TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, April 16, the 107th day of 2024. There are 259 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 16, 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.”
On this date:
In 1789, President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Virginia, for his inauguration in New York. In 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. In 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. In 2003, Michael Jordan played his last NBA game with the Washington Wizards, who lost to the Philadelphia 76ers, 107-87.
In 2007, in one of America’s worst school attacks, a college senior killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech before taking his own life. In 2020, the Trump administration gutted an Obama-era rule that compelled the country’s coal plants to cut back emissions of mercury and other human health hazards.
In 2021, Jon Ryan Schaffer, a member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and a heavy metal guitarist, became the first defendant to plead guilty to federal charges in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Today’s Birthdays: Singer Bobby Vinton is 89. Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II is 84. Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is 77. NFL coach Bill Belichick is 72. Rock singer (Midnight Oil) and former politician Peter Garrett is 71. Actor Ellen Barkin is 70. Rock musician Jason Scheff (Chicago) is 62. Singer Jimmy Osmond is 61. Rock singer David Pirner (Soul Asylum) is 60. Actorcomedian Martin Lawrence and actor Jon Cryer are 59. Actor Peter Billingsley is 53. Actor Lukas Haas is 48. Actor Claire Foy (TV: “The Crown”) is 40. Figure skater Mirai Nagasu is 31. Actor Sadie Sink is 22.