TODAY IN HISTORY TODAY is Monday, May 16, the 136th day of 2022. There are 229 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1568 — Mary, Queen of Scots, takes refuge in England. 1770 — Marie Antoinette, aged 14, is married to France’s Kin
organised colonisation of New Zealand, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, dies, aged 66.
1868 — The United States Senate fails by one vote to achieve the twothirds majority guilty vote required to convict President Andrew Johnson in his Senate impeachment trial.
1881 — The first electric tram goes into public service, near Berlin in Germany.
1883 — The first regular direct steam link between Britain and New Zealand begins with the arrival of Westmeath in Auckland.
1888 — Emile Berliner gives the first
demonstration of flatdisc recording and reproduction (technology that would replace Edison’s cylinders) before the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
1920 — Joan of Arc is formally canonised as a saint by Pope Benedict XV in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This concluded a process begun by an 1869 petition.
1943 — ‘‘Operation Chastise’’ takes place in World War 2, when British Lancaster aircraft from the 617 Squadron bomb the Mohne and the Eder dams in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Basin using bouncing bombs, in what has become known as the Dam Busters raid.
1960 — The Big Four summit conference in Paris collapses on its opening day as the Soviet Union levels spying charges against the United States following a U2 spy plane incident.
1961 — Majorgeneral Park Chunghee stages a military coup in South Korea.
1975 — Japanese climber Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest.
1981 — The New Zealand football team’s 20 victory over Australia, in Sydney, signals a defining moment in its qualifying campaign for the 1982 World Cup finals.
1982 — New Zealand plays its first international football match in Dunedin in 35 years, the League of Ireland defeating the All Whites 21. It was New Zealand’s only loss in a fivematch series.
1986 — Members of the military junta which led Argentina to defeat in the 1982 Falklands War with Britain are sentenced to between eight and 14 years’ imprisonment and stripped of their ranks. Former president Leopoldo Galtieri is sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
1991 — Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to address the US Congress.
1994 — For the first time, Scotland
Yard approves a plan to allow some London police officers to openly carry firearms.
2001 — Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen is indicted on charges of spying for Moscow. Hanssen later pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2013 — Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University report that they have successfully reprogrammed human skin cells back to an embryonic state. The purpose of their study was not to generate human clones, but to produce lines of embryonic stem cells.
Peter Hall, New Zealand flying ace in World War 2 (19222010); Roy Kerr, New Zealand mathematician (1934); Paul Ackerley, New Zealand Olympic hockey gold medallist (19492011); Pierce Brosnan, Irish actor (1953); Debra Winger, US actress (1955); Mare Winningham, US actress (1959); Janet Jackson, US pop singer (1966); Matthew Hart, New Zealand cricketer (1972); Tori Spelling, US actress (1973); Melanie Lynskey, New Zealand actress (1977); Jonathan Duncan, New Zealand swimmer (1982); Megan Fox, US actress/model (1986).
Quote of the day:
‘‘I had never used the prefix ‘Dr’ with my name, but when I started with Nasa, I had to. Otherwise, I could not get past the secretaries.’’ — Nancy Roman, US astronomer and one of the first female executives at Nasa. She is known to many as the ‘‘Mother of Hubble’’ for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. She was born on this day in 1925. She died in 2018 aged 93.