HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Saturday, April 16, the 106th day of 2016. There are 259 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1941 – World War II: The Italian convoy Duisburg, directed to
Tunisia, is attacked and destroyed by British ships. 1944 – World War II: Allied forces start bombing Belgrade, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter. 1945 – World War II: The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin, with nearly one million troops fighting in the Battle of the Seelow Heights. 1945 – The United States Army liberates Nazi Sonderlager (high security) prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz). 1945 – More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship
Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine. 1947 – Texas City disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600. 1947 – Bernard Baruch coins the term “Cold War” to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. 1953 – Queen Elizabeth II launches the Royal Yacht HMY
Britannia. 1961 – In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism. 1963 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pens his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting against segregation. 1972 – Apollo program: The launch of Apollo 16 from Cape
Canaveral, Florida. 1990 – The “Doctor of Death”, Jack Kevorkian, participates
in his first assisted suicide. 1992 – The Katina P runs aground off of Maputo, Mozambique
and 60,000 tons of crude oil spill into the ocean. 1995 – George W. Bush names April 16 as Selena Day in
Texas, after she was killed two weeks earlier. 2001 – India and Bangladesh begin a five-day border conflict, but are unable to resolve the disputes about their border. 2003 – The Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens admitting
ten new member states to the European Union. 2007 – Virginia Tech shooting: Seung-Hui Cho guns down 32
people and injures 17 before committing suicide. 2012 – The trial for Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of
the 2011 Norway attacks, begins in Oslo, Norway. 2012 – The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced, it was the first time since 1977 that no book won the Fiction Prize. 2013 – A 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Iran, killing at least 35 people and injuring 117 others. 2014 – The MV Sewol ferry carrying more than 450 people capsizes near Jindo Island off South Korea, leaving 295 passengers and crew dead and 9 more missing.