TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

May 16, 1868

At the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, 35 out of 54 senators voted to find Johnson guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict; the trial ended 10 days later after two other articles of impeachment went down to defeat as well. ALSO ON THIS DATE

1532

Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and a small band of soldiers landed on the northwestern coast of Peru.

1770

Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

1920

Joan of Arc was canonized by Pope Benedict XV.

1939

The federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.

1953

Associated Press correspondent William N. Oatis was released by communist authorities in Czechoslovakia, where he had been imprisoned for two years after being forced to confess to espionage while working as the AP’s Prague bureau chief.

1966

China launched the Cultural Revolution, a radical as well as deadly reform movement aimed at purging the country of “counter-revolutionaries.”