On Thursday, December 16, the book of history records, among other things:
1526: After the death of King Ludwig II, who drowned while fleeing after the defeat by the Turks in the Battle of Mohács, and the extinction of the Jagiellonian dynasty, he became (Ludwig’s brother-in-law) Archduke Ferdinand von Habsburg, brother of Emperor Charles V. , Hungarian and Bohemian king at the same time.
1761: The Russians conquer the Prussian fortress Kolberg in the Seven Years’ War.
1916: World War I: Russian and Romanian troops evacuate their positions in Dobruja.
1926: The novella “The death of the petty bourgeois” by Franz Werfel appears.
1931: In Rome, the German Dominican and scholastic scholar Albertus Magnus (Albert Graf von Bollstädt) (1200-1280) by Pope Pius XI. canonized and made a Doctor of the Church. (He was the pioneer of Aristotelianism and a mediator of Arabic and Jewish science in the Christian Middle Ages.)
1941: The London-based government in exile of Czechoslovakia declares war on Germany and Italy.
1941: A German task force murdered 12,000 Jews in Simferopol in the Crimea.
1942: Hitler orders the deportation of all “Gypsies” living in Germany to Auschwitz.
1946: The socialist Léon Blum, Prime Minister of the Popular Front government 1936-1938 and later imprisoned and deported under German occupation, becomes French head of government for the third time.
1951: The Turkish government is punishing communist party work with the death penalty. (The Turkish Communist Party, founded in 1920, was banned in 1923.)
1961: The Constitutional Court declares that it has no jurisdiction in the Otto Habsburg case.
1966: Because of the racist policy of the white minority regime, the UN Security Council is imposing an economic embargo on Southern Rhodesia, which has unilaterally declared itself independent.
1971: Indian intervention troops conquer Dhaka, in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) the Pakistani army surrenders.
1991: Kazakhstan declares its independence from the USSR.
2001: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat ordered the cessation of “armed activities” directed against Israel.
2006: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is causing unrest by calling for early elections. The ruling Hamas accuses him of a “coup against the will of the people”.
2006: A change of throne takes place in the Buddhist Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. After 35 years of reign, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk (51) abdicates in favor of his eldest son, the 26-year-old Crown Prince Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk.
2006: After a serious mistake in the use of lethal injection on a prisoner sentenced to death in the US state of Florida, this type of execution is questioned in the USA and suspended in several states.
Birthdays: Johann W. Ritter, German physicist (1776-1810); Margaret Mead, US ethnologist (1901-1978); James McCracken, US tenor (1926-1988); Elisabeth Kopp, black. Politician (1936); Benny Andersson, Swedish pop musician “ABBA” (1946); Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek, east. Pedagogue and politician (SPÖ), member of the National Council and Minister in various functions, including women, education (1961).
Days of Death: Kaspar Tieffenbrucker, German instrument maker (1514-1571); Siegfried Mahlmann, German writer (1771-1826); Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer (1835-1921); Dorothy Dix (real. Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer), US journalist (1861-1951); Gabriel Narutowicz, Polish politician (1865-1922); Albert Lieven, German actor (1906-1971); Stefan Heym, German writer (1913-2001); Dan Frazer, US-amer. Actor (1921-2011).
Name days: Adelheid, Anasias, Sturm, Elke, Ado, Alice, Heidi, Albine, Sebastian.