November 16 birthdays & history

Famous people born on November 16

• 1955Guillermo Lasso, Ecuadoran businessman, 47th President of Ecuador
• 1922José Saramago, Portuguese novelist and Nobel laureate in Literature
• 1717Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher
• 1974Paul Scholes, English footballer and sportscaster
• 1907Burgess Meredith, American actor, singer, director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1938Robert Nozick, American philosopher, author, and academic
• 1895Paul Hindemith, German composer, violist and conductor
• 1992Marcelo Brozović, Croatian footballer
• 1993Nélson Semedo, Portuguese footballer
• 1997Bruno Guimarães, Brazilian footballer

What happened on November 16

• 534The second edition of the Code of Justinian, a codification of Roman law by Byzantine emperor Justinian I, was published.
• 1855David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now Zambia-Zimbabwe.
• 1860Fisgard Lighthouse, built in the Colony of Vancouver Island, shines its first light, becoming the first permanent lighthouse in present-day British Columbia
• 1904English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve (vacuum tube).
• 1907Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
• 1914The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens.
• 1920Qantas, Australia's national airline, is founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited.
• 1933The United States and the Soviet Union establish formal diplomatic relations.
• 1959The Sound of Music, a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein based on The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
• 1973U.S. president Richard Nixon signed an act authorizing the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to transport oil from the Beaufort Sea to the Gulf of Alaska.
• 1981About 30 million people watched the fictional couple Luke Spencer and Laura Webber wed on the television show General Hospital in the highest-rated hour in American soap opera history.
• 1992The largest hoard of Roman silver and gold in Britain was found in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk.

Also observed on November 16

• Day of Declaration of Sovereignty (Estonia)
• Icelandic Language Day or Dagur íslenskrar tungu (Iceland)
• International Day for Tolerance (United Nations)
• Statia Day in Sint Eustatius (Caribbean Netherlands)
• Intergenerational Fairness Day (International day of action for rights of younger and future generations)