16 December: today's birthdays

• Jane Austen - English writer. She wrote Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and 
  Emma
• Donovan Bailey - Canadian athlete, gold medalist in the Olympic Games for the 100 metres race
• Arthur C. Clarke - English science fiction writer. He wrote the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Philip K. Dick - American science fiction writer. The films Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report were based his works 
• Mats Hummels - German footballer
• Vasilij Kandinskij (Wassily Kandinsky) - Russian painter. He is considered the first to paint abstract works
• Zoltán Kodály - Hungarian composer, linguist, ethnomusicologist, philosopher, and educator. He was just a child when he started to play violin and write music even if he had not received a formal music education yet. He is known worldwide as the creator of the Kodály Method, a way to teach children to love and play music
• Ernst Lissauer - German poet and dramatist. He created the slogan Gott strafe England during World War I, meaning May God punish England
• Margaret Mead - American anthropologist. Her studies about sexual behaviour in Southeast Asian cultures influenced the sexual revolution in the sixties
• René Redzepi - Danish chef
  
• Adam Riess - American astrophysicist Nobel Prize in Physics 2011
• Ed Ruscha - American painter and photographer, born Edward Ruscha. He was an exponent of Pop Art
• Fred Schepisi - Australian film director
• Liv Ullmann - Norwegian actress and film director born in Japan
• Léon Walras - French economist