Today in History, 2/16

1568: The entire population of the Netherlands - all three million of them - is sentenced to death by the Catholic Church for heresy.
1804: During the First Barbary War, leads a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia.1852: The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company is established. It was the forerunner of the automobile company.
1857: The National Deaf Mute College is established in Washington, DC. It is the first school for the advanced education of the deaf.
1859: The French Government passes a law to set the A-note above middle C to a frequency of 435 Hz, in an attempt to standardize pitch.
1884: Robert J. Flaherty is born. He produced and directed the first commercially successful full-length documentary Nanook of the North.
1901: Chester Morris is born. He played the oily Dr. Carlo Lombardi who is obsessed with getting women loaded and regressing them to past lives in the MST3K episode The She Creature.1903: Edger Bergen is born.

1909: Hugh Beaumont is born. He played the Dad on Leave it to Beaver. He was also in the MST3K episodes The Human Duplicators and The Mole People.1923: Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
1935: Sonny Bono is born.

1937: Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon.
1945: Jeremy Bulloch is born. He played Boba Fett in second and third Star Wars movies.
1945: Frank Welker is born. If you've watched a cartoon in the last 40 years, you probably heard him doing voices or sounds. Here's his resume over at Voice Chasers.
1951: William Katt is born. He's the Greatest American Hero!

1953: Roberta Williams is born. She was a pioneer in computer games in the 1980's.
1957: LeVar Burton is born. He played Lt. Geordi LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The character was originally supposed to be gay (and from the West Indies) but both notions got dropped in pre-production.1958: Lisa Loring is born. She played Wednesday on the old Addams Family TV show.1959: Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after overthrowing Batista.
1959: John McEnroe is born.
1961: Andy Taylor, guitarist for Duran Duran is born.
1964: Christopher Eccleston is born. He played the Doctor in the new version of Doctor Who.1968: In Haleyville, AL the first 911 emergency telephone system goes into service.
1978: The first computer bulletin board system is created in Chicago, IL. You kids today with your web and your bittorrent don't remember when these were just about the only way to get access to the Internet.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up