Today in history
Today is Monday, May 16, the 137th day of 2016. There are 229 days left in the year.
Highlight in history
On May 16, 1966, China launched the Cultural Revolution, a radical, youthdriven reform movement aimed at bolstering Chairman Mao Zedong while purging the country of “counter-revolutionaries.” It’s been estimated that during the decade of upheaval that followed, hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps more, died as a direct or indirect result of the Cultural Revolution.
On this date
In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
In 1866, Congress authorized minting of the first five-cent piece, also known as the “Shield nickel.”
In 1868, the U.S. Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on the eleven articles of impeachment against him.
In 1916, during World War I, France and Britain secretly ratified the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which concerned postwar partitioning of Arab lands held by the Ottoman Empire.
In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized by Pope Benedict XV.
In 1939, the federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.
In 1946, the Irving Berlin musical “Annie Get Your Gun,” starring Ethel Merman as Annie Oakley, opened on Broadway.
In 1957, federal agent Eliot Ness, who’d organized “The Untouchables” team that took on gangster Al Capone, died in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, at age 54.
In 1960, the first working laser was demonstrated at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, by physicist Theodore Maiman.
In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court, in California v. Greenwood, ruled that police can search discarded garbage without a search warrant. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop released a report declaring nicotine was addictive in ways similar to heroin and cocaine.
In 1991, Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the United States Congress as she lauded U.S.-British cooperation in the Persian Gulf War.
Ten years ago: The Pentagon released the first video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters and killing 189 people on 9/11. Richard Hatch, who’d won $1 million in the debut season of “Survivor,” was sentenced in Providence, Rhode Island, to more than four years in prison for failing to pay taxes on his reality TV show prize and other income. Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden, the winningest coaches in Division I-A football, were elected to the college football Hall of Fame.
Five years ago: A judge in New York refused to release on bail the chief of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused of trying to rape a hotel maid. (The charges against Strauss-Kahn were later dropped.) The Vatican told bishops around the world it was important to cooperate with police in reporting priests who’d raped and molested children and asked them to develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse; however, victims groups immediately denounced the recommendations as “dangerously flawed.” Endeavour blasted off on NASA’s next-to-last shuttle flight commanded by Mark Kelly, husband of wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.