What Happened On May 16 - On This Day

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  • Events
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  • 1689 Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō leaves Edo on his epic 150-day journey to Honshu Island in Japan, which he writes about in the literary masterpiece "Oku no Hosomichi" (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)
  • 1862 Belgian-French engineer Étienne Lenoir builds the first automobile with an internal-combustion engine
  • 1868 US Senate fails to impeach President Andrew Johnson by one vote
  • Interior of a packed St. Peter's Basilica in Rome as Joan of Arc is canonized by the Pope

    Canonization of Joan of Arc

    1920 French heroine Joan of Arc is canonized as a saint by Pope Benedict XV
  • 1943 Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr Valley with bouncing bombs
  • 1944 First of over 180,000 Hungarian Jews reaches Auschwitz
  • 1989 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing and formally end a 30-year rift
  • 2013 Human stem cells are successfully cloned
More May 16 Events
  • Janet Gaynor, the only woman to win Best Actress for multiple roles, receives her award from Douglas Fairbanks

    Silence is Golden At The First Oscars

    1929 1st Academy Awards: "Wings," Emil Jannings, and Janet Gaynor win
  • 1946 Irving Berlin, Dorothy Fields, and Herbert Fields' musical "Annie Get Your Gun," starring Ethel Merman and featuring "There's No Business Like Show Business," opens at the Imperial Theatre, NYC
  • 1948 First Chess World Championship since WWII, Russian player Mikhail Botvinnik wins a five-player tournament to begin 24 years of Soviet dominance
  • 1985 NBA Chicago Bulls forward Michael Jordan is named NBA Rookie of the Year

Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California

May 16, 1960

  • Infante Ferdinand

    1609 - 1641

  • William H. Seward

    1801 - 1872

  • David Edward Hughes

    1831 - 1900

  • H. H. Holmes

    1861 - 1896

  • Ivan Sutherland

    87 Years Old
More Birthdays on May 16

  • Henry Fonda

    1905 - 1982

  • Liberace

    1919 - 1987

  • Pierce Brosnan

    72 Years Old

  • Janet Jackson

    59 Years Old

  • Tucker Carlson

    56 Years Old

  • Megan Fox

    39 Years Old

  • Billy Martin

    1928 - 1989

  • Jack Morris

    70 Years Old

  • Olga Korbut

    70 Years Old

  • Gabriela Sabatini

    55 Years Old

Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creators of the M16 rifle and the AK-47 rifle respectively, meet in Washington, D.C.

May 16, 1990

  • 1770 Marie Antoinette (14) marries future King Louis XVI (15) of France
  • 1813 Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (35) weds German opera singer Elisabeth Röckel (20) in Vienna, Austria, until his death in 1837
  • 1836 American writer Edgar Allan Poe (26) marries his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm
  • 2008 "24" actor Kiefer Sutherland (37) divorces former model Elizabeth Kelly Winn (42) due to irreconcilable differences after nearly 8 years of marriage
More May 16 Weddings

  • Charles Perrault

    1628 - 1703

  • Django Reinhardt

    1910 - 1953

  • Margaret Hamilton

    1902 - 1985

  • Jim Henson

    1936 - 1990

  • Sammy Davis Jr.

    1925 - 1990

  • I. M. Pei

    1917 - 2019
More May 16 Deaths
  • The inventor of the AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov (right), meets the inventor of the M-16, Eugene Stoner (left)

    Mikhail Kalashnikov Meets Eugene Stoner

    The inventor of the AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov (right), meets the inventor of the M-16, Eugene Stoner (left) May 16, 1990
  • Classical Musician and Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Weekly Quiz for May 13 - 19

    Test your knowledge of historical events in our multi-choice weekly history quiz for May 13 - 19. Number 7 will leave you truly stumped then amazed!
  • 15 May
  • Calendar
  • May 17
  • John XII – 'the most wicked of Popes'

    Pope 'Turned Vatican Into Whorehouse'

    May 14, 964 AD
  • A leather-clad Lindi St Clair, aka Miss Whiplash, prepares for action

    Taxman Delivers Cruel Blow to Miss Whiplash

    May 15, 1990
  • Writer Ray Setterfield at the site in Yosemite Valley, California, where President Roosevelt and naturalist John Muir 'talked forest good'

    Theodore Roosevelt, the Cowboy President

    May 17, 1903
  • Isti Mirant Stella translates as ‘These men wonder at the star.’ Fingers point to Halley's Comet as King Harold looks worried. Bayeux Tapestry fragment, 1066

    The Quiet Passing of Halley’s Comet

    May 18, 1910
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