Ephemeris of November 16

On November 16, 1989, the Salvadoran “Death Squads” murdered six Jesuit priests and two women. Five of the Jesuits are Spanish, and among them is the rector of the Central American University (UCA), Ignacio Ellacuría

OTHER EVENTS:

1519.- The Spanish conquistador Diego Vázquez de Cuéllar founds the city of Havana, the current capital of Cuba, which was called the town of San Cristóbal de La Habana.

1780.- The indigenous leader Túpac Amaru II proclaims for the first time the abolition of slavery in America.

1855.- The British doctor, explorer and missionary David Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls in the course of the Zambezi River, in Rhodesia.

1885.- The American businessman George Eastman, founder of the Kodak company, invents nitrocellulose film in the United States to print images.

1904.- The United States takes over all the rights to the Panama Canal for 40 million dollars.

1918.- The People’s Republic of Hungary is proclaimed, after the declaration of independence and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

1933.- The United States and the Soviet Union establish diplomatic relations.

1938.- The battle of the Ebro ends, one of the bloodiest and longest of the Spanish civil war.

[1945-ConvenedinLondonby44countriesfromFranceandtheUnitedKingdomitisagreedtocreatetheUnitedNationsEducationalScientificandCulturalOrganization(UNESCO)whichwasfoundedin1946

1955.- King Mohamed V of Morocco returns from exile in Corsica where he had been deported by the French colonial authorities. The following year the country regains its independence.

1965.- The Soviet Union launches the Venera-3 probe into space, the first spacecraft to touch another planet when it hit the surface of Venus in March 1966.

1973.- The third and last crew of “Skylab” takes off, the first space station in the United States built as a response to the Soviet Salyut-1, the first orbital station in history.

1974.- The so-called Arecibo Message is sent from Puerto Rico and into space, the most powerful transmission ever made in an attempt to communicate with the outside world.

1980.- The XV Congress of the Socialist International concludes in Madrid, in which the former German chancellor, Willy Brandt, is re-elected president, a post he will hold until his death in 1992.

1985.- The girl Omayra Sánchez Garzón, victim of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, dies in Armero (Colombia). She spent three days trapped in the remains of her house.

1989.- The “Death Squads” assassinate six Jesuit priests and two women in San Salvador. Five of the Jesuits are Spanish, including the rector of the Central American University (UCA), Ignacio Ellacuría.

1994.- The Ukrainian Parliament approves the country’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

1995.- The retired general, Liamin Zerual wins the first plural presidential elections in the history of Algeria.

2000.- The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, visits Vietnam, 25 years after the end of the war. It is the first visit by a US president since Richard Nixon visited Saigon in 1969.

2001.- Mohamed Atef, Osama Bin Laden’s lieutenant and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, dies after an American bombardment of Kabul (Afghanistan).

2003.- Forward Leo Messi makes his debut with FC Barcelona in a friendly match against Porto in that Portuguese city.

2004.- The Supreme Court confirms the competence of the Spanish justice system to try the former Argentine soldier Adolfo Scilingo for crimes against humanity during the Argentine dictatorship.

2005.- The Supreme Court of Chile determines that Augusto Pinochet is fit to stand trial and that he exaggerated his senile dementia.

2007.- The tail of Comet Holmes reaches a diameter of 1.4 million kilometers, which exceeds the diameter of the Sun and becomes the largest object in the Solar System.

2008.- The Government of Baghdad approves the departure of US troops from Iraq before December 30, 2011.

2012.- The XXII Ibero-American Summit is inaugurated in Cádiz, the third to be held in Spain.

2016.- Russian President Vladimir Putin revokes Russia’s signature of the Rome Statute, the legal basis for the International Criminal Court.

2017.- Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting “Salvator Mundi” is sold for 450 million dollars, a world record.

2017.- The Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez obtains the Cervantes Prize for Spanish letters.

2019.- In Cuba, the 500th anniversary of the inauguration of the city of Havana is celebrated, an event in which the Capitol is reopened, a building built between 1927 and 1929 in the image of its twin in Washington, and which remained closed after a decade of restoration

2020.- Launch from Cape Canaveral (USA) of the SpaceX and NASA Resilience capsule, in the first manned operational mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from US soil.

2021.- The South Korean automobile group Hyundai Motor Group announces the start-up of the company Supernal, which will be in charge of urban air mobility, for which it develops an electric rapid takeoff and landing vehicle (eVTOL, for its acronym in English) .

BIRTHS:

1717.- Jean Le Rond D’Alambert, French mathematician and physicist.

1892.- Tazio Nuvolari, Italian motorist.

1895.- Pau Hindemith, German composer.

1922.- José Saramago, Portuguese writer.

1955.- Héctor Raúl Cúper, Argentine soccer coach.

1964.- Coral Astrid Bistuer, Spanish taekwondo player.

– Diana Krall, Canadian jazz pianist and singer.

DEATHS:

1797.- Frederick William II, King of Prussia.

1960.- Clark Gable, American actor.

1997.- Georges Marchais, French communist leader.

2006.- Milton Friedman, economist, Nobel Prize in Economics 1976.

2019.- Terry O’Neill, British photographer. EFE

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