| 141541 | December 16 | Event | 1941 – World War II: Japanese forces occupy Miri, Sarawak. |
| 141542 | December 16 | Event | 1942 – The Holocaust: Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz. |
| 141543 | December 16 | Event | 1944 – World War II: The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest. |
| 141544 | December 16 | Event | 1946 – Thailand joins the United Nations. |
| 141545 | December 16 | Event | 1947 – William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor. |
| 141546 | December 16 | Event | 1950 – Korean War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman declares a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight in support of communist North Korea. |
| 141547 | December 16 | Event | 1957 – Sir Feroz Khan Noon replaces Ibrahim Ismail Chundrigar as Prime Minister of Pakistan. |
| 141548 | December 16 | Event | 1960 – A United Airlines Douglas DC-8 and a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation collide over Staten Island, New York and crash, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft and 6 more on the ground. |
| 141549 | December 16 | Event | 1965 – Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland sends U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a request for 243,000 more men by the end of 1966. |
| 141550 | December 16 | Event | 1968 – Second Vatican Council: Official revocation of the Edict of Expulsion of Jews from Spain. |
| 141551 | December 16 | Event | 1971 – Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: The surrender of the Pakistan Army brings an end to both conflicts. This is commemorated annually as Victory Day in Bangladesh, and as Vijay Diwas in India. |
| 141552 | December 16 | Event | 1971 – The United Kingdom recognizes Bahrain's independence. This is commemorated annually as Bahrain's National Day. |
| 141553 | December 16 | Event | 1978 – Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression. |
| 141554 | December 16 | Event | 1979 – Libya joins four other OPEC nations in raising crude oil prices, which has an immediate, dramatic effect on the United States. |
| 141555 | December 16 | Event | 1985 – Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of New York's Gambino crime family |
| 141556 | December 16 | Event | 1986 – Gennady Kolbin replaces Dinmukhamed Konayev as First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party, prompting the Jeltoqsan protests which began the next day. |
| 141557 | December 16 | Event | 1989 – Romanian Revolution: Protests break out in Timișoara, Romania, in response to an attempt by the government to evict dissident Hungarian pastor László Tőkés. |
| 141558 | December 16 | Event | 1989 – U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Smith Vance is assassinated by a mail bomb sent by Walter Leroy Moody, Jr. |
| 141559 | December 16 | Event | 1991 – Kazakhstan declares independence from the Soviet Union. |
| 141560 | December 16 | Event | 1995 – Official adoption of the name of "Euro". |
| 141561 | December 16 | Event | 2013 – A bus falls from an elevated highway in the Philippines capital Manila killing at least 18 people with 20 injured. |
| 141562 | December 16 | Event | 2014 – Militants belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan attacked an Army Public School in the Pakistani city of Peshawar killing 145 people. |
| 141563 | December 16 | Birth | 1485 – Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536) |
| 141564 | December 16 | Birth | 1584 – John Selden, English jurist and scholar (d. 1654) |
| 141565 | December 16 | Birth | 1614 – Eberhard III, Duke of Württemberg (d. 1674) |
| 141566 | December 16 | Birth | 1716 – Louis Jules Mancini Mazarini, French poet and diplomat (d. 1798) |
| 141567 | December 16 | Birth | 1717 – Elizabeth Carter, English poet and scholar (d. 1806) |
| 141568 | December 16 | Birth | 1742 – Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, German field marshal (d. 1819) |
| 141569 | December 16 | Birth | 1775 – Jane Austen, English author (d. 1817) |
| 141570 | December 16 | Birth | 1775 – François-Adrien Boieldieu, French pianist and composer (d. 1834) |