Today In History
Today is Tuesday, April 16, the 107th day of 2024. There are 259 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
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
› 1789: President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Virginia, for his inauguration in New York.
› 1889: Comedian and movie director Charles Chaplin was born in London.
› 1945: A Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoed and sank the ship the MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers; it’s estimated that up to 7,000 people died.
› 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.
› 2003: Michael Jordan played his last NBA game with the Washington Wizards, who lost to the Philadelphia 76ers, 107-87.
› 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.
› 2012: A trial began in Oslo, Norway, for Anders Breivik, charged with killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in July 2011. ›
2013: NFL player-turned-broadcaster Pat Summerall, died in Dallas at age 82. ›
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. ›
2022: Russian forces accelerated scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond, a sign that the entire country was still under assault despite Russia’s pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Singer Bobby Vinton is 89. Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II is 84. Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is 77. Former Massachusetts first lady Ann Romney is 75. NFL coach Bill Belichick is 72. Rock singer (Midnight Oil) and former politician Peter Garrett is 71. Actor Ellen Barkin is 70. Actor Michel Gill is 64. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is
62. Rock musician Jason Scheff (Chicago) is 62. Singer Jimmy Osmond is 61. Rock singer David Pirner is 60. Actor-comedian Martin Lawrence is
59. Actor Jon Cryer is 59. Actor Peter Billingsley is 53. Actor Lukas Haas is 48. Actor-singer Kelli O’Hara is 48. Actor Claire Foy (TV: “The Crown”) is 40. Figure skater Mirai Nagasu is 31. Actor Sadie Sink is 22.