Birthday Paper › What happened on …? › May 16

Events on May 16

• 1770 The 14-year-old Marie Antoinette marries the 15-year-old Louis-Auguste at the Palace of Versailles, who later becomes King of France.
• 1810 The two volumes of Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are published by the Cotta publishing house in Tübingen. Among other things, it contains his essay Contributions to Optics.
• 1881 Siemens & Halske opens the world's first electric street railway in Lichterfelde near Berlin on a trial basis, running from Lichterfelde station to the Main Cadet Institute. Werner von Siemens himself, however, does not call the railway a street railway, but an "electric railway".
• 1888 German inventor and industrialist Emil Berliner presents the gramophone he invented and the record played on it to scientists at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
• 1943 Only when the ghetto has been completely burned down can units of the SS, Wehrmacht, and police under the command of Jürgen Stroop end the uprising that has been continuing since April 19. As a final act, Stroop has the Great Synagogue blown up.
• 1960 U.S. physicist Theodore Maiman completes the first laser, a ruby laser.
• 1974 The German Bundestag elects Helmut Schmidt, the successor to Willy Brandt—who resigned over the Guillaume Affair—as the fifth Federal Chancellor.
• 1977 The third episode of the Loriot television series is aired for the first time; it contains many sketches by the humorist that went on to become classics, including The Noodle and the three trick films The Breakfast Egg, After Work, and Television Evening.
• 1981 In the ZDF programme Wetten, dass..?, Karlheinz Böhm formulates his bet to Frank Elstner, which will lead to the founding of the aid organization People for People.
• 1995 The Federal Constitutional Court declares parts of the Bavarian Elementary School Ordinance unconstitutional in its Crucifix Decision. The ordinance stipulated that a crucifix or at least a cross was to be displayed in every classroom in Bavaria's elementary schools.
• 1996 The first Carnival of Cultures is held in Berlin.
• 2007 In France, Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) succeeds Jacques Chirac, who has served as president since 1995, as president.

Born on May 16

• 1887 Jakob van Hoddis, German Expressionist poet
• 1891 Richard Tauber, Austrian singer
• 1900 Dinah Nelken, German writer and screenwriter
• 1921 Winnie Markus, German film actress
• 1930 Friedrich Gulda, Austrian pianist and conductor
• 1960 Tamme Hanken, German animal healer
• 1970 Gabriela Sabatini, Argentine tennis player
• 1980 Jens Spahn, German politician
• 1981 Kaká, Brazilian football player
• 1990 Thomas Brodie-Sangster, British actor

Is your birthday on May 16?

Then there is a newspaper that tells only the story of your day: what was going on in the world on May 16 of your birth year, which song was at the top, what the weather was like at your birthplace, plus birthday twins and a personal greeting.

• For every birth year from 1946
• 4 to 10 pages, always €14.90, as a PDF to print
• With a greeting page for voice and video messages

Create the paper for May 16 · €14.90

Day and month are already filled in, you only choose the birth year.

Source of events and birthdays: German Wikipedia article „16. Mai“, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, selected, shortened and translated by Birthday Paper.

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