TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, April 16, the 106th day of 2022. There are 259 days left in the year. On this date in:
1789: President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Virginia, for his inauguration in New York.
1889: Comedian and movie director
Charles Chaplin was born in London. 1945: A Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoed and sank the MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers; it’s estimated that up to 7,000 people died. In his first speech to Congress, President Harry S. Truman pledged to carry out the war and peace policies of his late predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1947: The cargo ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate, blew up in the harbor in Texas City, Texas; a nearby ship, the High Flyer, which was carrying ammonium nitrate and sulfur, caught fire and exploded the following day; the blasts and fires killed nearly 600 people. 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which the civil rights activist responded to a group of local clergymen who had criticized him for leading street protests; King defended his tactics, writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
1972: Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon with astronauts John W. Young, Charles M. Duke Jr. and Ken Mattingly on board.
1977: Alex Haley, author of the bestseller “Roots,” visited the Gambian village of Juffure, where, he believed, his ancestor Kunta Kinte was captured as a slave in 1767.
1996: Britain’s Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, the Duchess of York, announced they were in the process of divorcing.
2003: Michael Jordan played his last NBA game with the Washington Wizards, who lost to the Philadelphia 76ers, 107-87.