📜 This Day in History

December 16

• 1598Led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the Korean navy were victorious at Battle of Noryang, ending the Japanese invasions of Korea.
• 1740Prussian forces, led by Frederick the Great, moved into the Habsburg region of Silesia, starting the First Silesian War.
• 1893Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony (audio featured) premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
• 1918Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas declared the formation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, a puppet state created by Soviet Russia to justify the Lithuanian–Soviet War.
• 1971The surrender of Pakistani forces in Dacca, East Pakistan, concluded the Bangladesh Liberation War and the India-Pakistan War.
• 2014A hostage crisis in a Lindt chocolate café in Sydney, Australia, ended with police storming the building, killing the perpetrator and one of the hostages.

Born on this day

• 1770Ludwig van Beethoven, composer (died 1827)
• 1775Jane Austen, English novelist (died 1817)
• 1866Wassily Kandinsky, Russian-French painter and theorist (died 1944)
• 1917Arthur C. Clarke, English science fiction writer (died 2008)