| 16 July 1212 | Castile, Spain, Navarre, Aragon [Reconquista of Spain (711–1492)] | The Spanish kings Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre, and Pedro II of Aragon and a few crusaders win a decisive victory over the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa. Muslim power in Spain is permanently broken. |
| 16 July 1263 | England [political events] | King Henry III of England makes peace with his baronial opponents by accepting their terms, following a number of armed clashes and the rising of the city of London, England, against him. The leader of the barons, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and his allies occupy London. |
| 16 July 1855 | UK, Australia [law and government] | The British Parliament establishes responsible government throughout the Australian states, except for Western Australia. |
| 16 July 1872 | Norway, Antarctica [births and deaths] | Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer who was the first person to reach the South Pole, born in Oslo, Norway (–1928). |
| 16 July 1909 | Persia [administration] | Mohammed Ali, shah of Persia, is deposed by the pro-liberal Bakhtiari chief, Ali Kuli Khan, in favour of Sultan Ahmad Shah, aged 12. |
| 16–17 July 1917 | Russian Empire [Russian Revolution] | During mass demonstrations in Petrograd, Russia, known as the ‘July Days’, the provisional government is undermined, but an attempted Bolshevik rising fails after details emerge of the dealings between the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Germany, who had helped him return to Russia. |
| 16 July 1918 | Russia [political events] | Nicholas II, tsar of Russia 1895–1917, is executed by the Bolsheviks, in Yekaterinburg, Russia (50). |
| 16 July 1934 | USA [unions and associations] | The first general strike in the USA takes place in San Francisco, California, with workers out in sympathy with stevedores. |
| 16 July 1945 | USA, Japan [energy] | The first atomic explosion occurs when the nuclear device code-named ‘Trinity’ is exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico. On 6 August and 9 August similar devices are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. |
| 16–24 July 1969 | USA [political events] | The US Moon-shot mission Apollo 11 takes place. On 20 July US astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon, famously saying ‘That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ He and Buzz Aldrin also install and operate the first Moon seismograph at Tranquillity base, spending a total of 21.6 hours on the Moon's surface, while Michael Collins remains orbiting the Moon in the command module. |
| 16 July 1979 | Iraq [law and government] | Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq. |
| 16–23 July 2001 | Germany [ecology] | At a major conference on climate control in Bonn, Germany, 186 states – not including the USA – reach agreement on implementing the 1997 Kyoto protocol on global warming. |
