What happened on 16 December?

18 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1689 English Bill of Rights Limits royal power; foundation of the British constitutional monarchy.
2. 1775 Born: Jane Austen English novelist; pioneer of the social-realist comedy of manners.
3. 1773 Boston Tea Party American colonists dump British East India Company tea into Boston Harbor in protest at taxation without representation.
4. 1989 Romanian Revolution of 1989 Violent overthrow and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu; bloodiest of the 1989 revolutions; 1,100+ killed.
5. 755 An Lushan marches on Luoyang Claiming secret orders to remove the chief minister, the frontier armies of the northeast turn south — 150,000 veterans against an interior that has not seen war in a century. Luoy
6. 1944 Battle of the Bulge Last major German offensive in the West; broken in the Ardennes by January 1945.
7. 1838 Battle of Blood River Voortrekkers defeat Zulus.
8. 1485 Born: Catherine of Aragon First wife of Henry VIII (married 1509), daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Her refusal to consent to annulment triggered the English Reformation and the break with Rome.
9. 1893 Dvořák's New World Symphony Written in America and premiered at Carnegie Hall; Dvořák urged American composers to build on spirituals and Native melody.
10. 1653 Cromwell's Protectorate Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector under the Instrument of Government; rules from 1653 until his death in 1658.
11. 1598 Battle of Noryang In the last battle of the war, Yi is shot as the retreating Japanese fleet is destroyed; he orders his death kept secret until victory is won.
12. 1961 Umkhonto we Sizwe launched After Sharpeville and the banning of the ANC, Mandela co-founds its armed wing, 'Spear of the Nation', which opens a sabotage campaign against government installations.
13. 1866 Born: Wassily Kandinsky Russian painter and theorist often credited with founding pure abstraction.
14. 1991 Grand Upright Music v. Warner Bros. Records Biz Markie loses over an uncleared Gilbert O'Sullivan sample, ending the free-for-all sampling era.
15. 2000 Stan (Eminem) UK No. 1 single by Eminem, first listed at No. 1 on the chart dated 16 December 2000.
16. 1914 German cruisers shell Scarborough and Hartlepool German battlecruisers appear out of the morning mist and shell three English seaside towns, killing 137 people, most of them civilians — the first English blood spilled at home in
17. 1431 Henry VI crowned King of France in Paris Under the Treaty of Troyes, the ten-year-old English king is crowned King of France at Notre-Dame — the only English monarch so crowned, in a city the French would retake five year
18. 1653 Instrument of Government establishes the Protectorate Britain's first written constitution makes Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, with rule shared between Protector, council and a single-chamber parliam