History of Today in India – 16 February

Explore the history of today 16 February in India, including important events, famous personalities, and milestones for UPSC SSC,Banking & PSC exams.

Last updated on 16 February 2026, 04:22 AM

📜 Important Events on 16 February in World History

16 Feb 2021: Five thousand people gathered in the town of Kherrata, Bejaia Province to mark the second anniversary of the Hirak protest movement. Demonstrations had been suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria. Read more
16 Feb 2013: A bomb blast at a market in Hazara Town, Quetta, Pakistan kills more than 80 people and injures 190 others. Read more
16 Feb 2006: The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army. Read more
16 Feb 2005: The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its ratification by Russia. Read more
16 Feb 2005: The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004–05 regular season and playoffs. Read more
16 Feb 2000: Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17 crashes near Sacramento Mather Airport in Rancho Cordova, California, killing all three aboard. Read more
16 Feb 1998: China Airlines Flight 676 crashes into a road and residential area near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taiwan, killing all 196 aboard and six more on the ground. Read more
16 Feb 1996: A Chicago-bound Amtrak train, the Capitol Limited, collides with a MARC commuter train bound for Washington, D.C., killing 11 people. Read more
16 Feb 1991: Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermúdez is assassinated in Managua. Read more
16 Feb 1986: The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. Read more
16 Feb 1986: China Airlines Flight 2265 crashes into the Pacific Ocean near Penghu Airport in Taiwan, killing all 13 aboard. Read more
16 Feb 1985: Hezbollah is founded. Read more
16 Feb 1984: Iran launches Operation Dawn 5, a major offensive during the Iran–Iraq War targeting the Basra–Baghdad highway, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. Read more
16 Feb 1983: The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia kill 75. Read more
16 Feb 1978: The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago). Read more
16 Feb 1968: In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service. Read more
16 Feb 1968: Civil Air Transport Flight 010 crashes near Shongshan Airport in Taiwan, killing 21 of the 63 people on board and one more on the ground. Read more
16 Feb 1962: The Great Sheffield Gale impacts the United Kingdom, killing nine people; the city of Sheffield is devastated, with 150,000 homes damaged. Read more
16 Feb 1962: Flooding in the coastal areas of West Germany kills 315 and destroys the homes of about 60,000 people. Read more
16 Feb 1961: Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched. Read more
16 Feb 1960: The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. Read more
16 Feb 1959: Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1. Read more
16 Feb 1945: World War II: American forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines. Read more
16 Feb 1945: The Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States, was signed into law. Read more
16 Feb 1943: World War II: In the early phases of the Third Battle of Kharkov, Red Army troops re-enter the city. Read more
16 Feb 1942: World War II: In Athens, the Greek People's Liberation Army is established Read more
16 Feb 1942: World War II: Attack on Aruba, first World War II German shots fired on a land based object in the Americas. Read more
16 Feb 1940: World War II: Altmark incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. A total of 299 British prisoners are freed. Read more
16 Feb 1937: Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon. Read more
16 Feb 1936: The Popular Front wins the 1936 Spanish general election. Read more
16 Feb 1934: The Austrian Civil War ends with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republikanischer Schutzbund. Read more
16 Feb 1934: The Commission of Government is officially sworn in; ending 79 years of responsible government in Newfoundland. Read more
16 Feb 1930: The Romanian Football Federation joins FIFA. Read more
16 Feb 1923: Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Read more
16 Feb 1918: The Council of Lithuania unanimously adopts the Act of Independence, declaring Lithuania an independent state. Read more
16 Feb 1900: The Southern Cross expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink achieves a new Farthest South of 78° 50'S, making the first landing at the Great Ice Barrier. Read more
16 Feb 1899: Iceland's first football club, Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur, is founded. Read more
16 Feb 1881: The Canadian Pacific Railway is incorporated by Act of Parliament at Ottawa (44th Vic., c.1). Read more
16 Feb 1866: Spencer Compton Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington becomes British Secretary of State for War. Read more
16 Feb 1862: American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant captures Fort Donelson, Tennessee. Read more
16 Feb 1804: First Barbary War: Stephen Decatur leads a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia. Read more

🎂 Important Births on 16 February in World History

16 Feb 2001: Yuki Naito, Japanese tennis player Yuki Naito is a Japanese tennis player. Naito has been ranked as high as world No. 169 in singles and No. 224 in doubles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). Read more
16 Feb 2000: Koffee, Jamaican singer, songwriter and rapper Mikayla Victoria Simpson, who performs under the stage name Original Koffee and formerly as Koffee, is a Jamaican singer, songwriter, rapper, and guitarist from Spanish Town. She released her debut single "Burning" in 2017, and signed with Columbia Records after releasing another single the following year. Her 2019 debut EP Rapture won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, making Koffee both the youngest person and only woman to be awarded in the Best Reggae Album category. Her most recent album, Gifted was released on 25 March 2022. Read more
16 Feb 2000: Coby White, American basketball player Alec Jacoby "Coby" White is an American professional basketball player for the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels. White was a top high school player in North Carolina, finishing his career as the top prep scorer in state history. After being selected by the Bulls in the first round of the 2019 NBA draft with the seventh overall pick, he was named to the NBA All-Rookie Second Team in 2020. In 2024, White finished second in NBA Most Improved Player award behind Tyrese Maxey. Read more
16 Feb 2000: Carlos Yulo, Filipino artistic gymnast Carlos Edriel Poquiz Yulo is a Filipino artistic gymnast. He is the 2024 Olympic gold medalist at the floor exercise and vault events. He is the first Filipino and the first male Southeast Asian gymnast to medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships with his floor exercise bronze medal finish in 2018, as well as the first Filipino and Southeast Asian to achieve a gold medal finish for the same criteria in 2019 at the same event. With multiple medals on the international stage, Yulo is the second person to win an Olympic gold medal for the Philippines and the first Southeast Asian athlete to win multiple gold medals at the Olympic Games. Read more
16 Feb 1999: Ignatius Ganago, Cameroonian footballer Ignatius Ganago is a Cameroonian professional footballer who plays as a forward for Ligue 1 club Nantes and the Cameroon national team. Read more
16 Feb 1999: Marie Ulven Ringheim, Norwegian singer, songwriter and music producer Marie Ulven Ringheim, known professionally as girl in red, is a Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer. Her first EPs Chapter 1 (2018) and Chapter 2 (2019) were recorded in her bedroom and feature songs about romance and mental health. Released through AWAL, her debut studio album If I Could Make It Go Quiet (2021) was a critical and commercial success, and won three Spellemann Awards, including Spellemann of the Year. She then signed to Columbia Records and released her second album, I'm Doing It Again Baby!, to moderate success in 2024. Read more
16 Feb 1998: An Hyejin, South Korean volleyball player An Hye-jin is a South Korean professional volleyball player. She is a setter and a member of the South Korean National Team. On the club level, she plays for GS Caltex Seoul KIXX. Read more
16 Feb 1998: Kim Suji, South Korean diver Kim Su-ji is a South Korean diver. She competed in the 10-metre platform event at the 2012 Summer Olympics. The youngest member of the South Korean contingent at the Olympics that year, she lives in Ulsan, where she graduated from Guyeong Primary School and went on to Cheonsang Middle School. She won a bronze medal along with Cho Eun-bi in the women's 10-metre synchronised platform event at the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin. Read more
16 Feb 1997: Jordan Greenway, American ice hockey player Jordan Greenway is an American professional ice hockey player who is a forward for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was selected by the Minnesota Wild in the second round in the 2015 NHL entry draft. Read more
16 Feb 1995: Denzel Curry, American rapper Denzel Rae Don Curry is an American rapper. Born and raised in Miami Gardens, Florida, Curry started rapping while in the sixth grade and began working on his first mixtape, King Remembered Underground Tape 1991–1995, in 2011, which was influenced by underground Florida rapper SpaceGhostPurrp. The mixtape was later featured on SpaceGhostPurrp's social media, giving Curry attention in the local music scene and resulting in him joining the former's hip-hop collective Raider Klan. Read more
16 Feb 1995: Katy Dunne, English tennis player Katy Dunne is a British tennis player. Read more
16 Feb 1995: Carina Witthöft, German tennis player Carina Witthöft is a German former professional tennis player. She won one singles title on the WTA Tour whereas on the ITF Women's Circuit, she won eleven singles titles and one doubles title. On 8 January 2018, she reached her career-high singles ranking of world No. 48. Read more
16 Feb 1994: Annika Beck, German tennis player Annika Beck is a German former professional tennis player. She started playing tennis at the age of four when introduced to the game by her parents. A baseliner whose favorite shot is forehand, and favorite surface is hardcourt. She was coached by Jakub Záhlava and Sebastian Sachs. Read more
16 Feb 1994: Federico Bernardeschi, Italian footballer Federico Bernardeschi is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a winger or attacking midfielder for Serie A club Bologna. His nickname is "Brunelleschi", after the famous Florentine architect, for his technique and elegance on the pitch. Read more
16 Feb 1994: Ava Max, American singer and songwriter Amanda Ava Koçi, known professionally as Ava Max, is an American singer and songwriter. She rose to prominence in 2018 with the release of her breakthrough single "Sweet but Psycho". The song peaked at number one in 22 countries and reached number two and number ten on the Australian ARIA Charts and US Billboard Hot 100, respectively. Read more
16 Feb 1992: Nicolai Boilesen, Danish footballer Nicolai Møller Boilesen is a Danish former professional footballer who played as a left back. Read more
16 Feb 1992: Zsófia Susányi, Hungarian tennis player Zsófia Susányi is a Hungarian former tennis player. Read more
16 Feb 1991: Sergio Canales, Spanish footballer Sergio Canales Madrazo is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder for Liga MX club Monterrey. Read more
16 Feb 1990: The Weeknd, Canadian singer-songwriter and producer Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor. Regarded as an influential figure in popular music, he is known for his light-lyric tenor vocal range and falsetto, as well as his alternative R&B sound. His accolades include four Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 22 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, and a Latin Grammy Award. Read more
16 Feb 1989: Elizabeth Olsen, American actress Elizabeth Chase Olsen is an American actress. She gained worldwide recognition for her portrayal of Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2014, with her performance in the miniseries WandaVision (2021) earning her nominations for both a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Read more
16 Feb 1988: Diego Capel, Spanish footballer Diego Ángel Capel Trinidad is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as a left winger. Read more
16 Feb 1988: Denílson, Brazilian footballer Denílson Pereira Neves, known as Denílson, is a Brazilian former professional footballer. He mainly featured as a central midfielder who at times also played in the role of defensive midfielder. He is also a former youth captain of Brazil. Read more
16 Feb 1988: Korbinian Holzer, German ice hockey player Korbinian Holzer is a German professional ice hockey defenceman currently playing for Adler Mannheim of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL). He previously played for the Anaheim Ducks, Nashville Predators, and Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL). Read more
16 Feb 1988: Zhang Jike, Chinese table tennis player Zhang Jike is a retired Chinese table tennis player. Read more
16 Feb 1988: Andrea Ranocchia, Italian footballer Andrea Ranocchia is an Italian former professional footballer who played as a defender. Read more
16 Feb 1988: Kim Soo-hyun, South Korean actor and singer Kim Soo-hyun is a South Korean actor. He is the recipient of five Baeksang Arts Awards, two Grand Bell Awards and one Blue Dragon Film Award. Kim made his television debut in 2007 with the family sitcom Kimchi Cheese Smile following a few theatrical performances. He went on to star in television dramas Dream High (2011), Moon Embracing the Sun (2012), as well as in the top-grossing films The Thieves (2012) and Secretly, Greatly (2013). Read more
16 Feb 1987: Luc Bourdon, Canadian ice hockey player (died 2008) Luc Bourdon was a Canadian professional ice hockey player who was a defenceman for the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL) from 2006 until 2008. After overcoming childhood arthritis, he was selected third overall in the 2003 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) draft and played for the Val-d'Or Foreurs, Moncton Wildcats, and Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, spending four seasons in the QMJHL. The Canucks drafted Bourdon with their first selection, 10th overall, in the 2005 NHL entry draft, and he split his professional career with the Canucks and their American Hockey League affiliate, the Manitoba Moose. Noted as a strong defenceman who could contribute on offence, Bourdon represented Canada in three international tournaments, winning two gold medals at the IIHF World Junior Championship and a silver medal at the IIHF World U18 Championship. Read more
16 Feb 1987: Theresa Goh, Singaporean swimmer Theresa Goh Rui Si is a Singaporean swimmer and Paralympic medalist, with a bronze at the SB4 100m breaststroke at the 2016 Summer Paralympics. She previously held world records for the SB4 50 metres and 200 metres breaststroke events. Read more
16 Feb 1987: Tommy Milone, American baseball player Tomaso Anthony Milone is an American professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Washington Nationals, Oakland Athletics, Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves, and Toronto Blue Jays. Read more
16 Feb 1987: Jon Ossoff, American politician and filmmaker Thomas Jonathan Ossoff is an American politician who has served as the senior United States senator from Georgia since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the youngest incumbent U.S. senator. Before his election to Congress, he was a documentary and investigative filmmaker. Read more
16 Feb 1987: Hasheem Thabeet, Tanzanian basketball player Hasheem Thabeet is a Tanzanian professional basketball player for Dar City of the Basketball Africa League (BAL). He played college basketball for the UConn Huskies before being drafted second overall in the 2009 NBA draft by the Memphis Grizzlies. Thabeet's performance as a second overall draft pick has led many analysts to label him as one of the "biggest busts" in NBA history. Read more
16 Feb 1986: Diego Godín, Uruguayan footballer Diego Roberto Godín Leal is a Uruguayan former professional footballer who played as a centre-back. Read more
16 Feb 1986: Shawne Williams, American basketball player Shawne Brian Williams is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Memphis Tigers before being selected 17th overall in the 2006 NBA draft by the Indiana Pacers. Read more
16 Feb 1985: Simon Francis, English footballer Simon Charles Francis is an English former professional footballer who is first-team technical director at Premier League club AFC Bournemouth. Read more
16 Feb 1985: Stacy Lewis, American golfer Stacy Lewis is an American professional golfer on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour. She has won two major championships: the Kraft Nabisco Championship in 2011 and the Women's British Open in 2013. She was ranked number one in the Women's World Golf Rankings for four weeks in 2013, and reclaimed the position in June 2014 with a victory at the ShopRite LPGA Classic for another 21 weeks. Read more
16 Feb 1985: Ron Vlaar, Dutch footballer Ron Peter Vlaar is a Dutch former footballer who played as a centre-back. Read more
16 Feb 1984: Sofia Arvidsson, Swedish tennis player Lena Sofia Alexandra Arvidsson is a Swedish professional padel player and a former tennis player. In her tennis career, she won two singles titles and one doubles title on the WTA Tour, as well as 20 singles and 13 doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. On 1 May 2006, she reached her career-high singles ranking of world No. 29. On 12 September 2011, she peaked at No. 67 in the WTA doubles rankings. Over her career, Arvidsson defeated top-ten players Marion Bartoli, Anna Chakvetadze, Jelena Janković, Petra Kvitová, Sam Stosur, and Caroline Wozniacki. Read more
16 Feb 1984: Oussama Mellouli, Tunisian swimmer Oussama "Ous" Mellouli is a Tunisian swimmer who competes in the freestyle and medley events. He is a three-time Olympic medalist, is an African record holder, and trains with the USC Trojans team based at the University of Southern California, where he studied as a computer science undergraduate and swam collegiately. Read more
16 Feb 1983: Agyness Deyn, English model, actress, and singer Agyness Deyn is an English model and actress. She is best known for her successful modelling career in the 2000s, and has been called one of the decade's top models. Since her retirement from modelling in the 2010s, she has pursued acting and design, among other ventures. Read more
16 Feb 1983: Tuomo Ruutu, Finnish ice hockey player and coach Tuomo Iisakki Ruutu is a Finnish former professional ice hockey forward and current assistant coach with the Florida Panthers of the National Hockey League. Ruutu was drafted in the first round, ninth overall, at the 2001 NHL Entry Draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, the team he spent the first four seasons of his National Hockey League (NHL) career with, Ruutu has also played in the NHL for the Carolina Hurricanes and New Jersey Devils, before finishing his career with Davos of the Swiss National League (NL). Read more
16 Feb 1982: Manny Delcarmen, American baseball player Manuel Delcarmen, nicknamed The Pride of Hyde Park, is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 2005 through 2010 for the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies; he was a member of Boston's 2007 World Series championship team. He later served as an assistant coach with Fisher College in Boston during the 2022 season. Read more
16 Feb 1982: Aleksandr Dmitrijev, Estonian footballer Aleksandr Dmitrijev is an Estonian football coach and former professional footballer, currently playing in amateur level as a midfielder for Tallinna Cosmos. Read more
16 Feb 1982: Lupe Fiasco, American rapper Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, is an American rapper, singer, record producer and music educator. Born and raised in Chicago, he gained mainstream recognition for his guest appearance on Kanye West's 2006 single "Touch the Sky", which peaked within the top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100. He also formed the rock band Japanese Cartoon in 2008, for which he serves as lead vocalist. Read more
16 Feb 1982: Rickie Lambert, English footballer Rickie Lee Lambert is an English former professional footballer who is currently an Academy Youth Development Coach at Wigan Athletic. A striker, Lambert was known for his large stature and physical performances, drawing comparisons with former Southampton player Matt Le Tissier for his ability in front of goal and penalty record. Read more
16 Feb 1981: Jay Howard, English race car driver Jay Howard is a British professional race car driver who competed in the IndyCar Series and Indianapolis 500. He qualified for the Indianapolis 500 in 2011, 2017 and 2018. Read more
16 Feb 1981: Susanna Kallur, Swedish sprint hurdler Susanna Elisabeth "Sanna" Kallur is a Swedish former athlete competing mainly in sprint hurdles. She has won several international medals, including the gold medal in the 100 m hurdles at the 2006 European Athletics Championships. Kallur previously held the world indoor record for the 60 metres hurdles for 16 years (2008–2024). Read more
16 Feb 1981: Jerry Owens, American baseball player Jerry Lee Owens is an American former professional baseball player. He played parts of four seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Chicago White Sox from 2006 to 2009. Read more
16 Feb 1981: Qyntel Woods, American basketball player Qyntel Deon Woods is an American former professional basketball player. He played mainly at the small forward position, but he also played at the shooting guard position, on occasion. Read more
16 Feb 1980: Longineu W. Parsons III, French-American musician and songwriter Longineu Warren "LP" Parsons III is a French-born American rock musician. He is the current drummer of American metalcore band Evergreen Terrace and is best known as the founding drummer of the American rock band Yellowcard. He played on all of the band's studio albums from their debut outing Midget Tossing (1997) through their eighth album Southern Air (2012). He departed from the band in 2014. Read more
16 Feb 1979: Stéphane Dalmat, French footballer Stéphane Dalmat is a French former footballer who played as a midfielder. Read more
16 Feb 1979: Eric Mun, American-South Korean singer and actor Eric Mun, birth name Mun Jung-hyuk (Korean: 문정혁, is a South Korean rapper, songwriter and actor. He is a member and leader of the South Korean boy band Shinhwa. He is also well known for several dramas such as Phoenix, Super Rookie, and Another Oh Hae-young. He was with Top Class Entertainment from 2007 to December 2013. In 2014, Mun and his manager of 10 years, Lee Jong-hyun, set up a new management agency, E&J Entertainment, for his individual activities. Mun is also the CEO of Shinhwa Company, the home agency of his group, with Lee Min-woo as co-CEO since 2011, and with the remaining members—Kim Dong-wan, Shin Hye-sung, Jun Jin and Andy Lee—as shareholders. Read more
16 Feb 1979: Valentino Rossi, Italian motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi is an Italian racing driver, former professional motorcycle road racer and nine-time Grand Prix motorcycle racing World Champion. Nicknamed "the Doctor", Rossi is widely considered one of the greatest motorcycle racers of all time. He is also the only road racer to have competed in 400 or more Grands Prix. Of Rossi's nine Grand Prix World Championships, seven were in the premier 500cc/MotoGP class. He holds the record for most premier class victories and podiums, with 89 victories and 199 podiums to his name. Read more
16 Feb 1978: Tia Hellebaut, Belgian high jumper and chemist Tia Hellebaut is a Belgian former track and field athlete. She started out in her sports career in the heptathlon, and afterwards specialized in the high jump event. She has cleared 2.05 metres both indoors and outdoors. Read more
16 Feb 1978: Wasim Jaffer, Indian cricketer Wasim Jaffer is a retired Indian professional cricketer. He was a right-handed opening batsman and an occasional right arm off-break bowler. In 2011 he became the highest run-scorer in Ranji Trophy cricket, surpassing Amol Muzumdar. In November 2018, he became the first batsman to score 11,000 runs in the competition. In January 2019, he became the most capped player in Ranji Trophy history with appearance of his 146th match surpassing Madhya Pradesh's Devendra Bundela (145). He was appointed as batting coach for Bangladesh cricket team. In March 2020, he announced his retirement from all forms of cricket. Read more
16 Feb 1978: John Tartaglia, American actor, singer, and puppeteer John Nicholas Tartaglia is an American puppeteer, actor, and singer. Read more
16 Feb 1977: Ian Clarke, Irish-American computer scientist, founded Freenet Ian Clarke is the original designer and lead developer of Hyphanet. Read more
16 Feb 1977: Ahman Green, American football player Ahman Rashad Green is an American former professional football running back who played 12 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, earning second-team All-American honors in 1997. Green was selected by the Seattle Seahawks in the third round of the 1998 NFL draft, playing there for two seasons before being traded to the Green Bay Packers, with whom he played for eight of the next ten seasons. Green also played for the Houston Texans, and was a four-time Pro Bowl selection with the Packers, where he holds the franchise record for rushing yards. He was the head esports coach at Lakeland University until the end of 2022. Read more
16 Feb 1977: Alexei Morozov, Russian ice hockey player and executive Alexei Alekseyevich Morozov is the president of the Kontinental Hockey League and a Russian former professional ice hockey player. Read more
16 Feb 1976: Eric Byrnes, American baseball player and sportscaster Eric James Byrnes, is an American baseball analyst and former outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Oakland Athletics, Colorado Rockies, Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Seattle Mariners. Byrnes retired from playing in 2010 and was an analyst for MLB Network until 2021. Read more
16 Feb 1976: Kyo, Japanese singer-songwriter and producer Kyo is a Japanese musician, singer, lyricist and poet. He is best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the heavy metal band Dir En Grey. He was formerly in a string of visual kei rock bands, with the most notable being La:Sadie's from 1996 to 1997. When they disbanded, he formed Dir En Grey in February 1997 with three of the other four members. Kyo formed the experimental rock band Sukekiyo in 2013, and the supergroup Petit Brabancon in 2021. Read more
16 Feb 1974: Mahershala Ali, American actor Mahershala Ali is an American actor. He has received multiple accolades, including two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him among the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019. Read more
16 Feb 1974: José Dominguez, Portuguese footballer and manager José Manuel Martins Dominguez is a Portuguese professional football manager and former player. Read more
16 Feb 1973: Cathy Freeman, Australian sprinter Catherine Astrid Salome Freeman is an Australian former sprinter, who specialised in the 400 metres event. Her personal best of 48.63 seconds currently ranks her as the 11th-fastest woman of all time, set while finishing second to Marie-José Pérec's number-six time at the 1996 Olympics. She became the Olympic champion for the women's 400 metres at the 2000 Summer Olympics, at which she had lit the Olympic Flame. Read more
16 Feb 1972: Jerome Bettis, American football player Jerome Abram Bettis Sr. is an American former professional football running back who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons, primarily with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Nicknamed "the Bus" due to his large size and forceful running style, he is regarded as one of the greatest power runners of all time and ranks eighth in NFL rushing yards. Read more
16 Feb 1972: Zoran Čampara, Bosnian football player Zoran Čampara is a Serbian retired footballer who played as a defender. Read more
16 Feb 1972: Sarah Clarke, American actress Sarah Clarke is an American actress, best known for her role as Nina Myers on 24, and also for her roles as Renée Dwyer, Bella Swan's mother, in the 2008 film Twilight, Erin McGuire on the short-lived TV show Trust Me, and CIA Officer Lena Smith on the show Covert Affairs. She also starred as Eleanor Wish in the police procedural drama Bosch. Read more
16 Feb 1972: Naomi Nishida, Japanese actress Naomi Nishida is a Japanese actress. She won the Best Supporting Actress award at the 2001 Yokohama Film Festival and at the 25th Hochi Film Award for her performance in Nabbie's Love. Read more
16 Feb 1971: Michael Avenatti, American attorney and pundit Michael John Avenatti is an American former attorney currently incarcerated in federal prison for felony fraud and extortion. He is best known for his legal representation of adult film actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against then U.S. President Donald Trump, and his multiple convictions for attempting to extort sports apparel company Nike and defrauding and embezzling settlement money from a series of other clients. In the late 2010s, Avenatti appeared extensively on television and in print as a legal and political commentator, and as a representative for prominent clients. Read more
16 Feb 1971: Craig Laundy, Australian politician Craig Arthur Samuel Laundy is a former Australian Liberal Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for Reid from 2013 until his retirement in 2019. He served as Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation in the Second Turnbull Ministry, before resigning in August 2018 following the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister. On 15 March 2019, Laundy announced he would retire from politics at the 2019 federal election. Read more
16 Feb 1970: Angelo Peruzzi, Italian footballer and manager Angelo Peruzzi is an Italian football coach and former goalkeeper, and a three-time winner of the Serie A Goalkeeper of the Year award. Read more
16 Feb 1968: Warren Ellis, English author and screenwriter Warren Girard Ellis is an English comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter. He is best known as the co-creator of several original comics series, including Transmetropolitan (1997–2002), Global Frequency (2002–2004) and Red (2003–2004), which was adapted into the feature films Red (2010) and Red 2 (2013). Ellis is the author of the novels Crooked Little Vein (2007) and Gun Machine (2013) and the novella Normal (2016). Read more
16 Feb 1967: Keith Gretzky, Canadian ice hockey player and coach Keith Edward Gretzky is a Canadian ice hockey executive and former player who served as interim general manager of the Edmonton Oilers from January 23 to May 7, 2019. He is the brother of Wayne Gretzky, considered by many as the best player of all time, and Brent Gretzky, who also briefly played NHL hockey. Read more
16 Feb 1965: Dave Lombardo, Cuban-American musician and songwriter David Lombardo is a Cuban-American drummer, best known as a co-founding member of the thrash metal band Slayer. He currently plays drums with Fantômas, Dead Cross, Mr. Bungle, Empire State Bastard, and Misfits. Read more
16 Feb 1964: Bebeto, Brazilian footballer and manager José Roberto Gama de Oliveira, known as Bebeto, is a Brazilian former professional football player who played as a forward. He entered politics in the 2010 Brazilian general elections and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro representing the Democratic Labour Party. Read more
16 Feb 1964: Christopher Eccleston, English actor Christopher Eccleston is an English actor. He is known for his work in various British social realist television dramas, as well as for playing the ninth incarnation of the Doctor in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who (2005). Read more
16 Feb 1962: John Balance, English singer-songwriter (died 2004) Geoffrey Nigel Laurence Rushton, better known under the pseudonyms John Balance or the later variation Jhonn Balance, was an English musician, occultist, artist and poet. Read more
16 Feb 1961: Niko Nirvi, Finnish journalist Niko Nirvi, pen name Nnirvi, is a long-term major icon in the Finnish gaming world. He is well known for writing computer game reviews since the 1980s in MikroBitti, C=Lehti and the computer game yearbooks that were predecessors of the Pelit magazine. He has worked for the latter since its founding in 1992, and holds a column in addition to making reviews and other reports. Read more
16 Feb 1961: Andy Taylor, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Andrew James Taylor is an English guitarist, best known as a former member of Duran Duran and the Power Station. He has also recorded and performed as a solo artist, and served as a guitarist, songwriter, and record producer for the likes of Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, the Almighty, Thunder, Love and Money, Mark Shaw, Then Jerico, C. C. Catch, Paul Rodgers, Belinda Carlisle, and Gun. Read more
16 Feb 1960: Pete Willis, English guitarist and songwriter Peter Andrew Willis is a retired English guitarist, best known as a founding member of the hard rock band Def Leppard. He was with Def Leppard from 1977 to 1982, when he was fired from the band and replaced by Phil Collen. His firing was due to drinking problems. Read more
16 Feb 1959: John McEnroe, American tennis player and sportscaster John Patrick McEnroe Jr. is an American former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 170 weeks, and as world No. 1 in men's doubles for 269 weeks. He is one of two male players to have held both No. 1 rankings, and the only one to hold both simultaneously. McEnroe was best known during his playing career for his shot-making and volleying skills, his rivalries with Björn Borg and Jimmy Connors, and his confrontational on-court behavior, which frequently landed him in trouble with umpires and tennis authorities. Read more
16 Feb 1959: Kelly Tripucka, American basketball player and sportscaster Peter Kelly Tripucka is an American former professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1981 to 1991. He was a two-time NBA All Star and averaged over twenty points a game in five of the ten seasons that he played in. Tripucka played for the Detroit Pistons, Utah Jazz and was a member of the Charlotte Hornets during their inaugural season in the NBA. The son of NFL Pro-Bowl quarterback Frank Tripucka, Kelly was a color analyst for the New York Knicks for four years, ending with the 2011–12 season. Read more
16 Feb 1958: Natalie Angier, American author Natalie Angier is an American nonfiction writer and a science journalist for The New York Times. Her awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting in 1991 and the AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award in 1992. She is also noted for her public identification as an atheist and received the Freedom from Religion Foundation's Emperor Has No Clothes Award in 2003. Read more
16 Feb 1958: Ice-T, American rapper and actor Tracy Lauren Marrow, known professionally as Ice-T, is an American rapper and actor. He is active in both hip-hop and heavy metal. Ice-T began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays. The following year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Records and released another album, Power (1988), which is Ice-T's only album to be certified platinum by the RIAA. His next three albums, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say! (1989), O.G. Original Gangster (1991) and Home Invasion (1993), were also critically acclaimed and commercially successful, and were all certified gold in the US. Read more
16 Feb 1958: Oscar Schmidt, Brazilian basketball player Oscar Daniel Bezerra Schmidt, nicknamed Mão Santa, is a Brazilian retired professional basketball player. Schmidt primarily played the power forward and small forward position, was 2.06 m tall and weighed 109 kg (240 lbs). Along with his home country, Schmidt also played in Italy for JuveCaserta and Pavia, and Spain for Fórum Valladolid. He was born in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Read more
16 Feb 1958: Herb Williams, American basketball player and coach Herbert Levene Williams is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for eighteen seasons from 1981 to 1999. Williams served as the interim head coach and the assistant coach of the NBA's New York Knicks. He was last an assistant coach for the New York Liberty of the WNBA. Read more
16 Feb 1957: LeVar Burton, American actor, director, and producer Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr. is an American actor, director, and television host. He played Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) and Kunta Kinte in the ABC miniseries Roots (1977), and was the host of the PBS Kids educational television series Reading Rainbow for 23 years (1983–2006). Burton received 12 Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award as host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow. Read more
16 Feb 1956: Vincent Ward, New Zealand director and screenwriter Vincent Ward is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and artist. Read more
16 Feb 1954: Iain Banks, Scottish author and playwright (died 2013) Iain Menzies Banks was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio, and television. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Read more
16 Feb 1954: Margaux Hemingway, American model and actress (died 1996) Margaux Louise Hemingway was an American fashion model and actress. The granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, she gained independent fame as a supermodel in the 1970s, appearing on the covers of magazines including Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Time. Read more
16 Feb 1954: Michael Holding, Jamaican cricketer and sportscaster Michael Anthony Holding is a Jamaican former cricketer and commentator who played for the West Indies cricket team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest pace bowlers in cricket history, he was nicknamed "Whispering Death" due to his undramatic but effective bowling style. Read more
16 Feb 1953: John Bradbury, English musician, songwriter, and producer (died 2015) John "Brad" Bradbury was an English drummer and record producer. He is best known for having been the drummer in the English ska group the Specials. Read more
16 Feb 1953: Lanny McDonald, Canadian ice hockey player and manager Lanny King McDonald is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Colorado Rockies and Calgary Flames of the National Hockey League (NHL). He played over 1,100 games during a 16-year career in which he scored 500 goals and over 1,000 points. His total of 66 goals in 1982–83 remains the Flames' franchise record for a single season. Read more
16 Feb 1953: Roberta Williams, American video game designer, co-founded Sierra Entertainment Roberta Lynn Williams is an American video game designer and writer. She has been named by several publications as one of the best or most influential creators in the video game industry. Read more
16 Feb 1952: James Ingram, American singer-songwriter and producer (died 2019) James Edward Ingram was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. He was a two-time Grammy Award-winner and a two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song. After beginning his career in 1973, Ingram charted eight top 40 hits on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart from the early 1980s until the early 1990s, as well as thirteen top 40 hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In addition, he charted 20 hits on the Adult Contemporary chart. He had two number-one singles on the Hot 100: the first, a duet with fellow R&B artist Patti Austin, 1982's "Baby, Come to Me" topped the U.S. pop chart in 1983; "I Don't Have the Heart", which became his second number-one in 1990, was his only number-one as a solo artist. Read more
16 Feb 1952: Peter Kitchen, English footballer Michael Peter Kitchen is an English former professional footballer who played in the Football League in the 1970s and 80s as a forward. Read more
16 Feb 1951: William Katt, American actor William Theodore Katt is an American actor and musician. He is best known for his starring role as Ralph Hinkley/Hanley on the ABC television series The Greatest American Hero (1981–1983). Read more
16 Feb 1950: Peter Hain, Welsh politician, Secretary of State for Wales Peter Gerald Hain, Baron Hain, is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2005 to 2007, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2007 to 2008 and twice as Secretary of State for Wales from 2002 to 2008 and from 2009 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Neath between 1991 and 2015. Read more
16 Feb 1948: Kaiketsu Masateru, Japanese sumo wrestler and coach (died 2014) Kaiketsu Masateru was a Japanese sumo wrestler, who reached the second highest rank of ōzeki on two occasions. He also won two top division tournament championships. After his retirement in 1979 he became a coach under the name of Hanaregoma-oyakata and established Hanaregoma stable. He was also chairman of the Japan Sumo Association from 2010 to 2012. Read more
16 Feb 1947: Jaroslav Kubera, Czech politician (died 2020) Jaroslav Kubera was a Czech politician for the Civic Democratic Party, who served in the Czech Senate representing Teplice from 2000 and the Senate President from 2018 until his death in 2020. He previously served as mayor of Teplice from 1994 to 2018. Read more
16 Feb 1944: Glyn Davies, Welsh farmer and politician Edward Glyn Davies is a former Welsh Conservative politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Montgomeryshire from 2010 to 2019. Davies previously served as a Member of the Welsh Assembly (AM) for the Mid and West Wales region from 1999 to 2007. Read more
16 Feb 1944: Richard Ford, American novelist and short story writer Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe. Read more
16 Feb 1944: António Mascarenhas Monteiro, Cape Verdean politician, 2nd President of Cape Verde (died 2016) António Manuel Mascarenhas Gomes Monteiro was the first democratically elected President of Cape Verde from 22 March 1991 to 22 March 2001. Read more
16 Feb 1942: Yang Jen-fu, Taiwanese politician (died 2024) Yang Jen-fu was a Taiwanese Amis politician. Read more
16 Feb 1941: Kim Jong Il, North Korean commander and politician, 2nd Supreme Leader of North Korea (died 2011) Kim Jong Il was a North Korean politician and dictator who was the second supreme leader of North Korea from the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994 until his own death in 2011. Posthumously, Kim Jong Il was declared an Eternal Leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK). Read more
16 Feb 1940: Hannelore Schmatz, German mountaineer (died 1979) Hannelore Schmatz was a German mountaineer and the fourth woman to summit Mount Everest. She collapsed and died as she was returning from summiting Everest via the southern route; Schmatz was the first woman and first German citizen to die on the upper slopes of Everest. Read more
16 Feb 1939: Adolfo Azcuna, Filipino lawyer and judge Adolfo Sevilla Azcuna is a Filipino jurist who was one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution being a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines from 2002 to 2009. He was appointed to the Court by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on October 24, 2002. As of November 2019 he was the Chancellor of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA), having been appointed to that position by the Supreme Court of the Philippines on June 1, 2009. The Court granted the title of "Chancellor Emeritus" upon Azcuna who served until May 31, 2021. He was succeeded by Arturo Brion who served for 2 years and was replaced by Rosmari Carandang as the fourth Chancellor who took her oath on February 23, 2022. Read more
16 Feb 1938: John Corigliano, American composer and academic John Paul Corigliano is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Academy Award. Read more
16 Feb 1937: Paul Bailey, British novelist, critic, and biographer Peter Harry "Paul" Bailey was an English novelist and critic, as well as a biographer of Cynthia Payne and Quentin Crisp. Read more
16 Feb 1937: Valentin Bondarenko, Soviet aviator and cosmonaut (died 1961) Valentin Vasilyevich Bondarenko was a Soviet fighter pilot selected in 1960 for training as a cosmonaut. He died as the result of burns sustained in a fire during a 15-day low-pressure endurance experiment in Moscow. The Soviet government concealed the death, along with Bondarenko's membership in the cosmonaut corps, until 1980. A crater on the Moon's far side is named after him. Read more
16 Feb 1937: Yuri Manin, Russian-German mathematician and academic (died 2023) Yuri Ivanovich Manin was a Russian mathematician, known for work in algebraic geometry and diophantine geometry, and many expository works ranging from mathematical logic to theoretical physics. Read more
16 Feb 1936: Carl Icahn, American businessman and investor Carl Celian Icahn is an American businessman and investor. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. Icahn's business model is to take large stakes in companies that he believes will appreciate from changes to corporate policy; Icahn then pressures management to make the changes that he believes will benefit shareholders, and him. Widely regarded as one of the most successful hedge fund managers of all time and one of the greatest investors on Wall Street, he was one of the first activist shareholders and is credited with making that investment strategy mainstream for hedge funds. Read more
16 Feb 1935: Brian Bedford, English-American actor and director (died 2016) Brian Bedford was an English actor. He appeared in film and on stage, and was an actor-director of Shakespeare productions. Bedford was nominated for seven Tony Awards for his theatrical work, winning once. Read more
16 Feb 1935: Sonny Bono, American actor, singer, and politician (died 1998) Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was an American singer, songwriter, actor, and politician. In partnership with his second wife, Cher, he formed the singing duo Sonny & Cher. A member of the Republican Party, Bono served as the 16th mayor of Palm Springs, California, from 1988 to 1992, and served as the U.S. representative for California's 44th district from 1995 until his death in 1998. Read more
16 Feb 1935: Stephen Gaskin, American activist, co-founded The Farm (died 2014) Stephen Gaskin was an American counterculture Hippie icon best known for his presence in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s and for co-founding "The Farm", a spiritual commune in 1970. He was a Green Party presidential primary candidate in 2000 on a platform which included campaign finance reform, universal health care, and decriminalization of marijuana. He was the author of over a dozen books, a political activist, a philanthropic organizer and a self-proclaimed professional Hippie. Read more
16 Feb 1935: Bradford Parkinson, American colonel and engineer Bradford Parkinson is an American engineer and inventor, retired United States Air Force Colonel and Emeritus Professor at Stanford University. He is best known as the lead architect, advocate and developer, with early contributions from Ivan Getting and Roger Easton, of the Air Force NAVSTAR program, better known as Global Positioning System. Read more
16 Feb 1935: Kenneth Price, American painter and sculptor (died 2012) Kenneth Price was an American artist who predominantly created ceramic sculpture. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956. He continued his studies at Chouinard Art Institute in 1957 and received an MFA degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1959. Kenneth Price studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos at Otis and was awarded a Tamarind Fellowship. Read more
16 Feb 1934: August Coppola, American author and academic (died 2009) August Floyd Coppola was an American academic, author, film executive, and member of the Coppola family. Read more
16 Feb 1934: Marlene Hagge, American golfer (died 2023) Marlene Hagge was an American professional golfer. She was one of the thirteen founders of the LPGA in 1950. She won one major championship and 26 LPGA Tour career events. She is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Read more
16 Feb 1934: Ken Brown, English footballer and manager Kenneth Brown is an English former football player and manager. As player, he made more than 400 appearances in the Football League representing West Ham United, where he spent the majority of his career, and Torquay United, and was capped once for the England national team. As manager, he took charge of Norwich City, Shrewsbury Town and Plymouth Argyle. Read more
16 Feb 1932: Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Sierra Leonean economist, lawyer, and politician, 3rd President of Sierra Leone (died 2014) Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was a Sierra Leonean politician who served twice as the 3rd President of Sierra Leone, from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by profession, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992. Read more
16 Feb 1932: Gretchen Wyler, American actress, singer, and dancer (died 2007) Gretchen Wyler was an American actress and dancer. She was also an animal rights advocate and founder of the Genesis Awards for animal protection. Read more
16 Feb 1931: Otis Blackwell, American singer-songwriter and pianist (died 2002) Otis Blackwell was an American songwriter whose work influenced rock and roll. His compositions include "Fever", "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless", "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up", and "Return to Sender", and "Handy Man". Read more
16 Feb 1931: Bernie Geoffrion, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (died 2006) Joseph André Bernard Geoffrion, nicknamed "Boom Boom", was a Canadian professional ice hockey player and coach. Generally considered one of the innovators of the slapshot, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972 following a 16-year career with the Montreal Canadiens and New York Rangers of the National Hockey League. In 2017 Geoffrion was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history. Read more
16 Feb 1931: Ken Takakura, Japanese actor and singer (died 2014) Ken Takakura , born Takeichi Oda , was a Japanese actor and singer who appeared in over 200 films. Affectionately referred to as "Ken-san" by audiences, he was best known for his brooding style and the stoic presence he brought to his roles. He won the Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role four times, tied with Koji Yakusho for the most ever. Takakura additionally received the Japanese Medal of Honor with purple ribbon in 1998, the Person of Cultural Merit award in 2006, and the Order of Culture in 2013. Read more
16 Feb 1929: Gerhard Hanappi, Austrian footballer and architect (died 1980) Gerhard Hanappi was an Austrian football midfielder who is often regarded as one of the greatest Austrian footballers. He is also the father of political economist Hardy Hanappi. Read more
16 Feb 1929: Peter Porter, Australian-English poet and educator (died 2010) Peter Neville Frederick Porter OAM was a British-based Australian poet. Read more
16 Feb 1927: June Brown, English actress (died 2022) June Muriel Brown was an English actress and author. She was best known for her role as Dot Cotton on the BBC soap opera EastEnders. In 2005, she won Best Actress at the Inside Soap Awards and received the Lifetime Achievement award at the 2005 British Soap Awards. Brown was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to drama and to charity, and promoted to an OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours. In 2009, she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress, making her the second performer to receive a BAFTA nomination for their work in a soap opera, after Jean Alexander. In February 2020, at the age of 93, she announced that she had left EastEnders permanently. Read more
16 Feb 1926: Margot Frank, German-Dutch holocaust victim (died 1945) Margot Betti Frank was the elder daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank and the elder sister of Anne Frank. Margot's deportation order from the Gestapo hastened the Frank family into hiding. According to the diary of her younger sister, Anne, Margot kept a diary of her own, but no trace of it has ever been found. She died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from a typhus outbreak. Read more
16 Feb 1926: John Schlesinger, English actor and director (died 2003) John Richard Schlesinger was an English film, television and stage director, and actor. He emerged in the early 1960s as a leading light of the British New Wave, before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood, often directing films dealing frankly in provocative subject matter, combined with his status as one of the rare openly gay directors working in mainstream films. Read more
16 Feb 1925: Ed Emshwiller, American illustrator and experiment film maker (died 1990) Edmund Alexander Emshwiller was an American visual artist notable for his science fiction illustrations and his pioneering experimental films. He usually signed his illustrations as Emsh but sometimes used Ed Emsh, Ed Emsler, Willer and others. Read more
16 Feb 1923: Samuel Willenberg, Polish-Israeli sculptor and painter (died 2016) Samuel Willenberg, nom de guerre Igo, was a Polish Holocaust survivor, artist, and writer. He was a Sonderkommando at the Treblinka extermination camp and participated in the unit's planned revolt in August 1943. While 300 escaped, about 79 were known to survive the war. Willenberg reached Warsaw where, before war's end, he took part in the Warsaw Uprising. At his death, Willenberg was the last survivor of the August 1943 Treblinka prisoners' revolt. Read more
16 Feb 1922: Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, German soldier and pilot (died 1950) Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer was a German Luftwaffe night-fighter pilot and the highest-scoring night fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. A flying ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during combat. All Schnaufer's 121 victories were claimed during World War II, mostly against British four-engine bombers, for which he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, Germany's highest military decoration at the time, on 16 October 1944. He was nicknamed "The Spook of St. Trond", from the location of his unit's base in occupied Belgium. Read more
16 Feb 1921: Jean Behra, French race car driver (died 1959) Jean Marie Behra was a French racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1952 to 1959. Read more
16 Feb 1921: John Galbraith Graham, English priest and academic (died 2013) John Galbraith Graham MBE was a British crossword compiler, best known as Araucaria of The Guardian. He was also, like his father Eric Graham, a Church of England priest. Read more
16 Feb 1921: Vera-Ellen, German-American actress, singer, and dancer (died 1981) Vera-Ellen was an American dancer, actress, and singer. She is remembered for her solo performances as well as her work with partners Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, and Donald O'Connor. She is best known for her starring roles in On the Town (1949) with Kelly and White Christmas (1954) with Kaye. Read more
16 Feb 1920: Anna Mae Hays, American general (died 2018) Anna Mae Violet Hays was an American military officer who served as the 13th chief of the United States Army Nurse Corps. She was the first woman in the United States Armed Forces to be promoted to a general officer rank; in 1970, she was promoted to brigadier general. Hays paved the way for equal treatment of women, countered occupational sexism, and made a number of recommendations which were accepted into military policy. Read more
16 Feb 1919: Georges Ulmer, Danish-French actor and composer (died 1989) Georges Ulmer (1919–1989) was a Danish-born composer, librettist, and actor who became a naturalized French citizen. He was born Jørgen Frederik Ulmer on 16 February 1919 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and died on 29 September 1989 at Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was the father of singer Laura Ulmer. Read more
16 Feb 1916: Bill Doggett, American pianist and composer (died 1996) William Ballard Doggett was an American pianist and organist. He began his career playing swing music before transitioning into rhythm and blues. Best known for his instrumental compositions "Honky Tonk" and "Hippy Dippy", Doggett was a pioneer of rock and roll. He worked with the Ink Spots, Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Jordan. Read more
16 Feb 1914: Jimmy Wakely, American country music singer-songwriter and actor (died 1982) James Clarence Wakely was an American actor, songwriter, country music vocalist, and one of the last singing cowboys. During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, he released records, appeared in several B-Western movies with most of the major studios, appeared on radio and television and even had his own series of comic books. His duet singles with Margaret Whiting from 1949 until 1951, produced a string of top seven hits, including 1949's number one hit on the US country chart and pop music chart, "Slippin' Around". Wakely owned two music publishing companies in later years, and performed at the Grand Ole Opry until shortly before his death. Read more
16 Feb 1909: Hugh Beaumont, American actor and director (died 1982) Eugene Hugh Beaumont was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver, originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963, and as private detective Michael Shayne in a series of low-budget crime films in 1946 and 1947. Read more
16 Feb 1909: Richard McDonald, American businessman, co-founded McDonald's (died 1998) Richard James McDonald and Maurice James "Mac" McDonald, known as the McDonald brothers, were American entrepreneurs who founded the fast food company McDonald's. Read more
16 Feb 1906: Vera Menchik, Russian-Czechoslovak-British chess player (died 1944) Vera Francevna Mencikova, was a Russian-born Czechoslovak chess player who primarily resided in England. She was the first and longest-reigning Women's World Chess Champion from 1927 to 1944, winning the championship a record eight times primarily in round-robin tournaments. In an era when women primarily competed against other women, Menchik was the first and only woman competing in master-level tournaments with the world's best players. Read more
16 Feb 1905: Henrietta Barnett, English Women's Royal Air Force officer (died 1985) Air Commandant Dame Mary Henrietta Barnett was a senior officer of the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF). From 1956 to 1960, she served as its director. Read more
16 Feb 1904: James Baskett, American actor and singer (died 1948) James Baskett was an American actor who portrayed Uncle Remus in the 1946 Disney feature film Song of the South. His performance included singing the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah". In recognition of his portrayal of Remus, he was given an Honorary Academy Award in 1948. Read more
16 Feb 1904: George F. Kennan, American historian and diplomat, United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union (died 2005) George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men". Read more
16 Feb 1903: Edgar Bergen, American ventriloquist and actor (died 1978) Edgar John Bergen was an American ventriloquist, comedian, actor, vaudevillian and radio performer. He was best known for his characters Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Bergen pioneered modern-day ventriloquism and has been described by puppetry organization UNIMA as the “quintessential ventriloquist of the 20th century”. He was the father of actress Candice Bergen. Read more
16 Feb 1902: Cyril Vincent, South African cricketer (died 1968) Cyril Leverton Vincent was a South African cricketer who played in 25 Test matches from 1927 to 1935. He was later chairman of the South African selectors. Read more
16 Feb 1901: Wayne King, American singer-songwriter and conductor (died 1985) Harold Wayne King was an American musician, songwriter, and bandleader with a long association with both NBC and CBS. He was referred to as "the Waltz King" because much of his most popular music involved waltzes; "The Waltz You Saved for Me" was his standard set-closing song in live performance and on numerous radio broadcasts at the height of his career. King's innovations included converting Carrie Jacobs-Bond's "I Love You Truly" from its original 24 time over to 34. Read more
16 Feb 1901: Chester Morris, American actor (died 1970) John Chester Brooks Morris was an American stage, film, television, and radio actor. He had some prestigious film roles early in his career, and received an Academy Award nomination for Alibi (1929). Morris is remembered for portraying Boston Blackie, a criminal-turned-detective, in the eponymous film series of the 1940s. Read more
16 Feb 1896: Eugénie Blanchard, French super-centenarian (died 2010) French supercentenarians are citizens, residents or emigrants from France who have attained or surpassed 110 years of age. As of January 2015, the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) had validated the longevity claims of 161 French supercentenarians. France was home to the oldest human being ever whose longevity is well documented, Jeanne Calment, who lived in Arles for her entire life of 122 years and 164 days. The oldest verified Frenchman ever is Georges Thomas (1911–2024), who lived for 112 years and 195 days. Read more
16 Feb 1893: Katharine Cornell, American actress and producer (died 1974) Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York. Read more
16 Feb 1891: Hans F. K. Günther, German eugenicist and academic (died 1968) Hans Friedrich Karl Günther was a German writer, advocate of scientific racism and eugenicist in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He was also known as "Rassengünther" or "Rassenpapst". He is considered to have been a major influence on Nazi racialist thought. Read more
16 Feb 1887: Kathleen Clifford, American actress (died 1962) Kathleen Clifford was an American vaudeville and Broadway stage and film actress of the early twentieth century. She was known for her skills as a male impersonator. Read more
16 Feb 1884: Robert J. Flaherty, American director and producer (died 1951) Robert Joseph Flaherty, was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of narrative documentary with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the father of both the documentary and the ethnographic film. Read more
16 Feb 1878: Pamela Colman Smith, English occultist and illustrator (died 1951) Pamela Colman Smith, nicknamed "Pixie", was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist. She is best-known for illustrating the Rider–Waite Tarot for Arthur Edward Waite. This tarot deck became the standard among tarot card readers, and remains the most widely used today. Smith also illustrated over 20 books, wrote two collections of Jamaican folklore, edited two magazines, and ran the Green Sheaf Press, a small press focused on women writers. Read more
16 Feb 1878: James Colosimo, Italian-American mob boss (died 1920) Vincenzo Colosimo, known as James "Big Jim" Colosimo or as "Diamond Jim", was an Italian-American Mafia crime boss who emigrated from Calabria, Italy, in 1895 and built a criminal empire in Chicago based on prostitution, gambling and racketeering. He gained power through petty crime and heading a chain of brothels. From 1902 until his death in 1920, he led a gang known after his death as the Chicago Outfit. Colosimo was assassinated on May 11, 1920, and no one was ever charged with his murder. Johnny Torrio, an enforcer whom Colosimo imported in 1909 from New York, seized control of Colosimo's businesses after his death. Al Capone, a close associate of Torrio, has been accused of involvement in Colosimo's murder but was not yet in Chicago at the time. Read more
16 Feb 1877: Tom Crean, Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer (died 1938) Thomas Crean was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving (AM). Read more
16 Feb 1876: G. M. Trevelyan, English historian and academic (died 1962) George Macaulay Trevelyan was an English historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the University of Cambridge and was Regius Professor of History from 1927 to 1943. He served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. In retirement, he was Chancellor of Durham University. Read more
16 Feb 1873: Radoje Domanović, Serbian journalist and author (died 1908) Radoje Domanović was a Serbian journalist, writer and teacher, most famous for his satirical short stories. His adult years were a constant fight against tuberculosis. This circumstance of his life, and the affection which he inspired in all who knew him, created an aura of romanticism and sentimentality which stand in contrast to his literary accomplishments as a satirist and a powerful critic of the contemporary Serbian society. Read more
16 Feb 1866: Billy Hamilton, American baseball player and manager (died 1940) William Robert Hamilton, nicknamed "Sliding Billy", was an American professional baseball player in Major League Baseball (MLB) during the 19th century. He played for the Kansas City Cowboys, Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Beaneaters between 1888 and 1901. Read more
16 Feb 1856: Ossian Everett Mills, American academic, founded Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia (died 1920) Ossian Everett Mills was the founder of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1898. Read more
16 Feb 1848: Hugo de Vries, Dutch botanist, geneticist, and academic (died 1935) Hugo Marie de Vries was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists. He is known chiefly for suggesting the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while apparently unaware of Gregor Mendel's work, for introducing the term "mutation", and for developing a mutation theory of evolution. Read more
16 Feb 1848: Octave Mirbeau, French journalist, novelist, and playwright (died 1917) Octave Henri Marie Mirbeau was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages. Read more
16 Feb 1845: George Kennan, American journalist and explorer (died 1924) George Kennan was an American explorer noted for his travels in the Kamchatka and Caucasus regions of the Russian Empire. He was a cousin twice removed of the American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, whose birthday he shared. Read more
16 Feb 1843: Henry M. Leland, American engineer and businessman, founded Cadillac and Lincoln (died 1932) Henry Martyn Leland was an American machinist, inventor, engineer, and automotive entrepreneur. He founded the two premier American luxury automotive marques, Cadillac and Lincoln. Read more
16 Feb 1841: Armand Guillaumin, French painter (died 1927) Armand Guillaumin was a French Impressionist painter and lithographer. Read more
16 Feb 1838: Henry Adams, American journalist, historian, and author (died 1918) Henry Brooks Adams was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. presidents. As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to the United Kingdom. The posting influenced the younger man through the experience of wartime diplomacy and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he became a political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston. Read more
16 Feb 1834: Ernst Haeckel, German biologist, physician, and philosopher (died 1919) Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ecology, phylum, phylogeny, ontogeny, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the disproven but influential recapitulation theory, later generalizing it into the so called "Biogenetic Law". He wrongly claimed that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny, using incorrectly drawn images of human embryonic development to derive the law. Whether they were intentionally falsified, or drawn poorly by accident is a matter of debate. Read more
16 Feb 1831: Nikolai Leskov, Russian author, playwright, and journalist (died 1895) Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is credited with creating a comprehensive picture of contemporary Russian society using mostly short literary forms. His major works include Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865), which was later made into an opera by Shostakovich); The Cathedral Folk (1872); The Enchanted Wanderer (1873); and "The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (1881). Read more
16 Feb 1830: Lars Hertervig, Norwegian painter (died 1902) Lars Hertervig was a Norwegian painter. His semi-fantastical work with motives from the coastal landscape in the traditional district of Ryfylke is regarded as one of the peaks of Norwegian painting. Read more
16 Feb 1826: Joseph Victor von Scheffel, German poet and author (died 1886) Joseph Victor von Scheffel was a German poet and novelist. His novel Ekkehard (1855) became one of the most popular German novels in the 19th century. Read more
16 Feb 1824: Peter Kosler, Slovenian lawyer, geographer, and cartographer (died 1879) Peter Kosler or Kozler was an Austrian-Slovene lawyer, geographer, cartographer, activist, and businessman. He was of Gottscheer origin, but also identified with Slovene culture and advocated for the peaceful coexistence of the Slovene and Germanic cultures in Carniola. Read more
16 Feb 1822: Francis Galton, English biologist and statistician (died 1911) Sir Francis Galton was an English polymath and the originator of eugenics during the Victorian era; his ideas later became the basis of behavioural genetics. Read more
16 Feb 1821: Heinrich Barth, German explorer and scholar (died 1865) Johann Heinrich Barth was a German explorer of Africa and scholar. Read more
16 Feb 1812: Henry Wilson, American colonel and politician, 18th Vice President of the United States (died 1875) Henry Wilson was the 18th vice president of the United States, serving from 1873 until his death in 1875, and a senator from Massachusetts from 1855 to 1873. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading Republican, and a strong opponent of slavery. Wilson devoted his energies to the destruction of "Slave Power", the faction of slave owners and their political allies which anti-slavery Americans saw as dominating the country. Read more
16 Feb 1804: Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, German physiologist and zoologist (died 1885) Prof Karl (Carl) Theodor Ernst von Siebold FRS(For) HFRSE was a German physiologist and zoologist. He was responsible for the introduction of the taxa Arthropoda and Rhizopoda, and for defining the taxon Protozoa specifically for single-celled organisms. Read more
16 Feb 1802: Phineas Quimby, American mystic and philosopher (died 1866) Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was an American folk healer, mentalist and mesmerist. His work is widely recognized as foundational to the New Thought spiritual movement. Read more

🕊️ Important Deaths on 16 February in World History

16 Feb 2025: Viktor Antonov, Bulgarian artist (born 1972) Viktor Antonov was a Bulgarian artist, video game designer, writer, and worldbuilder who worked on numerous first-person shooter (FPS) games. In 2017, Blake Hester wrote for Vice that Antonov "has created disturbing, memorable, and unique worlds" which "conjure images of cyberpunk metropolises and grim London alleyways." Read more
16 Feb 2024: Alexei Navalny, Russian activist (born 1976) Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny was a Russian opposition leader, anti-corruption activist and political prisoner. He founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in 2011. He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. Read more
16 Feb 2021: Gustavo Noboa, Ecuadorian politician, 42nd President of Ecuador (born 1937) Gustavo José Joaquín Noboa Bejarano was an Ecuadorian politician who served as the 42nd president of Ecuador from 22 January 2000 to 15 January 2003. Previously he served as the 42nd vice president under President Jamil Mahuad from 1998 until 2000. From 1983 until 1984, he also was the Governor of the province of Guayas. Read more
16 Feb 2019: Bruno Ganz, Swiss actor (born 1941) Bruno Ganz was a Swiss actor whose career in German stage, television and film productions spanned nearly 60 years. He was known for his collaborations with the directors Werner Herzog, Éric Rohmer, Francis Ford Coppola, Theo Angelopoulos and Wim Wenders, earning widespread recognition with his roles as Jonathan Zimmerman in The American Friend (1977), Jonathan Harker in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Damiel the Angel in Wings of Desire (1987). Read more
16 Feb 2016: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian politician and diplomat, 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations (born 1922) Boutros Boutros-Ghali was an Egyptian politician and diplomat who served as the sixth secretary-general of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. Prior to his appointment as secretary-general, Boutros-Ghali was the acting minister of foreign affairs of Egypt between 1977 and 1979. He oversaw the United Nations over a period coinciding with several world crises, including the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide. Read more
16 Feb 2015: Lasse Braun, Algerian-Italian director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1936) Lasse Braun was an Italian pornographer, film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and researcher. Read more
16 Feb 2015: Lesley Gore, American singer-songwriter (born 1946) Lesley Gore was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. At the age of 16, she recorded her first hit song "It's My Party", a U.S. number one in 1963. She followed it up with ten further U.S. Billboard top 40 hits including "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me". Gore said she considered "You Don't Own Me" her signature song. Read more
16 Feb 2015: R. R. Patil, Indian lawyer and politician, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra (born 1957) Raosaheb Ramrao Patil, better known as R. R. Patil, was an Indian politician from the state of Maharashtra. He was an MLA for Tasgaon vidhan sabha constituency from 1991 to 2015. He was an important leader of modern Maharashtra. He was a member of the Nationalist Congress Party. He became Home Minister of Maharashtra for the second time after the 2009 Maharashtra assembly election victory of the Congress-NCP alliance. He was also the former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Read more
16 Feb 2015: Lorena Rojas, Mexican actress and singer (born 1971) Lorena Rojas was a Mexican actress and singer, best known for her leading roles in popular telenovelas. Read more
16 Feb 2014: Ken Farragut, American football player (born 1928) Kenneth David Farragut Jr. was an American professional football player who was a center for the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Ole Miss Rebels. Read more
16 Feb 2014: Kralle Krawinkel, German guitarist (born 1947) Gert "Kralle" Krawinkel was a German musician, best known as the guitarist of the 1980s pop group Trio. Read more
16 Feb 2014: Michael Shea, American author (born 1946) Michael Shea was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author. His novel Nifft the Lean won the World Fantasy Award, as did his novella Growlimb. Read more
16 Feb 2013: Colin Edwards, Guyanese footballer (born 1991) Colin Edwards was a Guyanese international football player. He played in three friendly games for the Guyana national football team. Read more
16 Feb 2013: Grigory Pomerants, Russian philosopher and author (born 1918) Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants was a Russian philosopher and cultural theorist. He is the author of numerous philosophical works that circulated in samizdat and made an impact on the liberal intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s. Read more
16 Feb 2013: Tony Sheridan, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1940) Anthony Esmond Sheridan McGinnity, known professionally as Tony Sheridan, was an English rock and roll guitarist who spent much of his adult life in Germany. He was best known as an early collaborator of the Beatles, one of two non-Beatles to receive label performance credit on a record with the group, and the only non-Beatle to appear as lead singer on a Beatles recording which charted as a single. Read more
16 Feb 2012: Gary Carter, American baseball player and coach (born 1954) Gary Edmund Carter was an American professional baseball catcher whose 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career was spent primarily with the Montreal Expos and New York Mets. Nicknamed "The Kid" for his youthful exuberance, Carter was named an All-Star 11 times and was a member of the 1986 World Series champion Mets. Read more
16 Feb 2012: Elyse Knox, American model, actress, and fashion designer (born 1917) Elyse Knox was an American actress, model, and fashion designer. She is the mother of actor Mark Harmon. Read more
16 Feb 2012: John Macionis, American swimmer and lieutenant (born 1916) John Joseph Macionis was an American competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Read more
16 Feb 2012: Anthony Shadid, American journalist (born 1968) Anthony Shadid was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times based in Baghdad and Beirut who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting twice, in 2004 and 2010. Read more
16 Feb 2011: Len Lesser, American actor (born 1922) Leonard King Lesser was an American character actor and comedian, best known for his recurring role as Uncle Leo on Seinfeld. He was also known for his role as Garvin on Everybody Loves Raymond. Read more
16 Feb 2011: Justinas Marcinkevičius, Lithuanian poet and playwright (born 1930) Justinas Marcinkevičius was a Lithuanian poet and playwright. Read more
16 Feb 2009: Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, South Korean cardinal (born 1921) Stephen Kim Sou-hwan was a Korean prelate of the Catholic Church and the Korea's first elevated to the rank of cardinal. He is a former archbishop of Seoul, South Korea. Having been an iconic figure in South Korea's bloody and tumultuous transition from military rule to democracy, he was widely respected across all sections in South Korean society. He is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church having been declared Servant of God by Pope Francis. Read more
16 Feb 2006: Johnny Grunge, American wrestler (born 1966) Michael Lynn Durham was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, Johnny Grunge. He is known for his appearances with Eastern/Extreme Championship Wrestling, World Championship Wrestling and the World Wrestling Federation as one-half of the tag team The Public Enemy with Rocco Rock. In the course of his career, Grunge held championships such as the ECW World Tag Team Championship and WCW World Tag Team Championship. Read more
16 Feb 2006: Ernie Stautner, German-American football player and coach (born 1925) Ernest Alfred Stautner was a German-American professional football player and coach. He played as a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He also served as a coach for the Steelers, Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys. He played college football for the Boston College Eagles. Stautner was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1969. Read more
16 Feb 2004: Doris Troy, American singer-songwriter (born 1937) Doris Troy was an American R&B singer and songwriter, known to her fans as "Mama Soul". Her biggest hit was "Just One Look", a top 10 hit in 1963. Read more
16 Feb 2003: Rusty Magee, American actor and composer (born 1955) Benjamin Rush "Rusty" Magee was an American comedian, actor and composer/lyricist for theatre, television, film and commercials. Read more
16 Feb 2002: Walter Winterbottom, English footballer and manager (born 1913) Sir Walter Winterbottom was an English football player and coach. He was the first manager of the England national team (1946–1962) and Director of Coaching for The Football Association. He resigned from the FA in 1962 to become General Secretary of the Central Council of Physical Recreation (CCPR) and was appointed as the first director of the Sports Council in 1965. He was knighted for his services to sport in 1978 when he retired. The Football Association marked the 100th anniversary of Winterbottom's birth by commissioning a bust which was unveiled by Roy Hodgson at St George's Park on 23 April 2013 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of English football. Read more
16 Feb 2001: Howard W. Koch, American director and producer (born 1916) Howard Winchel Koch was an American film producer and director. He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was involved in the production and direction of numerous films throughout his career, including The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Odd Couple (1968), Airplane! (1980) and its 1982 sequel, and Ghost (1990). At the 62nd Academy Awards, he was honored the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his "outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes". Read more
16 Feb 2001: William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (born 1915) William Howell Masters was an American gynecologist and the senior member of the Masters and Johnson human sexuality research team. Along with his partner Virginia E. Johnson, he pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunctions and disorders from 1957 until the 1990s. Read more
16 Feb 2000: Marceline Day, American actress (born 1908) Marceline Day was an American motion picture actress whose career began as a child in the 1910s and ended in the 1930s. Read more
16 Feb 2000: Lila Kedrova, Russian-French actress and singer Yelizaveta Nikolaevna Kedrova, known as Lila Kedrova, was a Russian-French actress of the screen and stage. For her portrayal of Madame Hortense in Zorba the Greek (1964), she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. For reprising the same role in the musical stage adaptation on Broadway in 1984, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. Read more
16 Feb 2000: Karsten Solheim, Norwegian-American businessman, founded PING (born 1911) Karsten Solheim was a golf club designer and businessman. He founded Karsten Manufacturing, a golf club maker better known by the name of PING, and the Solheim Cup, the premier international team competition in women's golf. Read more
16 Feb 1998: Mary Amdur, American toxicologist and public health researcher (born 1908) Mary Ochsenhirt Amdur was an American toxicologist and public health researcher who worked primarily on pollution. She was charged with studying the effects of the 1948 Donora smog, specifically looking into the effects of inhaling sulfuric acid by experimenting on guinea pigs. Her findings on the respiratory effects related to sulfuric acid led to her being threatened, her funding being pulled, and her losing her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953. Undeterred, she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT and New York University. Despite the early controversy related to her work, it was used in the creation of standards in air pollution, and towards the end of her life she received numerous awards and accolades. Read more
16 Feb 1998: Sheu Yuan-dong, Taiwanese politician (born 1927) Sheu Yuan-dong was a Taiwanese politician who was the 15th governor of Taiwan's central bank from 1995 until his death in 1998. Born in then-Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Sheu attended Taipei City Success High School and graduated from the Department of Political Science at the National Taiwan University. He held senior positions in Taiwan's financial sector. On 16 February 1998, he was killed in the crash of China Airlines Flight 676 along with his wife, Huang Mian-mei, and three other officials of the central bank. Read more
16 Feb 1997: Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese-American physicist and academic (born 1912) Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese: 吳健雄; pinyin: Wú Jiànxióng; Wade–Giles: Wu2 Chien4-Hsiung2; May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of nuclear and particle physics. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. This discovery resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, while Wu herself was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Her expertise in experimental physics evoked comparisons to Marie Curie. Her nicknames include the "First Lady of Physics", the "Chinese Marie Curie" and the "Queen of Nuclear Research". Read more
16 Feb 1996: Roberto Aizenberg, Argentinian painter and sculptor (born 1922) Roberto Aizenberg, nicknamed "Bobby", was an Argentine painter and sculptor. He was considered the best-known orthodox surrealist painter in Argentina. Read more
16 Feb 1996: Roger Bowen, American actor and author (born 1932) Roger Wendell Bowen was an American comedic actor and novelist, best known for his portrayal of Lt. Col. Henry Blake in the 1970 film M*A*S*H. Read more
16 Feb 1996: Pat Brown, American lawyer and politician, 32nd Governor of California (born 1905) Edmund Gerald "Pat" Brown was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 32nd governor of California from 1959 to 1967. His first elected office was as district attorney for San Francisco, and he was later elected attorney general of California in 1950, before becoming the state's governor after the 1958 election. Read more
16 Feb 1996: Brownie McGhee, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1915) Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee was an American folk and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry. Read more
16 Feb 1992: Angela Carter, English novelist, short story writer (born 1940) Angela Olive Pearce, who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Read more
16 Feb 1992: Jânio Quadros, Brazilian politician, 22nd President of Brazil (born 1917) Jânio da Silva Quadros was a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd president of Brazil from 31 January to 25 August 1961, when he resigned from office. He also served as the 24th and 36th mayor of São Paulo, and the 18th governor of the state of São Paulo. Quadros was known for his populist style of government and eccentric behavior. Read more
16 Feb 1992: Herman Wold, Norwegian-Swedish economist and statistician (born 1908) Herman Ole Andreas Wold was a Norwegian-born econometrician and statistician who had a long career in Sweden. Wold was known for his work in mathematical economics, in time series analysis, and in econometric statistics. Read more
16 Feb 1991: Enrique Bermúdez, Nicaraguan lieutenant and engineer (born 1932) Enrique Bermúdez Varela, known as Comandante 380, was a Nicaraguan soldier and rebel who founded and commanded the Nicaraguan Contras. In this capacity, he became a central global figure in one of the most prominent conflicts of the Cold War. Read more
16 Feb 1990: Keith Haring, American painter and activist (born 1958) Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his work includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism by using the images to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness. In addition to solo gallery exhibitions, he participated in renowned national and international group shows such as documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial in New York, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. The Whitney Museum held a retrospective of his art in 1997. Read more
16 Feb 1988: Ye Shengtao, Chinese writer, educator, and politician (born 1894) Ye Shengtao also known as Ye Shaojun, was a Chinese writer, journalist, educator, publisher and politician. He was a founder of the Association for Literary Studies (文學研究會), the first literature association during the May Fourth Movement in China. He served as the Vice-Minister of Culture of the People's Republic of China. Read more
16 Feb 1984: M. A. G. Osmani, Bangladeshi general (born 1918) Muhammad Ataul Gani Osmani was a Bangladeshi military officer, revolutionary and politician. His military career spanned three decades, beginning with his service in the British Indian Army in 1939. He fought in the Burma Campaign during World War II, and after the partition of India in 1947, he joined the Pakistan Army and served in the East Bengal Regiment, retiring as a colonel in 1967. Osmani joined the Provisional Government of Bangladesh in 1971 as the commander-in-chief of the nascent Bangladesh Forces. Regarded as the founder of the Bangladesh Armed Forces, Osmani retired as a four star general from the Bangladesh Army in 1972. Read more
16 Feb 1980: Erich Hückel, German physicist and chemist (born 1895) Erich Armand Arthur Joseph Hückel was a German physicist and physical chemist. He is mainly known for the Debye–Hückel theory of electrolytic solutions and the Hückel method of approximate molecular orbital (MO) calculations on π electron systems. Read more
16 Feb 1977: Janani Luwum, bishop, Church of Uganda, martyr (born c.1922) Janani Jakaliya Luwum was a Ugandan Anglican bishop. He was the archbishop of the Church of Uganda from 1974 to 1977 and one of the most influential leaders of the modern church in Africa. He was arrested in February 1977 and died shortly after. Although the official account describes a car crash, it is generally accepted that he was murdered on the orders of then-president Idi Amin. Read more
16 Feb 1977: Rózsa Péter, Hungarian mathematician (born 1905) Rózsa Péter, until January 1934 Rózsa Politzer, was a Hungarian mathematician and logician. She is best known as the "founding mother of recursion theory". Read more
16 Feb 1975: Morgan Taylor, American hurdler and coach (born 1903) Frederick Morgan Taylor was an American hurdler and the first athlete to win three Olympic medals in the 400 m hurdles. He was the flag bearer for the United States at his last Olympics in 1932. Read more
16 Feb 1974: John Garand, Canadian-American engineer, designed the M1 Garand Rifle (born 1888) Jean Cantius Garand, also known as John C. Garand, was a Canadian-American designer of firearms who created the M1 Garand, a semi-automatic rifle that was widely used by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps during both World War II and the Korean War. Read more
16 Feb 1967: Smiley Burnette, American singer-songwriter and actor (born 1911) Lester Alvin Burnett, better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's Petticoat Junction in the 1960s. Read more
16 Feb 1964: James M. Canty, American educator, school administrator, and businessperson (born 1865) James Munroe Canty was an American educator, school administrator, and businessperson. Canty was an acting principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1898 and is considered by West Virginia State as an acting president. Canty also served as the superintendent of Mechanical Industries for West Virginia Colored Institute from 1893 through 1914. Read more
16 Feb 1961: Dazzy Vance, American baseball player (born 1891) Charles Arthur "Dazzy" Vance was an American professional baseball player. He played as a pitcher for five different franchises in Major League Baseball (MLB) in a career that spanned 16 seasons over 21 years. A late bloomer, Vance pitched his first full season in 1922 at age 31 and, aided by his impressive fastball, became the only pitcher to lead the National League in strikeouts for seven consecutive seasons. Vance was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955. Read more
16 Feb 1957: Josef Hofmann, Polish-American pianist and composer (born 1876) Josef Casimir Hofmann was a Polish-American pianist, composer, music teacher, and inventor. Read more
16 Feb 1944: Dadasaheb Phalke, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1870) Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke, was an Indian producer, director and screenwriter, widely regarded as "the Father of Indian cinema". Read more
16 Feb 1941: Frida Felser, German opera singer and actress (born 1872) Frida Felser was a German soprano opera singer and actress. Read more
16 Feb 1932: Ferdinand Buisson, French academic and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1841) Ferdinand Édouard Buisson was a French educational public servant, pacifist, and Radical-Socialist politician. He presided over the League of Education from 1902 to 1906 and over the Human Rights League (LDH) from 1914 to 1926. In 1927, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him jointly with Ludwig Quidde. A philosopher and educator, he was Director of Primary Education. He was the author of a thesis on Sebastian Castellio, in whom he saw a "liberal Protestant" in his image. Ferdinand Buisson was the president of the National Association of Freethinkers. In 1905, he chaired the parliamentary committee to implement the separation of church and state. Famous for his fight for secular education through the League of Education, he coined the term laïcité ("secularism"). Read more
16 Feb 1932: Edgar Speyer, American-English financier and philanthropist (born 1862) Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet was an American-born financier and philanthropist. He became a British subject in 1892 and was chairman of Speyer Brothers, the British branch of the Speyer family's international finance house, and a partner in the German and American branches. He was chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London from 1906 to 1915, a period during which the company opened three underground railway lines, electrified a fourth and took over two more. Read more
16 Feb 1928: Eddie Foy Sr., American actor and dancer (born 1856) Edwin Fitzgerald, known professionally as Eddie Foy and Eddie Foy Sr., was an American actor, comedian, dancer and vaudevillian. Read more
16 Feb 1919: Vera Kholodnaya, Ukrainian actress (born 1893) Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya was a Russian cinema actress. She was the first star of Imperial Russian silent cinema. Only five of her films still exist, and the total number she acted in is unknown, with speculation ranging from 50 to 100. Read more
16 Feb 1917: Octave Mirbeau, French journalist, novelist, and playwright (born 1848) Octave Henri Marie Mirbeau was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages. Read more
16 Feb 1912: Nicholas of Japan, Russian-Japanese monk and saint (born 1836) Nicholas (Kasatkin), Equal-to-the-Apostles, Archbishop of Japan, born Ivan Dmitrovich Kasatkin (Russian: Иван Дмитриевич Касаткин; 13 August [O.S. 1 August] 1836 – 16 February 1912) was a Russian Orthodox priest, monk, and bishop. He introduced the Eastern Orthodox Church to Japan. The Orthodox cathedral of Tokyo (metropolitan diocese of Japan), Tokyo Resurrection Cathedral, was informally named after him as Nikorai-do, first by the local community, and today nationwide, in remembrance of his work. Read more
16 Feb 1907: Giosuè Carducci, Italian poet and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1835) Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci was an Italian poet, writer, literary critic and teacher. He was noticeably influential, and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906, he became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy awarded him the prize "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces." Read more
16 Feb 1899: Félix Faure, French merchant and politician, 7th President of France (born 1841) Félix François Faure was President of France from 1895 until his death in 1899. A native of Paris, he worked as a tanner in his younger years. Faure became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Seine-Inférieure in 1881. He rose to prominence in national politics up until unexpectedly assuming the presidency, during which time France's relations with Russia improved. Read more
16 Feb 1898: Thomas Bracken, Irish-New Zealand journalist, poet, and politician (born 1843) Thomas Bracken was an Irish-born New Zealand poet, journalist and politician. He wrote "God Defend New Zealand", one of the two national anthems of New Zealand, and was the first person to publish the phrase "God's Own Country" as applied to New Zealand. He also won the Otago Caledonian Society's prize for poetry. Read more
16 Feb 1862: William Pennington, American lawyer and politician, 13th Governor of New Jersey, 23rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (born 1796) William Pennington was an American politician and lawyer. He was the 13th governor of New Jersey from 1837 to 1843. He served one term in the United States House of Representatives, during which he served as the first Republican Speaker of the House from 1860 to 1861. Read more
16 Feb 1820: Georg Carl von Döbeln, Swedish general (born 1758) Georg Carl von Döbeln was a Swedish friherre (baron), Lieutenant general and above all known for his efforts on the Swedish side during the Finnish War. Read more

Why is 16 February Important in World History?

Several significant political, cultural, educational, and sporting events took place on 16 February, making it an important topic for general knowledge and competitive examinations.

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What happened on 16 February in World history?

On 16 February, several important historical events, notable births, and major milestones occurred in World history.

Is History of Today important for competitive exams?

Yes, History of Today is frequently asked in UPSC, SSC, Banking, Railway, and State PSC exams as part of static GK and current awareness sections.