List of Famous people born on May 16th

Bobbejaan Schoepen was a Flemish pioneer in Belgian pop music, vaudeville, and European country music. Schoepen was a versatile entertainer, entrepreneur, singer-songwriter, guitarist, comedian, actor, and professional whistler, as well as the founder and former director of the amusement park Bobbejaanland. His musical career flourished from 1948 until the first half of the 1970s. He sold more than five million copies from his repertoire of 482 songs, which extended from Twang, cabaret, instrumental film music, chansons, country, to folk and vocal music. Born in Boom, Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium, he worked his way up from a working-class environment to become one of the 200 richest people in Belgium.

Pascal Salin is a French economist, professor emeritus at the Université Paris-Dauphine and a specialist in public finance and monetary economics. He is a former president of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Émile Hamilius was a Luxembourgish politician for the Democratic Party. He was the Mayor of Luxembourg City from 1946 until 1963, and also sat three stints in the Chamber of Deputies. Hamilius was the second President of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, from 1953 until 1959.

Rudolf Kompfner was an Austrian-born inventor, physicist and architect, best known as the inventor of the traveling-wave tube (TWT).

Joan Benoit Samuelson is an American Senior Grand Masters marathon runner who was the first women's Olympic Games marathon champion, winning the Gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She held the fastest time for an American woman at the Chicago Marathon for 32 years after winning the race in 1985. Her time at the Boston Marathon was the fastest time by an American woman at that race for 28 years. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.

Georges Cochevelou (1889–1974) was an interpreter, soldier and banker. He discovered and reconstructed the Celtic harp of the Middle Ages, and, along with his harpist son Alan Stivell, was responsible for its revival in Brittany in the 1950s.

Tiziano Scarpa is an Italian novelist, playwright and poet.

Katsura Shinnosuke was a Japanese rakugoka and musician who performed the works of Katsura Bunji X and performed in the jazz band Newoirans.