Today in history

On May 16, 1943, the nearly month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.

In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

In 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.

In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized by Pope Benedict XV.

In 1939, the federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.

In 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.

In 1966, China launched the Cultural Revolution, a radical as well as deadly reform movement aimed at purging the country of “counter-revolutionaries.”

In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

In 1984, comedian Andy Kaufman died in Los Angeles at age 35.

In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court, in California v. Greenwood, ruled that police could search discarded garbage without a search warrant. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop released a report declaring nicotine was addictive in ways similar to heroin and cocaine.

In 1990, death claimed entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in Los Angeles at age 64 and “Muppets” creator Jim Henson in New York at age 53.

In 1991, Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the United States

Congress as she lauded U.S.-British cooperation in the Persian Gulf War.

In 2006, the Pentagon released the first video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters and killing 189 people on 9/11.

Ten years ago: BP crews finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil rushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico by hooking up a milelong tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship. Space shuttle Atlantis arrived at the International Space Station. Rafael Nadal won a record 18th Masters title by beating Roger Federer 6-4, 7-6 (5) in the Madrid final. Lebanese-born Miss Michigan Rima Fakih won the 2010 Miss USA title.

Five years ago: U.S. commandos killed a man described as the Islamic State’s head of oil operations in a rare ground attack inside Syria. An Egyptian court sentenced the country’s first freely elected leader, ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, to death over a mass prison break during the 2011 uprising that eventually brought him to power. (Morsi collapsed and died in court in June, 2019, during trial on espionage charges.) American Pharoah won the Preakness in a driving rain, keeping alive his Triple Crown bid, which he achieved at the Belmont Stakes the following month.

One year ago: The death of globe-trotting architect I.M. Pei was confirmed by his New York company; one of Pei’s sons said he had died overnight at the age of 102. Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was ordered back to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. (Manning was released in March, 2020 after prosecutors reported that the grand jury that subpoenaed her had disbanded.) Prosecutors in Dallas said Billy Chemirmir, a man who’d previously been arrested in the death of an 81-year-old woman, had been charged with killing at least 11 more elderly women whose jewelry and other valuables he allegedly stole. “The Big Bang Theory” closed out its run as television’s top-rated comedy; the series had won 10 Emmy Awards, including four acting honors for Jim Parsons.