie Mann, jazz flute player (d. 2003)
1935 - Sarah Kirsch, lyricist
1939 - Dusty Springfield, singer (d. 1999)
1940 - Queen Margaret II of Denmark
1946 - Bobby Vinton, singer
1953 - J. Neil Schulman, Science Fiction writer, Libertarian activist
1947 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball star
1954 - James Cameron, director (Terminator, Titanic)
1956 - Lise-Marie Morerod, slalom skier
1962 - Ian MacKaye, musician
1965 - Martin Lawrence, actor, comedian, producer
1971 - Selena, singer (d. 1995)

Deaths

69 - Otho, Roman Emperor (b. 32)
744 - al-Walid II ibn Abd al-Malik, Umayyad caliph
1689 - Aphra Behn, dramatist (b. ca. 1640)
1788 - Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, naturalist (b. 1707)
1828 - Francisco de Goya, spanish painter (b. 1746)
1914 - George William Hill, astronomer (b. 1838)
1927 - Gaston Leroux, author (b.1868)
1946 - Arthur Chevrolet, pioneer automobile racer and designer
1968 - Edna Ferber, author (b. 1885)
1972 - Kawabata Yasunari, author (b. 1899)
1991 - David Lean, director (b. 1908)
1992 - Neville Brand, actor (b. 1920)
1997 - Doris Angleton, Houston, Texas socialite (b. 1951)
1998 - Fred Davis, English snooker player (b. 1913)

Holidays and observances

Birthday of the Queen celebrated in Greenland

April 15 - April 17 - March 16 - May 16 -- listing of all days