A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, December 16th!
| 1431 | Henry VI of England is crowned King of France. |
| 1653 | Oliver Cromwell takes on dictatorial powers with the title of “Lord Protector.”  |
| 1773 | The Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes. |
| 1809 | Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate. |
| 1811 | The first of the powerful New Madrid earthquakes, with an estimated magnitude of 7.7, struck the central Mississippi Valley. |
| 1835 | A fire in New York City destroys property estimated to be worth $20,000,000. It lasts two days, ravages 17 blocks, and destroys 674 buildings including the Stock Exchange, Merchants’ Exchange, Post Office, and the South Dutch Church. |
| 1863 | Confederate General Joseph Johnston takes command of the Army of Tennessee. |
| 1864 | Union forces under General George H. Thomas win the battle at Nashville, smashing an entire Confederate army. |
| 1916 | Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen.  |
| 1917 | Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, England. |
| 1930 | In Spain, a general strike is called in support of the revolution. |
| 1939 | The National Women’s Party urges immediate congressional action on equal rights. |
| 1940 | British troops carry out an air raid on Italian Somalia. |
| 1944 | Germany mounts a major offensive in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. As the center of the Allied line falls back, it creates a bulge, leading to the name–the Battle of the Bulge. |
| 1949 | Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung is received at the Kremlin in Moscow. |
| 1950 | President Harry Truman declares a state of National Emergency as Chinese communists invade deeper into South Korea. |
| 1976 | President Jimmy Carter appoints Andrew Young as Ambassador to the United Nations.  |
| 1978 | Cleveland becomes the first U.S. city to default since the depression. |
| 1985 | Reputed organized-crime chief Paul Castellano was shot to death outside a New York City restaurant. |
| 1990 | Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in the country’s first democratic elections. |
| 1991 | The U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. |
| 1998 | President Bill Clinton ordered a sustained series of airstrikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein’s continued defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors. |
| 2000 | President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state. |
| 2007 | British forces formally handed over to Iraq responsibility for Basra, the last Iraqi region under their control. |
| 2009 | Iran test-fired a missile capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe. |
| 2010 | Larry King concluded his CNN talk show after 25 years. |
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