Today in History ~
May 16
Events
0955 - Alberich II, (bastard?) son of Octavianus elected pope
1527 - Florence becomes a republic
1532 - Sir Thomas More resigns as English Lord Chancellor
1568 - Mary Queen of Scotland flees to England
1763 - Samuel Johnson meets his future biographer James Boswell in London
1770 - Marie Antoinette (14) marries future King Louis XVI (15) of France [H]
1792 - Denmark abolishes slave trade
1804 - Senate & Tribune declare Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of France
1860 - Chicago: Republican convention selects Abraham Lincoln candidate
1861 - Confederate government offers war volunteers $10 premium
1861 - Kentucky proclaims its neutrality
1861 - Tennessee officially admitted to the Confederacy
1863 - Battle of Champion's Hill, MS-bloodiest action of Vicksburg Campaign [H]
1864 - Atlanta Campaign-battle of Resaca, ends (since May 13)
1866 - Charles Elmer Hires invents root beer
1866 - Congress authorizes nickel 5-cent piece (the silver half-dime was used up to this point).
1868 - Bedrich Smetana's opera "Dalibor," premieres in Prague
1868 - Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took
its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him.
1871 - U.S. Marines landed in Korea in an unsuccessful attempt to open the
country to foreign trade.
1879 - Antonin Dvorak's "Slavonic Dances" premieres
1881 - World's 1st elec tram goes into service in Lichterfelder (near Berlin)
1888 - German inventor Emile Berliner gave the first demonstration of recording sound on a flat disc
1891 - George A Hormel & Co introduce Spam
1911 - Remains of a neanderthal man found in Jersey UK
1911 - Zeppelin "Deutschland" wrecked at Dusseldorf
1920 - Joan of Arc (Jean D'arc) canonized a saint by Pope Benedict XV
1925 - Ground-to-air phone call On May 16, 1925, Arthur Atwater Kent, aboard the blimp The Los Angeles called his wife, Mabel Lucas Kent, in a car in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1927 - Supreme Court ruled bootleggers must pay income tax
1929 - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the first Academy
Awards a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie "Wings"
won "best production" while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named
best actor and best actress.
1939 - Food stamps are 1st issued
1941 - Last great German air attack on Great Britain (Birmingham)
1943 - Three German dams were attacked by 19 Lancaster bombers of RAF 617 "Dambusters"
Squadron using the "bouncing" bomb.
1943 - In Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as Nazi soldiers gained control of Warsaw's Jewish ghetto, blowing up the last remaining synagogue and initiating the mass deportation of the ghetto's remaining dwellers to the Treblinka extermination camp.
[H]
1944 - 1st of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz
1946 - Musical "Annie Get Your Gun," starring Ethel Merman premieres in NYC
1948 - Chaim Weizmann elected 1st president of Israel
1957 - Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Invicti Athletae
1960 - Big Four summit conference in Paris collapsed on its opening day as the
Soviet Union leveled spy charges against the United States in the wake of the
U-2 incident.
1963 - Gordon Cooper completes 22 orbits in Faith 7, ends US Project Mercury
1965 - Spaghetti-O's 1st sold
1966 - Stokely Carmichael named chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating
1969 - The unmanned Soviet spacecraft Venera 5 lands on Venus, returns data on atmosphere
1971 - First Class Mail now costs 8 cents (was 6 cents).
1974 - Helmut Schmidt becomes West German chancellor
1975 - India annexes Principality of Sikkim
1975 - Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei became the first woman to climb Mount Everest.
1977 - 5 people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the
Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade
flying.
1985 - Michael Jordan named NBA Rookie of Year
1987 - "Bobro 400," a barge carrying 3,200 tons of garbage, set sail from NY, beginning an
unsuccessful 8-week search for a dumping site
1988 - Surgeon Gen C Everett Koop reports nicotine as addictive as heroin
1988 - US Supreme Court rules trash may be searched without a warrant
1989 - Soviet president Mikhail S Gorbachev & Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ended a 30-year rift when they formally met in Beijing
1991 - Queen Elizabeth II becomes 1st British monarch to address US congress
1991 - 13 of the 15 Soviet republics agreed on an emergency economic plan to ban
strikes while increasing wages and worker productivity
1991- Secretary of State James A. Baker III wrapped
up his latest Mideast visit in Israel without an agreement for Arab-Israeli
peace talks.
1992 - The space shuttle Endeavour completed its maiden voyage with a safe
landing in the California desert.
1992 - America3 ("America Cubed"), skippered by Bill Koch, won the
28th defense of the America's Cup.
1992 - Polls show Perot, Bush & Clinton could be in a deadlock
1992 - A poll showed 1 in 8 Southern California households were victimized
within the last two years by crimes involving firearms.
1993 - Farmer Sugeng finds 1.2 million year old Pithecanthropus IX skull
1994 - Jacqueline Onassis admitted to the hospital for cancer treatment
1995 - Japanese police arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara & charged him with
murder and attempted murder in the March nerve-gas attacks in a Tokyo subway
that killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000.
1996 - Admiral Jeremy Boorda, chief of naval operations and the highest-ranking
officer in the U.S. Navy, shot himself to death after learning that Newsweek
magazine wanted to question him about the propriety of wearing combat medals.
1997 - President Clinton apologized for the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated
Syphillis in the Negro Male," which was conducted between 1932 and 1972. [H]
1997 - Mobutu Sese Seko--who'd ruled Zaire for more than 30 years, looting it of
billions of dollars--fled the
capital city as rebel forces advanced. The rebels entered the city the next day
and Laurent Kabila declared himself head of state.
2000 -The Federal Reserve raised its federal funds rate by one-half point, the
biggest increase in five years.
2000 - The New York Democratic Party, meeting in Albany, nominated First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton for the U.S. Senate.
2000 -Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas resigned from United Press
International, a day after the wire service was sold to the parent firm of The
Washington Times.
2001 - Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was indicted on charges of spying for
Moscow. (Hanssen later pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and was
sentenced to life in prison without parole.)
2001 - Nathaniel Brazill, a 14-year-old boy who shot his English teacher to
death on the last day of the school year, was convicted of second-degree murder
in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Brazill was later sentenced to 28 years in prison.)
Birthdays
Today
1801 - William Henry Seward, Sec of State (1861-69, buys Alaska at 2 cents/acre)
1831 - David Edward Hughes, inventor (microphone, teleprinter)
1892 - Richard Tauber, [Ernst Seiffert], Austria/British, tenor/conductor ("Deine ist mein ganzes
Herz")
1905 - Henry Fonda (Academy Award-winning actor: On Golden Pond [1981]; Grapes of Wrath, Advice and Consent, Mister Roberts, Young Mr. Lincoln; father of Jane & Peter Fonda)
1911 - Studs (Louis) Terkel (writer: Hard Times, Working)
1913 - Woody Herman (bandleader: Woodchopper's Ball, The Sheik of Araby, Chloe,
Caldonia)
1919 - Liberace (Wladziu Liberace) (concert pianist & showman: The Liberace Show; Las Vegas entertainer)
1922 - Eddie Bert (jazz musician: trombone)
1924 - Frank F Mankiewicz, NYC, columnist (Perfectly Clear)
1925 - Robert Pierpoint (newsman)
1926 - Rube (Albert) Walker (baseball)
1928 - Billy (Alfred) Martin (baseball: played and managed (5 times) the New York Yankees; also managed Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers and Oakland A's)
1930 - Better Carter (Lillie Mae Jones) (jazz singer: toured with Lionel Hampton & Miles Davis)
1940 - Bernardo Bertolucci, Parma Italy, director (1900, Last Emperor)
1940 - Yvonne Craig (actress, dancer: Digging Up Business, It Happened at the World's Fair, The Young Land, Mars Needs Women)
1941 - Al Marshall (football)
1943 - Donny Anderson (football: Green Bay Packers: running back, punter: Super Bowls I & II)
1948 - Jim Langer (football: Miami Dolphins guard & center: Super Bowls VI, VII, VIII)
1949 - Rick Reuschel (baseball: Chicago Cubs pitcher)
1952 - Pierce Brosnan (actor: GoldenEye, Mrs. Doubtfire, Remington Steele, The Manions of America, Noble House, The Heist, Detonator, The Fourth Protocol, Don't Talk to Strangers)
1953 - Rick Rhoden (baseball)
1955 - Debra Winger (actress: Terms of Endearment, An Officer and a Gentleman, Shadowlands, Dangerous Woman, Leap of Faith)
1956 - Olga Korbut (Olympic Gold [3] Medalist: gymnast [1972])
1966 - Janet Jackson (singer: When I Think of You, w/Cliff Richard: Two to the Power of Love; Michael's sister; actress: Good Times, Fame, Diff'rent Strokes)
Famous
deaths
0942 - Saadiah Gaon, head of Talmudic Academy of Sura, dies
1691 - Jacob Leisler, becomes 1st American colonist hanged for treason
1777 - Button Gwinnet, US revolutionary leader, dies from wounds
1829 - William Congreve, English officer, dies at 56
1944 - Max Brand, [Frederick Schiller Faust], western author, dies
1955 - James Agee, US critic/writer (Death in Family), dies in NY
1979 - Asa Philip Randolph, labor leader & civil rights pioneer, dies at 90
1984 - Andy Kaufman, comedian (Latka-Taxi), dies of cancer at 35
1984 - Irwin Shaw, US writer (Rich Man, Poor Man), dies at 71
1985 - Margaret Hamilton, actress (Wicked Witch-Wizard of Oz), dies at 82
1990 - Jim Henson, puppeteer (Sesame Street, Muppet Show), dies at 53
1990 - Sammy Davis Jr, singer/actor (Golden Boy), dies at 64
1996 - Mike Jeremy Boorda, NATO, commits suicide at 57
If
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