16 February History
- 1760 - Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George are killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements.
- 1804 - Lt. Stephen Decatur attacks the Tripoli pirates who burned the USS Philadelphia.
- 1862 - Fort Donelson, Tennessee, falls to Grant's Federal forces, but not before Nathan Bedford Forrest escapes.
- 1865 - Columbia, South Carolina, surrenders to Federal troops.
- 1923 - Bessie Smith makes her first recording "Down Hearted Blues."
- 1934 - Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden.
- 1937 - Dupont patents a new thread, nylon, which will replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs.
- 1940 - The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
- 1942 - Tojo outlines Japan's war aims to the Diet, referring to "new order of coexistence" in East Asia.
- 1945 - American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines.
- 1951 - Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war.
- 1952 - The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
- 1957 - A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica.
- 1959 - Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana.
- 1965 - Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument.
- 1966 - The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam.
- 1978 - China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.
16 February Birthdays
- 1620 - Frederick William, founder of Brandenburg-Prussia.
- 1838 - Henry Adams, U.S. historian, son and grandson of the presidents.
- 1852 - Charles Taze Russell, founder of the International Bible Students Association which later became the Jehovah's Witnesses.
- 1845 - Quinton Hogg, English philanthropist.
- 1886 - Van Wyck Brooks, biographer, critic and literary historian.
- 1903 - Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist and radio comedian.
- 1904 - George Kennan, U.S. diplomat and historian.
- 1944 - Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (The Sportswriter, Independence Day).