August 16 birthdays & history

Famous people born on August 16

• 1958Madonna, American singer-songwriter, producer, actress, and director
• 1816Octavia Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor
• 1954James Cameron, Canadian director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1920Charles Bukowski, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer
• 1913Menachem Begin, Belarusian-Israeli politician, Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1845Gabriel Lippmann, Luxembourger-French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1832Wilhelm Wundt, German physician, psychologist, and physiologist
• 1888T. E. Lawrence, British colonel, diplomat, writer and archaeologist
• 1815John Bosco, Italian priest and educator
• 1645Jean de La Bruyère, French philosopher and author

What happened on August 16

• 1844Governor-general of the Philippines Narciso Claveria signs a decree to reform the country's calendar by skipping Tuesday, December 31, as a solution to anomalies that had existed since Ferdinand Magellan's arrival in 1521.
• 1858U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few weeks.
• 1876Richard Wagner's Siegfried, the penultimate opera in his Ring cycle, is premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
• 1891San Sebastian Church, an all-iron church in Manila, was officially consecrated.
• 1896A group including George Carmack and Skookum Jim Mason discovered gold near Dawson City, Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
• 1913Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tohoku University) becomes the first university in Japan to admit female students.
• 1916The Migratory Bird Treaty between Canada and the United States is signed.
• 1920In the United Kingdom, the Blind Persons Act received royal assent.
• 1920The congress of the Communist Party of Bukhara opens. The congress would call for armed revolution.
• 1923The United Kingdom gives the name "Ross Dependency" to part of its claimed Antarctic territory and makes the Governor-General of the Dominion of New Zealand its administrator.
• 1962The English rock band the Beatles fired their drummer Pete Best, replacing him with Ringo Starr.
• 2009At the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, Usain Bolt ran the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds, breaking his own record set a year earlier.

Also observed on August 16

• Children's Day (Paraguay)
• Gozan no Okuribi (Kyoto, Japan)
• National Airborne Day (United States)
• Restoration Day (Dominican Republic)
• The first day of the Independence Days, celebrates the independence of Gabon from France in 1960.
• Xicolatada (Palau-de-Cerdagne, France)