DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Monday, May 16, the 136th day of 2022. There are 229 days left in the year. On this date in:
1770: Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
1866: Congress authorized minting of the first five-cent piece, also known as the “Shield nickel.”
1929: The first Academy Awards were presented. “Wings” won “best production,” while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.
1939: The federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.
1943: The nearly monthlong Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.
1957: Federal agent Eliot Ness, who organized “The Untouchables” team that took on gangster Al Capone, died in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, at age 54.
1960: The first working laser was demonstrated at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, by physicist Theodore Maiman.
1966: China launched the Cultural Revolution, a radical as well as deadly reform movement aimed at purging the country of “counter-revolutionaries.”
1975: Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1990: Death claimed entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in Los Angeles at age 64 and “Muppets” creator Jim Henson in New York at age 53.
1997: President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for the notorious Tuskegee experiment, in which government scientists beginning in the 1930s deliberately allowed Black men to weaken and die of treatable syphilis.
2007: Anti-war Democrats in the Senate failed in an attempt to cut off funds for the Iraq war.
2016: President Barack Obama called on the nation to support law enforcement officers as he bestowed the Medal of Valor on 13 who risked their lives.
2012: Gen. Ratko Mladic went on trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. (Mladic would be convicted on 10 counts and sentenced to life in prison.)
Jazz drummer Billy Cobham is 78. Actor Danny Trejo is 78. Actor Bill Smitrovich (“Crime Story,” “Life Goes On”) is 75. Actor Pierce Brosnan is 69. Actor Debra Winger is 67. Actor Mare Winningham is 63. Violinist
Boyd Tinsley of The Dave Matthews Band is 58. Bassist Krist Novoselic (Nirvana) is 57. Singer Janet Jackson is 56. Actor-singer Scott Reeves (“Nashville,” “General Hospital”) is 56. Actor Brian F. O’byrne (“Million Dollar Baby”) is 55. Singer Ralph Tresvant is 54. Actor David Boreanaz (“Bones,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) is 53. Political commentator
Tucker Carlson is 53.