Template:On this day - August 16

Petra de San José

• 1097 – In Huesca (Kingdom of Aragon) King Peter I of Aragon marries his second wife, Bertha.
• 1748 – In the New Kingdom of Granada (present-day Colombia), José Lázaro de Rivera founds the settlement of Aguachica.
• 1773 – In Rome, Pope Clement XIV decrees the worldwide suppression of the Society of Jesus.
• 1815 – Birth of John Bosco, Italian priest and saint, founder of the Salesians.
• 1841 – In the Province of San Juan (Argentina) the Battle of Angaco is fought, the bloodiest of the Argentine Civil Wars.
• 1842 – The President of Peru Manuel Menéndez is overthrown by the Peruvian Army general Juan Crisóstomo Torrico, who would declare himself the new president, although he would be overthrown two months later.
• 1863 – The Dominican Restoration War of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo against the Kingdom of Spain begins.
• 1866 – In Ostend, Spanish progressives and democrats in exile sign the Pact of Ostend.
• 1868 – At the Cotopaxi Volcano, in Ecuador, an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 on the Richter scale destroys the towns of Ibarra and Otavalo and leaves some 20,000 victims.
• 1869 – At Eusebio Ayala (Paraguay), during the War of the Triple Alliance, Brazilian troops slaughter 3,500 child soldiers aged 9 to 15 at the Battle of Acosta Ñu. This day is celebrated in that country as Children's Day.
• 1906 – Death of Petra de San José, Spanish nun, founder of the Congregation of the Mothers of the Forsaken and Saint Joseph of the Mountain (b. 1845).
• 1910 – Death of Pedro Montt, president of Chile between 1906 and 1910 (b. 1849).
• 1930 – In the Dominican Republic General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo comes to power, beginning a dictatorship that will last 31 years (1930–1961).
• 1973 – Death of Fulgencio Batista, Cuban soldier and dictator, constitutional president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and de facto dictator from 1952 to 1959, the year he was overthrown during the Cuban Revolution (b. 1901).
• 1994 – In the Dominican Republic, Joaquín Balaguer assumes the presidency for the sixth and last time.
• 2005 – The Chilean Parliament removes the signature of the dictator Augusto Pinochet from the Constitution.
• 2012 – The government of Ecuador grants political asylum to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.
• 2023 – In Nicaragua, the confiscation of the Central American University, ordered by the regime of Daniel Ortega after accusing it of "terrorism", becomes official.