This day in history
Today is Tuesday, April 16, the 107 th day of 2024. There are 259 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Singer Bobby Vinton is 89. Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II is 84. Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg is 82. Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is 77. Former Massachusetts first lady Ann Romney is 75. Former Patriots 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 singer David Pirner of Soul Asylum is
60. Actor-comedian Martin Lawrence is 59. Actor Jon Cryer is 59. Actor Peter Billingsley is
53. Actor-singer Kelli O’Hara is
48. Actor Claire Foy is 40. Figure skater Mirai Nagasu is 31. Actor Sadie Sink is 22.
▶In 1789, President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Va., for his inauguration in New York.
▶In 1889, comedian and movie director Charles Chaplin was born in London.
▶In 1928, tens of thousands of mill workers went on strike in New Bedford over a 10 percent cut in pay. The strike would last six months.
▶In 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.
▶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 1952, state lawmaker Thomas P. “Tip’’ O’Neill announced he would run for the US House seat from Cambridge being vacated by John F. Kennedy, who was running for Senate. O’Neill would spend the next four decades in Congress, with the last ten years as speaker of the House.
▶In 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.”
▶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 2010, the US government accused Wall Street’s most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs Co. had sold mortgage investments without telling buyers the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail. (In July 2010, Goldman agreed to pay $550 million in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission but did not admit wrongdoing.)
▶In 2012, a trial began in Oslo for Anders Breivik, charged with killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in July 2011. (Breivik was found guilty of terrorism and premeditated murder and given a 21-year prison sentence.)
▶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 US Capitol.
▶In 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.