TODAY IN HISTORY

MONDAY MAY 16, 2022

1943

The nearly month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.

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.

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 64and “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 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.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Former U.S. Senator and Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker is 91. Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is 79. Jazz musician Billy Cobham is 78. Actor Danny Trejo is 78. Actor Bill Smitrovich is 75. Actor Pierce Brosnan is 69. Actor Debra Winger is 67.