On this day

December 19, 2016

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

Historical Context for December 19, 2016

In 2016, the world population was approximately 7,558,554,526 people[†]

Notable Deaths

Andrei Karlov

2016Andrei Karlov, Russian diplomat, Ambassador to Turkey (born 1954)[†]

Andrei Gennadyevich Karlov was a Russian diplomat who served as the Russian ambassador to Turkey and earlier as the Russian ambassador to North Korea.

Historical Events

Andrei Karlov

2016Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated while at an art exhibition in Ankara. The assassin, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, is shot and killed by a Turkish guard.[†]

Andrei Gennadyevich Karlov was a Russian diplomat who served as the Russian ambassador to Turkey and earlier as the Russian ambassador to North Korea.

2016 Berlin truck attack

2016A vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills 12 and injures 56 people at a Christmas market.[†]

On 19 December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. One of the victims was the truck's original driver, Łukasz Urban, who was found shot dead in the passenger seat. The truck was eventually stopped by its automatic brakes. The perpetrator was 24-year-old Anis Amri, an unsuccessful asylum seeker from Tunisia. Four days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy. An initial suspect was arrested and later released due to lack of evidence. Nearly five years after the attack, a man who was critically injured during the attack died from complications related to his wounds, becoming the 13th victim. The attack is the deadliest act of terror in Germany since the 1980 Oktoberfest bombing in Munich, which killed 13 people and injured 211 others, and as of December 2023, it remains the worst Islamist terrorist attack by number of casualties in German history.

Portrait 1080 × 1920 PNG · created on your device

Filter by:

Headlines from December 19, 2016