History of 16 April
1900 – The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.
1905 – Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000,000 of personal money to set up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
1912 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
1917 – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution after years of exile.
1922 – Annie Oakley shot 100 clay targets in a row, to set a women’s record.
1922 – The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo under which Germany recognized the Soviet Union and diplomatic and trade relations were restored.
1935 – “Fibber McGee and Molly” premiered.
1940 – The first no-hit, no-run game to be thrown on an opening day of the major league baseball season was earned by Bob Feller. The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0.
1942 – The Island of Malta was awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack.
1943 – In Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD-25 while working on the medicinal value of lysergic acid.
1944 – The destroyer USS Laffey survived immense damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa.
1945 – American troops entered Nuremberg, Germany.
1947 – The Zoomar lens, invented by Dr. Frank Back, was demonstrated in New York City. It was the first lens to exhibit zooming effects.
1947 – In Texas City, TX, the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up. The explosions and resulting fires killed 576 people.
1948 – In Paris, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation was set up.
1951 – 75 people were killed when the British submarine Affray sank in the English Channel.
1953 – The British royal yacht Britannia was launched.
1962 – Walter Cronkite began anchoring “The CBS Evening News”.
1967 – At the Western Open in El Monte, CA, Ken Barnes Jr. became the first skeet shooter to break a perfect 400 x 400 in all four guns (.410, 28, 20, and 12 gauges). He is also the only shooter to do this with pump action guns.
1968 – The Pentagon announced that troops would begin coming home from Vietnam.
1968 – Major league baseball’s longest night game was played when the Houston Astros defeated the New York Mets 1-0. The 24 innings took six hours, six minutes to play.
1972 – Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon. It was the fifth manned moon landing.
1972 – Two giants pandas arrived in the U.S. from China.
1975 – The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror.
1978 – In Orissa, India, 180 people died when a tornado hit.
1980 – A failed assassination attempt against Iraqi vice-premier Tariq Aziz occurred.
1982 – The U.S. transferred the Canal Zone to Panama.
1983 – New York Islander Mike Bossy became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to score 60 goals in 3 consecutive seasons.
1985 – World oil prices dropped below $10 a barrel.
1986 – The U.S. submarine Nathaniel Green ran aground in the Irish Sea.
1987 – Steve Newman became the first man to walk around the world. The walk was 22,000 miles and took 4 years.
1987 – U.S. President Reagan told doctors in Philadelphia, “We’ve declared AIDS public health enemy No. 1.”
1991 – Iran released British hostage Roger Cooper after 5 years.
1991 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jurors could not be barred from serving due to their race.
1991 – The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved.
1992 – Players began the first strike in the 75-year history of the National Hockey League (NHL).
1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton threw out the first ball preceding a game between the Kansas City Royals and the Baltimore Orioles.
1997 – David Carradine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1998 – A federal judge dismissed the Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against U.S. President Clinton saying that the claims fell “far short” of being worthy of a trial.
1999 – In Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Anatoliy Onoprienko was sentenced to death for the deaths of 52 men, women and children. 43 of the killings occurred in a 6-month period.
1999 – The Canadian territory of Nunavut was created. It was carved from the eastern part of the Northwest Territories and covered about 772,000 square miles.
2001 – China began holding 24 crewmembers of a U.S. surveillance plane. The EP-3E U.S. Navy crew had made an emergency landing after an in-flight collision with a Chinese fighter jet. The Chinese pilot was missing and presumed dead. The U.S. crew was released on April 11, 2001.
2001 – Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested on corruption charges after a 26-hour standoff with the police at his Belgrade villa.
2003 – North Korea test-fired an anti-ship missile off its west coast.
2003 – Jason Mewes was ordered to complete drug rehabilitation or face five years in jail stemming from a drug conviction in 1999.
2004 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The bill made it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.
2004 – Gateway Inc. announced that it would be closing all of its 188 stores on April 9.
2009 – Albania and Croatia joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
2010 – The U.S. Congress cut Medicare reimbursements to physicians by 21%.
2011 – After protests against the burning of the Quran turned violent, a mob attacks a United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of thirteen people, including eight foreign workers.
2016 – Nagorno-Karabakh clashes: The Four Day War or April War, began along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of contact on April 1.
Celebrating Birthday Today
- 1981 – Anestis Agritis, Greek footballer
- 1981 – Maya Dunietz, Israeli singer-songwriter, and pianist
- 1981 – Matthieu Proulx, Canadian football player
- 1982 – Gina Carano, American mixed martial artist, and actress
- 1982 – Boris Diaw, French basketball player
- 1982 – Jonathan Vilma, American football player
- 1983 – Marié Digby, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress
- 1983 – Cat Osterman, American softball player
- 1984 – Teddy Blass, American composer, and producer
- 1984 – Claire Foy, English actress
- 1984 – Tucker Fredricks, American speed skater
- 1984 – Paweł Kieszek, Polish footballer
- 1984 – Kerron Stewart, Jamaican sprinter
- 1985 – Luol Deng, Sudanese-English basketball player
- 1985 – Brendon Leonard, New Zealand rugby player
- 1985 – Benjamín Rojas, Argentinian singer-songwriter and actor
- 1985 – Taye Taiwo, Nigerian footballer
- 1986 – Paul di Resta, Scottish racing driver
- 1986 – Shinji Okazaki, Japanese footballer
- 1986 – Peter Regin, Danish ice hockey player
- 1986 – Epke Zonderland, Dutch gymnast
- 1987 – Cenk Akyol, Turkish basketball player
- 1987 – Aaron Lennon, English footballer
- 1988 – Kyle Okposo, American ice hockey player
- 1990 – Reggie Jackson, American basketball player
- 1990 – Vangelis Mantzaris, Greek basketball player
- 1990 – Tony McQuay, American sprinter
- 1990 – Travis Shaw, American baseball player
- 1991 – Nolan Arenado, American baseball player
- 1991 – Kim Kyung-Jung, South Korean footballer
- 1993 – Mirai Nagasu, American figure skater
- 1993 – Chance the Rapper, American rapper
- 1994 – Albert Almora, American baseball player
- 1994 – Will Fuller, American football player
- 2002 – Sadie Sink, American actress