May 16

Events

• 218 – Julia Maesa, aunt of the assassinated Caracalla, is banished to her home in Syria by self-proclaimed emperor Macrinus. She declares her 14-year-old grandson Elagabalus to be emperor of Rome. Macrinus is later deposed.
• 946 – Emperor Suzaku abdicates the throne in favor of his brother Murakami who becomes the 62nd emperor of Japan.
• 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.
• 1739 – The Battle of Vasai concludes as the Marathas defeat the Portuguese army.
• 1770 – A 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. Bessarabia is annexed by Imperial Russia.
• 1822 – Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli.
• 1834 – The Battle of Asseiceira is fought, the last and decisive engagement of the Liberal Wars in Portugal.
• 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 United States Congress establishes the nickel.
• 1868 – United States 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.
• 1888 – Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.
• 1891 – The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current (the most common form today).
• 1916 – The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic sign the secret wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement partitioning former Ottoman territories such as Iraq and Syria.
• 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 NC-4 aircraft 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, the first Academy Awards ceremony takes place.
• 1943 – The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.
• 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.
• 1959 – The Triton Fountain in Valletta, Malta is turned on for the first time.^[1]
• 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 space probe, lands on Venus.
• 1974 – Josip Broz Tito is elected president for life of Yugoslavia.
• 1988 – A report by the Surgeon General of the United States 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.
• 1997 – Mobutu Sese Seko, the President of Zaire, flees the country.
• 2003 – In 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.
• 2011 – STS-134 (ISS assembly flight ULF6), launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th and final flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.
• 2014 – Twelve people are killed in two explosions in the Gikomba market area of Nairobi, Kenya.