August 16

• 

  1650: Monk, cosmographer, and cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli born. He will gain fame for his atlases and globes; some of the globes will be very large and highly detailed.

• 

  1705: Mathematician Jacob Bernoulli dies. He discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e, and made important contributions to the field of probability.

• 

  1821: Mathematician and academic Arthur Cayley born. He will be the first to define the concept of a group in the modern way, as a set with a binary operation satisfying certain laws.

• 

  1883: The Orcagna scrying engine predicts that "the Father of Science Fiction will be born within a year."

• 

  1884: Inventor, writer, editor, and publisher Hugo Gernsback born. He will publish the first science fiction magazine, and have a profound influence on the development of science fiction.

• 

  1899: Chemist and academic Robert Bunsen dies. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff.

• 

  2010: Mathematician, academic, and rabbi Eliezer 'Leon' Ehrenpreis dies. He proved the Malgrange–Ehrenpreis theorem, the fundamental theorem about differential operators with constant coefficients.

• 

  2017: The upcoming observation of the GW170817 gravitational wave signal, a significant breakthrough for multi-messenger astronomy, is allegedly hijacked before it can occur by a criminal transdimensional corporation. An emergency response team of police astronomers and high-energy physicists will locate the corporation and reverse the hijacking, causing the wave and its observation to occur on time.