Portal:Biography/Selected anniversaries/December 16

Births

• 1485 – Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England (d. 1536)
• 1742 – Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, German field marshal (d. 1819)
• 1775 – Jane Austen, English author (d. 1817)
• 1869 – Hristo Tatarchev, Bulgarian revolutionary and author (d. 1952)
• 1901 – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist (d. 1978)
• 1917 – Arthur C. Clarke, English author (d. 2008)

Deaths

• 705 – Wu Zetian, Empress of China (b. 625)
• 1598 – Yi Sun-sin, Korean admiral (b. 1545)
• 1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz, 1st President of the Republic of Poland (b. 1865)
• 1945 – Giovanni Agnelli, founder of Fiat Automobile Company (b. 1866)
• 1982 – Colin Chapman, English engineer and founder of Lotus Cars (b. 1928)
• 1993 – Kakuei Tanaka, 64th Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1918)