Today in history

On Dec. 16, 1485, Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was born in Alcala de Henares, Spain.

In 1653 Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

In 1770 composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany.

In 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.

In 1775 novelist Jane Austen was born in Steventon, England.

In 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate.

In 1811 the first of the powerful New Madrid earthquakes struck the central Mississippi Valley with an estimated magnitude of 7.7.

In 1899 playwright Noel Coward was born outside London.

In 1901 anthropologist Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia.

In 1905 the entertainment trade publication Variety came out with its first weekly issue.

In 1916 Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was killed by a group of noblemen.

In 1944 the World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium.

In 1950 President Harry Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism.”