Anniversaries 16 April

Birth

Genghis Khan5

founder and first emperor of the Mongol Empire 1162–1227

Mugaku Sogen1

1226–1286

John Davies (poet)9

English poet, lawyer, and politician, born 1569 1569–1626

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma18

Maharajah of Travencore 1813–1846

Ferdinand Eisenstein2

German mathematician 1823–1852

Ernest Solvay4

Belgian chemist, industrialist, philanthropist 1838–1922

Anatole France122

French writer 1844–1924

Henry Smith Pritchett1

American astronomer 1857–1939

Grace Livingston Hill1

20th-century novelist 1865–1947

Wilbur Wright12

American aviation pioneer 1867–1912

John Millington Synge16

Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folk… 1871–1909

Richard R. Wright Jr.6

1878–1967

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax17

British politician 1881–1959

Ernst Thälmann2

leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much … 1886–1944

Charlie Chaplin75

British comic actor and filmmaker 1889–1977

Jerzy Neyman4

Polish statistician 1894–1981

Tristan Tzara19

Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performa… 1896–1963

William T. Stearn1

British botanist 1911–2001

Evsey Domar1

American economist 1914–1997

Charlotte Salomon25

German painter 1917–1943

Spike Milligan15

British-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright,… 1918–2002

Merce Cunningham5

American dancer 1919–2009

Peter Ustinov59

English actor, writer, and dramatist 1921–2004

Samuel Youd4

British writer 1922–2012

Kingsley Amis32

English novelist, poet, critic, teacher 1922–1995

Pope Benedict XVI117

265th Pope of the Catholic Church 1927

Diane Wood Middlebrook1

biographer 1939–2007

Dusty Springfield6

English singer and record producer 1939–1999

Margrethe II of Denmark29

Queen of Denmark 1940

Moni Ovadia1

Italian actor, musician, singer and theatrical author 1946

Margot Adler1

author, Neopagan, and National Public Radio reporter 1946–2014

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar4

American basketball player 1947

Gerry Rafferty7

Scottish singer and songwriter 1947–2011

Yochanan Afek1

Israeli chess player, composer, trainer and arbiter 1952

Bill Belichick2

American football coach 1952

Henri of Luxembourg11

Grand Duke (head of state) of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg 1955

Rafael Benítez6

Spanish association football player and manager 1960

Antony Blinken1

American government official and 71th U.S. Secretary of Sta… 1962

Ian MacKaye3

American singer and record label owner 1962

Martin Lawrence1

American actor and director 1965

Selena10

Mexican-American singer, songwriter, actress, and fashion d… 1971–1995

Ed Byrne10

Irish comedian 1972

Akon5

singer 1973

Mathias Malzieu8

French singer 1974

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes23

Novelist 1984

Nate Diaz12

American mixed martial artist 1985

Mirai Nagasu2

American figure skater 1993

Umair Ahmad3

Businessman 1997

Umair Ahmad3

Entrepreneur, Writer, Researcher & Film Producer 1997

Josephs Quartzy15

Tanzanian actor 1999

Death

Bayazid Bastami1

Persian Sufi mystic 804–846

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham20

English statesman and poet 1628–1687

Aphra Behn15

British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer 1640–1689

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon5

French natural historian 1707–1788

Francisco De Goya40

Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828) 1746–1828

Alexis De Tocqueville135

French political thinker and historian 1805–1859

Samuel Smiles13

Scottish author 1812–1904

Bernadette Soubirous1

French saint 1844–1879

Edna Ferber6

Novelist, playwright 1885–1968

Yasunari Kawabata44

Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner 1899–1972

Rudolf Höss11

German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz concentration … 1901–1947

Ralph Ellison82

American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer 1914–1994

Kaoru Ishikawa3

Japanese business theorist 1915–1989

Edward Norton Lorenz2

American mathematician and meteorologist 1917–2008

Rosalind Franklin2

British chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer 1920–1958

C.K. Prahalad11

Indian academic 1941–2010