TIME TRAVELING, MAY 16 1770 Fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette marries the future King Louis XVI of France, who is 15. 1777 Georgia patriot and signer of the Declaration of Independence Button Swinnett receives a fatal bullet wound in a duel with his political rival, Georgia city Whig Lachlan McIntosh. McIntosh is also shot in the duel but recovers. 1868 President Andrew Johnson is acquitted by the U.S. Senate of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The House of Representatives had charged Johnson in February with 11 articles of impeachment relating to his staunch resistance to implementing Congress’ Civil War Reconstruction policies after he fired the War Department’s head, Edwin Stanton, who was responsible for carrying out the programs. 1920 Joan of Arc is canonized in Rome. 1929 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards in Hollywood, Calif. Actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr., president of the Academy, is host of the first Academy Awards ceremony, and winner of the first Best Picture Oscar is “Wings.” 1948 The body of CBS News correspondent George Polk, who had been covering the civil war in Greece between the right wing government and communists, is found in Solonika Bay in Greece a week after he disappeared. His hands and feet are tied, and he has been shot at point-blank range in the back of the head. 1960 In the wake of the Soviet Union’s downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state designed to ease Cold War tensions, declaring Eisenhower would not be welcome in the Soviet Union during his scheduled visit in June. The outburst angers Eisenhower, Khruschchev storms out, and any chances for successful talks and negotiations at the summit are doomed. 1960 Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratory in California, demonstrates the first working laser. 1965 What is described by the U.S. government as “an accidental explosion of a bomb on one aircraft which spread to others” at Bien Hoa air base in South Vietnam leaves 27 U.S. servicemen and four South Vietnamese dead and 95 Americans injured. More than 40 planes, including 10 B-57s, are destroyed. 1965 Spaghetti-Os are sold for the first time. 1969 Russian spacecraft “Venus 5” lands on the planet Venus. 1971 The cost of a one-ounce first-class U.S. stamp is increased from 6 to 8 cents. 1975 Japanese climber Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world at 29,035 feet above sea level. 1985 Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls is named Rookie of the Year in the NBA. 1988 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that police do not need a search warrant to search discarded garbage. 1991 Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress. 2000 First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is nominated to run for U.S. Senator in New York, becoming the first U.S. First Lady to run for public office.
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 05:36:40 +0000
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