List of Famous people who born in 1916

Aloysius Martin "Lou" Thesz was an American professional wrestler. An official six-time world champion, he held the NWA World Heavyweight Championship three times for a combined total of 10 years, three months and nine days – longer than anyone else in history. Considered to be one of the last true shooters in professional wrestling, Thesz is widely regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. In Japan, Thesz was known as a 'God of Wrestling' and was called Tetsujin, which means 'Ironman', in respect for his speed, conditioning and expertise in catch wrestling. Alongside Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson, Thesz later helped train young Japanese wrestlers and mixed martial artists in catch wrestling.

Harold John Smith was an American actor who is credited in over 300 film and television productions. He was best known for his role as Otis Campbell, the town drunk on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show and for voicing Owl in the first four original Winnie the Pooh shorts and later The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

William Lloyd Brill, & Bar was a senior officer and bomber pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born in the Riverina district of New South Wales, he was a farmer and a member of the Militia before joining the RAAF in 1940. After training in Australia and Canada, he was posted to Britain in 1941 to take part in the air war over Europe. Brill first saw combat with No. 460 Squadron RAAF, flying Vickers Wellington medium bombers. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in May 1942 for attacking a target after his plane was badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire. Following assignment as an instructor with the Royal Air Force (RAF), he returned to the bombing campaign in January 1944 as a flight commander with No. 463 Squadron RAAF, flying Avro Lancaster heavy bombers.

Elizabeth “Betty” Ruth Grable was an American actress, pin-up girl, dancer, model, and singer. Her 42 films during the 1930s and 1940s grossed more than $100 million, for 10 consecutive years (1942–1951) she reigned in the Quigley Poll's Top 10 box office stars. The U.S. Treasury Department in 1946 and 1947 listed her as the highest-salaried American woman; she earned more than $3 million during her career.

Richard Kenneth Guy was a British mathematician. He was a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Calgary. He is known for his work in number theory, geometry, recreational mathematics, combinatorics, and graph theory. He is best known for co-authorship of Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays and authorship of Unsolved Problems in Number Theory. He published more than 300 scholarly articles. Guy proposed the partially tongue-in-cheek "Strong Law of Small Numbers", which says there are not enough small integers available for the many tasks assigned to them – thus explaining many coincidences and patterns found among numerous cultures. For this paper he received the MAA Lester R. Ford Award.

William Kistler Coors was an American brewery executive with the Coors Brewing Company. He was affiliated with the company for over 64 years, and was a board member from 1973 to 2003. He was a grandson of Adolph Coors (1847–1929), the company's founder.

Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch was an English-Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as crazed television anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a Best Actor award from the Golden Globes.

Heinz-Wilhelm Eck was a German U-boat commander of the Second World War who was tried, convicted, condemned and executed postwar for ordering his crew to shoot the survivors of a Greek merchantman sunk by U-852.

Hertha Feiler was an Austrian actress. She was married to the comedian Heinz Rühmann with whom she starred in several films. She was of Jewish descent.

John Albert Kundla was an American college and professional basketball coach. He was the first head coach for the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and its predecessors, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL), serving 12 seasons, from 1947 to 1959. His teams won six league championships, one in the NBL, one in the BAA, and four in the NBA. Kundla was the head basketball coach at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul for one season in 1946–47, and at the University of Minnesota for ten seasons, from 1959 to 1968. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995 and the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.