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On June 16, 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel to space aboard Vostok 6. Tereshkova, who had been a textile factory worker and amateur parachutist before being selected, completed 48 orbits in 70 hours — more than all American astronauts combined up to that point — and would never fly to space again. She remains the only woman to have completed a solo mission.

June 16, 1904 is "Bloomsday" — the day on which the action of James Joyce's novel "Ulysses" — published in 1922 — takes place, during which protagonist Leopold Bloom wanders the streets of Dublin. Every year, since 1954, thousands of literary fans trace the locations mentioned in the novel. Joyce chose this date because it was the day of his first outing with his future wife Nora Barnacle in 1904.

On June 16, 1976, students from the Soweto township in Johannesburg protested against the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction. Apartheid police opened fire, killing Hector Pieterson — a 13-year-old boy — in an image that went around the world. The Soweto Uprising radicalised international resistance to apartheid, and June 16 is today Youth Day in South Africa.