On December 16
No pivotal events are recorded on exactly December 16 in the Human Saga — here is the surrounding week in history.
This week in history (Dec 13 – Dec 19)
On the morning of 17 December 1903, near Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first sustained, controlled, powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft.
On 18 December 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party convened in Beijing and resolved to shift the focus of the Party and state from class struggle to economic construction, launching…
After a siege lasting from March 1696 to December 1698, the army of the Yarubid sultan of Oman, Saif ibn Sultan, stormed Fort Jesus at Mombasa on 13 December 1698, ending nearly two centuries of Portuguese dominance over the East African…
On 18 December 1979 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty often described as an international bill of rights for women.
On 17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, set himself on fire after police confiscated his goods and humiliated him. He died on 4 January 2011.
In 2025, renewable energy surpassed coal as the largest single source of electricity generation worldwide for the first time, a structural milestone in the global energy transition.
On 13 December 2003 US forces captured the deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during Operation Red Dawn near his hometown of Tikrit.