May 16 birthdays & history

Famous people born on May 16

• 1986Megan Fox, American actress
• 1953Pierce Brosnan, Irish-American actor and producer
• 1966Janet Jackson, American singer-songwriter and actress
• 1905Henry Fonda, American actor
• 1611Pope Innocent XI, Head of the Catholic Church from 1676 to 1689
• 1718Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician and philosopher
• 1883Celâl Bayar, Turkish politician, 3rd President of Turkey
• 1974Laura Pausini, Italian singer-songwriter and producer
• 1950Georg Bednorz, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1993IU, Korean singer-songwriter and actress

What happened on May 16

• 1605After a scuffle in which one cardinal had several bones broken, a papal conclave convened in Rome elected Camillo Borghese as Pope Paul V.
• 1832Prospector Juan Godoy discovered a silver outcrop in Chañarcillo, sparking the Chilean silver rush.
• 1842The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri, with 100 pioneers.
• 1866The United States Congress authorized the minting of the Shield nickel, the country's first five-cent piece to be made of a copper–nickel alloy.
• 1881John Richard Clark Hall, a barrister who would go on to write a widely used Anglo-Saxon dictionary and translation of Beowulf, was admitted to Gray's Inn.
• 1888Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.
• 1925The first modern performance of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria occurred in Paris.
• 1929The first Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
• 1959The Tritons' Fountain in Valletta, one of Malta's most important Modernist landmarks, was turned on for the first time.
• 1960American physicist Theodore Maiman operated the first working laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu.
• 1975Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
• 1977The first Chuck E. Cheese location, the first family restaurant to integrate food, animated entertainment, and an indoor arcade, opened in San Jose, California.

Also observed on May 16

• National Day, declared by Salva Kiir (South Sudan)
• Teachers' Day (Malaysia)