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November 16 is the 320th day of the year (321st in leap
years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 45 days
remaining.
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 (b. 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
November 15 - November
17 - October 16 - December
16 -- listing of all days
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