May 16 - Events

Events

• 218 – Julia Maesa, aunt of the assassinated Caracalla, is banished to her home in Syria by the self-proclaimed emperor Macrinus and declares her 14-year old grandson Elagabalus, emperor of Rome.
• 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.
• 1584 – Santiago de Vera becomes sixth Governor-General of the Spanish colony of the Philippines.
• 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.
• 1811 – Peninsular War: The allies Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom, defeat the French at the Battle of Albuera.
• 1812 – Russian Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov signs the Treaty of Bucharest, ending the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812. Bessarabia is illegitimately annexed by Imperial Russia.
• 1822 – Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli.
• 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.
• 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 – 16 May 1877 political crisis in France.
• 1891 – The International Electro-Technical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electrical current (the most common form today).
• 1914 – The first ever National Challenge 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 during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later.
• 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.
• 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 Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
• 1953 – American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechslovakia.
• 1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
• 1961 – Park Chung-hee leads a coup d'état to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea.
• 1966 – The Communist Party of China issues the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
• 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 – India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state holds a referendum in which the popular vote is in favor of merging with India.
• 1975 – Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
• 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.
• 1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
• 2003 – In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.
• 2005 – Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.
• 2007 – Nicolas Sarkozy takes office as President of France.
• 2011 – STS-134 (ISS assembly flight ULF6), launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th and final flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.