Cruel Conquistador

1532

Francisco Pizarro traps Incan emperor Atahualpa

Born on This Day

"Big Time Adolescence" New York Premiere

Pete Davidson

1993 -

Laid-back American comedian and actor who famously joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live" at age 20.

2018 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones - Arrivals

Lisa Bonet

1967 -

Actress best known as Denise Huxtable on the '80s sitcom "The Cosby Show" and its college-set spin-off, "A Different World."

Shigeru Miyamoto Video Game Designer

Shigeru Miyamoto

1952 -

Innovative Japanese video game designer whose creations include "Mario," "The Legend of Zelda" and "Donkey Kong."

Pete Davidson

Getty Images

Lisa Bonet

Getty Images

Shigeru Miyamoto

Getty Images

2012

NOV

16

Hostess Brands announces its shutdown, sparking a national wave of snack cake hoarding. Within a week, retailer Amazon sees a 31,000% jump in Twinkie sales.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on November 16th

1776

British capture Fort Washington

Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries and 5,000 Redcoats lay siege to Fort Washington at the northern end and highest point of Manhattan Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside the fort, but by afternoon, the Patriots were overwhelmed, and the garrison […]

1:28m read read

1821

Trade opens on the Santa Fe Trail

On November 16, 1821, Missouri Indian trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sells his goods at an enormous profit and makes plans to return the next year over the route that will become known as the Santa Fe Trail. It would become one of the most important and lucrative of the Old […]

1:56m read read

1849

Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death

On November 16, 1849, a Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his allegedly anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group. His execution is stayed at the last minute. Dostoevsky’s father was a doctor at Moscow’s Hospital for the Poor, where he grew rich enough to buy land and serfs. After his father’s […]

1:24m read read

1907

Oklahoma enters the Union

Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years. The first Europeans to visit the region were Spanish explorers in the 16th […]

2:28m read read

1941

Joseph Goebbels publishes his screed of hate

On November 16, 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that “The Jews wanted the war, and now they have it”—referring to the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift the blame for the world war onto European Jews, thereby giving the Nazis a rationalization for the so-called Final Solution. Just two days earlier, […]

1:22m read read

1957

Body of Ed Gein’s final victim, Bernice Worden, is found

On November 16, 1957, the body of Bernice Worden of Plainfield, Wisconsin, is found, the final victim of infamous killer Edward Gein. His grave robbing, necrophilia and copious corpse trophies gained national attention, and may have provided inspiration for the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of […]

1:28m read read

1959

“The Sound of Music” premieres on Broadway

On November 16, 1959, The Sound of Music opens on Broadway, becoming a smash success from the first night. Did a young Austrian nun named Maria von Trapp really take to the hills surrounding Salzburg to sing spontaneously of her love of music? No, but nearly all of the particulars of her 1949 book, The […]

1:30m read read

1974

The Arecibo Message, an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrials, is sent into space

On November 16, 1974, eight years before E.T. did the “Phone Home” thing on film, researchers send humanity’s first real-life, deliberate radio message into outer space to extraterrestrials. The message goes out from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, where the Arecibo radio telescope was getting a major upgrade and conducting a ceremony to mark […]

2001

First Harry Potter film opens

On November 16, 2001, the British author J.K. Rowling’s star creation—bespectacled boy wizard Harry Potter—makes his big-screen debut in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which opens in movie theaters across the United States. Based on the mega-best-selling fantasy novel of the same name, the film, which starred Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, went […]

2:36m read read

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