Historical Events on this Day in History

 May 16

• 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.
• 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 signatory to the United States Declaration of Independence, dies three days later.
• 1811 – Peninsular War: The allies Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom, 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 Idlewild Airport (now 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.
• 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 addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
• 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.