Historical Events on 16 May

Historical Events on 16 May

1204 - Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire.
1527 - The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes itself as a republic.
1532 - Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England.
1568 - Mary Queen of Scots flees to England.
1770 - 14-year old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste who later becomes king of France.
1771 - The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called "The Regulators", occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.
1777 - Lachlan McIntosh and Button Gwinnett shoot each other during a duel near Savannah, Georgia. Gwinnett, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, dies three days later.
1811 - Peninsular War - The allies Spain, Portugal and Britain, defeat the French at the Battle of Albuera.
1815 - The Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, officially names the town of Blackheath in the upper Blue Mountains.
1822 - Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli.
1836 - Edgar Allan Poe marries his 13-year-old cousin Virginia.
1843 - The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.
1866 - The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.
1866 - Charles Elmer Hires invents root beer.
1868 - President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate.
1874 - A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroys much of four villages and kills 139 people.
1877 - May 16, 1877 political crisis in France.
1910 - The United States Congress authorizes the creation of the United States Bureau of Mines.
1914 - The first ever Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final is played. Brooklyn Field Club defeats Brooklyn Celtic 2-1.
1918 - The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.
1919 - A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.
1920 - In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc as a saint.
1929 - In Hollywood, California, the first Academy Awards are handed out.
1943 - Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.
1948 - Chaim Weizmann is elected the first President of Israel.
1951 - The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
1960 - Nikita Khrushchev demands an apology from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union thus ending a Big Four summit in Paris.
1960 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
1965 - The Campbell Soup Company introduces SpaghettiOs under its Franco-American brand.
1966 - The Communist Party of China issues the 'May 16 Notice', marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
1967 - The city of Jerusalem is captured by Israel during the six-day war
1969 - Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.
1974 - Josip Broz Tito is re-elected president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This time he is elected for life.
1975 - Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1975 - India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state holds a referendum in which the popular vote was in favour of merging with India.
1983 - Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement rebels against the Sudanese government.
1986 - The Seville Statement on Violence is adopted by an international meeting of scientists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO, in Seville, Spain.
1988 - A report by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.
1992 - STS-49: Space Shuttle Endeavour lands safely after a successful maiden voyage.
2003 - In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.
2004 - The Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kiev, Ukraine. Here during 1930s and early 1940s communist bolsheviks executed over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians.
2005 - Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.
2006 - A large earthquake (7.4 on the Richter scale) occurs near New Zealand.
2007 - Alex Salmond is elected First Minister of Scotland. He is the first Scottish National Party leader to be elected as First Minister after winning an historic victory at the Scottish general election on the 3rd May.