Today in HISTORY

YEAR DAY EVENT 1290 Aug 16 Charles of Valois married Margaret of Anjou. 1498 Aug 16 Christopher Columbus reached the island of Margarita (Venezuela). 1513 Aug 16 Henry VIII of England and Emperor Maximilian defeated the French at Guinegatte, France, in the Battle of the Spurs. 1678 Aug 16 Andrew Marvell (b.1621), English poet (Definition of Love), died. 1691 Aug 16 Yorktown, Va., was founded. 1745 Aug 16 Skirmish at Laggan: Glengarry beat the Royal Scots. 1777 Aug 16 American forces won the Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington, Vt. 1777 Aug 16 France declared a state of bankruptcy 1799 Aug 16 Vincenzo Manfredini (b.1737), Italian composer, died. 1780 Aug 16 American troops under Gen. Horatio Gates were badly defeated by the British at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina. 1812 Aug 16 American General William Hull surrendered Detroit without resistance to a smaller British and Indian forces under General Isaac Brock. 1829 Aug 16 The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, arrived in Boston aboard the ship Sachem to be exhibited to the Western world. 1846 Aug 16 Gioacchino Rossini married Olympe Pelissier in Paris and stopped composing operas. 1854 Aug 16 Duncan Phyfe (86), NYC furniture maker, died. 1858 Aug 16 A telegraphed message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President Buchanan was transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable. The cable linked Ireland and Canada and failed after a few weeks. 1861 Aug 16 Union and Confederate forces clashed near Fredericktown and Kirkville, Missouri. 1862 Aug 16 Amos Alonzo Stagg, football pioneer, inventor of the tackling dummy, was born in West Orange, New Jersey. 1863 Aug 16 Chickamauga campaign took place in GA. Union General William S. Rosecrans moved his army south from Tullahoma, Tennessee to attack Confederate forces in Chattanooga. 1864 Aug 16 Battle of Front Royal, VA. (Guard Hill). 1876 Aug 16 Opera “Siegfried” premiered at Bayreuth. 1894 Aug 16 Indian chiefs from the Sioux & Onondaga tribes met to urge their people to renounce Christianity and return to their old Indian faith. 1898 Aug 16 Edwin Prescott patented a roller coaster. 1904 Aug 16 NYC began building the Grand Central Station. 1914 Aug 16 Liege, Belgium, fell to the German army. 1914 Aug 16 Zapata and Pancho Villa over ran Mexico. 1915 Aug 16 A hurricane hit Galveston, Texas. It caused 12 deaths and an estimated $5-8 million in property damage in the city. 1918 Aug 16 US troops overthrew Archangel (Russia). 1924 Aug 16 Conference about German recovery payments opened in London. 1934 Aug 16 US ended its occupation of Haiti (begun in 1915). 1943 Aug 16 Bulgarian czar Boris III visited Adolf Hitler. 1944 Aug 16 Chartres, France, was freed. 1946 Aug 16 A riot in Calcutta left some 3-4,000 Moslems and Hindus dead. 1949 Aug 16 Margaret Mitchell (48), US writer (Gone With the Wind), died. 1953 Aug 16 Shah Pahlavi of Persia and princess Soraya fled to Baghdad and then Rome. 1954 Aug 16 Sports Illustrated was first published by Time Inc. 1955 Aug 16 Fiat Motors ordered the 1st private atomic reactor. 1956 Aug 16 Bela Lugosi (b.1882), actor (Dracula), died of heart attack in Hollywood. He was born in Hungary as Bela Blasko. 1959 Aug 16 William F. Halsey (Bull Halsey), US vice-admiral (WW II Pacific), died. 1961 Aug 16 Martin Luther King protested for black voting rights in Miami. 1984 Aug 16 A federal jury in Los Angeles acquitted auto maker John Z. DeLorean of trafficking in cocaine due to entrapment. 1986 Aug 16 Flozelle Woodmore (18), shot and killed her abusive boyfriend, Clifton Morrow, with a .357 magnum in the presence of their 2-year-old son in Los Angeles. In 2007 Gov. Schwarzenegger, said he no longer oppose her parole. 1987 Aug 16 Thousands of people worldwide began a two-day celebration of the “harmonic convergence,” which heralded what believers called the start of a new, purer age of humankind. Nearly 5,000 people gathered at Mount Shasta, Ca., for the Harmonic Convergence aimed at bringing about world peace. 1988 Aug 16 VP George Bush tapped Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to be his running mate. 1989 Aug 16 A rare “prime time” lunar eclipse occurred over most of the United States, although clouds spoiled the view for many. 1990 Aug 16 President Bush met with Jordan’s King Hussein in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he urged the monarch to close Iraq’s access to the sea through the port of Aqaba. 1991 Aug 16 Pope John Paul the Second began the first-ever papal visit to Hungary. 1992 Aug 16 On the eve of the Republican National Convention in Houston, President Bush and party officials heatedly denied a report in The New York Times that a confrontation with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was motivated by political concerns. 1993 Aug 16 President Clinton opened his campaign for health care reform with a speech to the nation’s governors in Tulsa, Okla. 1994 Aug 16 President Clinton and other top Democrats were scouring the House of Representatives for converts in hopes of reviving a stalled anti-crime bill. 1996 Aug 16 A jubilant Bob Dole set out from the Republican convention, promoting his tax-cut plan as a boon to working families. 1997 Aug 16 Thousands of Elvis Presley fans thronged Graceland on the 20th anniversary of his death. 1998 Aug 16 A day before President Clinton was to face a criminal grand jury about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, his lawyer said, “The truth is the truth, and that’s how the president will testify.” 1999 Aug 16 Republican Lamar Alexander folded his presidential campaign. 2000 Aug 16 Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles formally nominated Al Gore for president. 2001 Aug 16 Wild fires in the 10 Western US states covered over 50,000 acres, half in Oregon. 20,000 fighters fought 42 major blazes. 2002 Aug 16 Major League Baseball players set a strike deadline of Aug. 30. The two sides finally reached an agreement with just six hours to spare. 2003 Aug 16 The Midwest and Northeast were almost fully recovered from the worst power outage in U.S. history. 2004 Aug 16 Pres. Bush announced plans to pull 70-100 thousand US troops from Europe and Asia and redeploy them to meet the demands of the global war on terrorism. 2005 Aug 16 Pres. Bush selected Donald Winter of Northrup Grumman to be Navy secretary and Michael Wynne, Pentagon aide, as Air Force head. 2006 Aug 16 New York City officials released new tapes of hundreds of heart-wrenching phone calls from the World Trade Center on 9-11, along with other emergency transcripts. 2007 Aug 16 The US offered Israel an unprecedented $30 billion military aid package. 2008 Aug 16 Dorival Caymmi (b.1914), Brazilian composer, died. He had composed over 100 songs and catapulted to fame when Carmen Miranda performed one of his songs in 1938. 2009 Aug 16 Y.E. Yang (37) of South Korea won the PGA Championship at Chaska, Minnesota, with a 2-under par 70 beating Tiger Woods who shot a 5 over par 75. 2010 Aug 16 The US Justice Dept. dropped its 6-year investigation of former US House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex) and his interactions with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. 2011 Aug 16 The US National Marriage Project reported that the number of Americans with children who live together without marrying has increased 12-fold since 1970. 2012 Aug 16 In California gang member Pierre Mercado was found guilty in Los Angeles of 4 counts of murder during a mid 1990’s crime spree. He was a member of the Asian Boys founded by his brother, Marvin, now serving life in prison. 2014 Aug 16 In California the search for Erin Corwin (19) ended when her body was spotted with a video camera 140 feet down a mine shaft on federal land near her home in Twentynine Palms, where her Marine husband was stationed. Former Marine Christopher Brandon Lee (24) was arrested the next day in Alaska. Corwin had disappeared on June 28.