April 16

• 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.
• 2001 - The US Constitutional right of access to DNA testing is established, granting convicted felons the right to have their DNA re-tested in an attempt to exonerate themselves.

• 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
• 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)

• 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)

• Birthday of the Queen celebrated in Greenland