What happened on 16 December?

14 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. 1653 Cromwell's Protectorate Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector under the Instrument of Government; rules from 1653 until his death in 1658.
10. 1893 Dvorak's New World Symphony Symphony No. 9, composed in New York and steeped in American themes.
11. 1866 Born: Wassily Kandinsky Russian painter and theorist often credited with founding pure abstraction.
12. 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.
13. 1914 German cruisers shell Scarborough and Hartlepool German battlecruisers appear out of the morning mist and shell three English seaside towns, killing 137 civilians — the first English blood spilled at home in the war. 'Remember Sc
14. 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