16 July in history
9 events that happened on 16 July, from 622 to 1994.
✦ Anniversary of the day
997 CE 1,029 years ago
The Byzantines defeat Tsar Samuel's Bulgarians at the Spercheios
A Byzantine army under General Nikephoros Ouranos defeated the Bulgarian army of Tsar Samuel on the Spercheios river near Lamia in central Greece. The victory virtually destroyed the Bulgarian army and ended its raids in the southern Balkans and Greece.
1054 CE 972 years ago
Papal legates excommunicate the patriarch of Constantinople in Hagia Sophia
During the liturgy in Hagia Sophia, Cardinal Humbert and his fellow legates, whose authority had lapsed with the pope's death, laid a charter excommunicating Patriarch Michael I Cerularius on the altar. Historians often date the East–West Schism from this act.
1232 CE 794 years ago
Arjona elects the future Muhammad I of Granada as its leader
After the final Friday prayer of Ramadan, a mosque assembly in Arjona declared the town's independence from Ibn Hud and elected Muhammad ibn Yusuf as its leader. He went on to found the Nasrid dynasty and the Emirate of Granada.
1661 CE 365 years ago
Stockholms Banco issues Europe's first banknotes
Sweden's Stockholms Banco began issuing paper credit notes, the first banknotes in Europe. The bank over-issued and collapsed within a few years, but paper money was here to stay.
1945 CE 81 years ago
The first atomic bomb is detonated in New Mexico
The Trinity test at 5.29 am in the Jornada del Muerto desert proved the plutonium bomb worked. Oppenheimer later recalled the Bhagavad Gita: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'
1969 CE 57 years ago
Apollo 11 launches for the Moon
A Saturn V rocket lifted Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins from Kennedy Space Center. Four days later Armstrong and Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon.
1994 CE 32 years ago
Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 begin hitting Jupiter
Over six days some 21 fragments of the comet slammed into Jupiter, the first collision between solar system bodies ever observed. They left dark scars in the atmosphere larger than Earth.
Born on 16 July 4
Died on 16 July 5
Dates as the sources give them: in the Julian calendar before 1582, and in some countries for longer (Britain until 1752, Russia until 1918). Only people whose day of birth or death the records agree on are listed.