Reuters
Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 16:
1600s - Annual bareback horse race in Siena's central square, dating back to the 1600s.
1948 - American baseball player George Herman (Babe) Ruth died in New York City.
1949 - U.S. journalist-author Margaret Mitchell died. She wrote only one novel -- "Gone with the Wind".
1960 - Cyprus became an independent republic, with Archbishop Makarios as its first president.
1977 - Elvis Presley died aged 42 from heart failure brought on by abuse of prescribed drugs.
1996 - Leonel Fernandez, a 42-year-old lawyer who grew up in New York City, became the 100th president of the Dominican Republic.
2002 - Palestinian Abu Nidal, the world's most prolific and hotly pursued guerrilla mastermind, died aged 65. Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Bana, headed a group called Fatah-The Revolutionary Council.
2003 - Idi Amin died. Amin, a one-time army boxing champion who became one of Africa's bloodiest despots, ruled Uganda from 1971 for 8 years.
2004 - The United States said it would withdraw about 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia in a major restructuring of military forces prompted by the end of the Cold War.
2005 - Brother Roger, one of the 20th century's leading ecumenical figures, was stabbed to death by a woman during a service at the Taize community he founded in eastern France.
2012 - South African police open fire against thousands of striking miners in Rustenburg.
