Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 16:
1600s – Annual bareback horse race in Siena’s central square, dating back to the 1600s.
1948 – American baseball player George Herman (Babe) Ruth died in New York City.
1949 – U.S. journalist-author Margaret Mitchell died. She wrote only one novel — “Gone with the Wind”.
1960 – Cyprus became an independent republic, with Archbishop Makarios as its first president.
1977 – Elvis Presley died aged 42 from heart failure brought on by abuse of prescribed drugs.
1996 – Leonel Fernandez, a 42-year-old lawyer who grew up in New York City, became the 100th president of the Dominican Republic.
2002 – Palestinian Abu Nidal, the world’s most prolific and hotly pursued guerrilla mastermind, died aged 65. Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Bana, headed a group called Fatah-The Revolutionary Council.
2003 – Idi Amin died. Amin, a one-time army boxing champion who became one of Africa’s bloodiest despots, ruled Uganda from 1971 for 8 years.
2004 – The United States said it would withdraw about 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia in a major restructuring of military forces prompted by the end of the Cold War.
2005 – Brother Roger, one of the 20th century’s leading ecumenical figures, was stabbed to death by a woman during a service at the Taize community he founded in eastern France.
2012 – South African police open fire against thousands of striking miners in Rustenburg.
(Reuters)