What Happened on May 16
Historical Events
- 1920 Joan of Arc (Jeanne D'arc) canonized a saint
- 1943 Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs
- 1944 1st of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz
- 1989 Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing and formally end a 30-year rift
- 2013 Human stem cells are successfully cloned
- More Historical Events
May 16 in Film & TV
- 1929 1st Academy Awards: "Wings", Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor win
- 1986 "Top Gun", directed by Tony Scott and starring Tom Cruise premieres
May 16 in Music
- 1946 Irving Berlin, Dorothy and Herbert Fields' musical "Annie Get Your Gun" starring Ethel Merman and featuring "There's No Business Like Show Business" opens at Imperial Theater, NYC
May 16 in Sport
- 1948 First chess world championship since WWII; Russian player Mikhail Botvinnik wins a 5-player tournament to begin 20-year Russian domination
- 1985 Michael Jordan named NBA Rookie of Year
Did You Know?
Did You Know?Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California
On May 16, 1960
H. H. Holmes
Henry Fonda
Liberace
Pierce Brosnan
Janet Jackson
Megan FoxFamous Weddings
- 1770 Marie Antoinette (14) marries future King Louis XVI (15) of France
- 1836 American writer Edgar Allan Poe (26) marries his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm
- 1981 Pretenders' Martin Chambers weds Tracy Atkinson
Famous Divorces
- 2008 "24" actor Kiefer Sutherland (37) divorces former model Elizabeth Kelly Winn (42) due to irreconcilable differences after nearly 8 years of marriage
More Weddings & Divorces
Django Reinhardt
Margaret Hamilton
Jim Henson
Sammy Davis Jr.
Bob Hawke
I. M. PeiArticles, Photos and Quiz
Silence is Golden At The First Oscars
The first Academy Awards ceremony took place on this day before just 250 guests. All the movies nominated for what would become known as an Oscar were silent
May 16, 1929Mikhail Kalashnikov Meets Eugene Stoner
The inventor of the AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov (right), meets the inventor of the M-16, Eugene Stoner (left)
May 16, 1990Weekly Quiz for May 13-20
Test your knowledge of historical events in our multi-choice weekly history quiz for May 13-20. Number 7 will leave you truly stumped then amazed!
