July 16
Pope Hilarius
0463 Start of Lunar Cycle of Hilarius.
0622 The traditional starting day of the Islamic Era, when a persecuted Muhammad flees from Mecca to Medina. (Muharram 1, 1 AH).
1054 The 'Great Schism' between the Western and Eastern churches begins over rival claims of universal pre-eminence. (In 1965, 911 years later, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I will meet to declare an end to the schism.)
1212 The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa ends Moslem power in Spain.
1439 Kissing is banned in England.
The Fourth Duke of Marlborough by Reynolds
1723 Birth: Sir Joshua Reynolds, English artist, portrait painter. (Simplicity). Died in 1792.
1746 Birth: Giuseppe Piazzi, discovered 1st asteroid (Ceres).
1765 Prime Minister of England Lord Greenville resigns and is replaced by Lord Rockingham.
1774 Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their six-year war.
1775 John Adams graduates Harvard.
Wayne
1779 American Revolution: American troops under General Anthony Wayne capture Stony Point, NY.
1790 The District of Columbia, or Washington, DC, is established as the permanent seat of the United States Government.
1791 Louis XVI is suspended from office until he agrees to ratify the constitution.
1798 The US Public Health Service established and the US Marine Hospital authorised.
Farragut
1862 US Civil War: David G. Farragut becomes the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.
Wells
1862 Born this day, Ida Bell Wells, journalist, anti-lynching activist. Died in 1931.
1875 French Revolution: The new French constitution is finalized.
Lincoln
1882 Death: Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln. She finaly had that stroke she'd been 'fixin ta have' for decades.
1894 Many black miners in Alabama are killed by striking white miners.
1894 The Treaty of Aoki-Kimberley is signed between Japan and England.
Berger
1896 Birth: Gottlob Berger SS general and one of Himmler's top experts on "racial selection" for the SS as well as problems of organization and security. It is said that Berger was the originator of the idea of the Waffen-SS as an international army which would forge together the scattered "racial" Germans of eastern and western Europe. He was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer in 1940, and for the next five years served as Himmler's Chief of Staff for the Waffen-SS and head of the SS main leadership office. After the war, an American tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced him to twenty-five years imprisonment. His sentence was later commuted, and he was released in 1951.
1904 Manifesting Destiny: The islands of the Manu'a group (Samoa) are ceded to the US by their chiefs.
1912 Bradley A. Fiske patents the airplane torpedo.
1917 July 16-17 Russian Revolution: Following a disastrous military offensive, Petrograd soldiers, instigated by local Bolshevik agitators, demonstrate against the government in what be comes known as the "July Days." (July 3-4, O.S.)
1917 July 16-18 Russian Revolution: The Bolsheviks make a premature attempt to seize power in Petrograd. Trotsky is arrested and Lenin is forced to go into hiding in Finland.
1918 Russian Revolution: Czar Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra, their five children, their doctor and three attendants are herded into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. Nicholas had been forced to abdicate a year earlier as civil war gripped the country. He and his family were forced into exile in the Ural Mountains city. The Czar and his family are lined up against a wall, for a family portrait, their Bolshevik captors say. Instead, a firing squad bursts into the room and opens fire. Jewels sewn into the dresses of the women deflected some of the bullets. The firing squad uses bayonets to finish them off. The bodies are dumped into a mine shaft. They are later retrieved as word of the killings spread. The death squad tries burning two of the bodies; but it takes too long, so they douse the rest of the bodies with sulfuric acid and burie them in a shallow grave in a forest outside the city.
1926 Romani Holocaust: A law is passed directed at controlling the "Gypsy plague." This treatment is in direct violation of the terms of the Weimar Constitution.
1927 Augusto Sandino begins a 5-year war against the continued US occupation of Nicaragua.
1935 Holocaust: Violent anti-Jewish demonstrations occur on Berlin's Kurfuerstendam.
1935 Oklahoma City becomes the first city in the U.S. to make use of parking meters. I wonder how many meters of meters surround your average Federal Office Building?
Mosley in Hyde Park
1939 Sir Oswald Mosley declares that one million British Fascists will refuse to fight in a "Jewish war."
1940 WW2: Hitler issues Directive #16 concerning the invasion of Great Britain. "As England, in spite of the hopelessness of her military position, has so far shown herself unwilling to come to any compromise, I have decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion of England...and if necessary the island will be occupied.' Hitler also stresses the importance of air superiority in this regard.
1941 WW2: In an important meeting, Hitler, Goering Bormann and Rosenberg decide on plans for the exploitation of the conquered areas of Russia. Rosenberg is put in charge of a new ministry with the task of organizing the new territories for Germany's economic benefit and eliminating the Jews and Communists from these areas. (WWIIDBD)
1941 July 16-18 WW2: Prince Kenoye reforms his Japanese cabinet, eliminating Matsuoka who has been urging that the neutrality agreement with the Soviets should be abandoned; so that Japan can join with the Germans in the attack on the USSR. Kenoye believes that without Matsuoka and his known liking for Hitler, there is a better chance of reaching an agreement with the U.S. over the pressing lack of oil reserves.
1942 Those Vichey French: French police officers round up 13,000 Jews and hold them in the Winter Velodrome. The round-up is part of an agreement between Pierre Laval and the Nazis. Germany has agreed to not deport French Jews if France arrests foreign Jews.
1942 WW2: Hitler arrives at Vinnitsa, in the Ukraine.
1944 The Secret Diary of Anti-Hitler Conspirator Ulrich von Hassel: [By Wolf Ulrich von Hassel] On July 16 he finally reached our apartment in Potsdam. After the failure of the plot of July 20, 1944 was confirmed, it was clear to my father that the last hope for an overthrow had evaporated, and that Germany's fate could no longer be avoided. Outwardly unconcerned, he continued his daily life.
1944 WW2: Soviet troops occupy Vilna, Lithuania, in their drive toward Germany.
1945 WW2: The first experimental atomic bomb is successfully exploded by the U.S. at Alamagardo, New Mexico. Fat Boy, the experimental, plutonium bomb, exploded at 5.30am in the first US test of an atomic bomb. The mushroom-shaped cloud rose to a height of 41,000 feet above the New Mexico desert at Alamogordo Air Base. All life in a one mile radius had ceased to exist.
1951 Recommended Reading For Asocial Types: J.D. Salinger's novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," is first published.
1957 Marine Major John 'Nerves Of Steel' Glenn sets a transcontinental speed record when he flies a jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
Walker's X-15
1962 NASA civilian test pilot Joseph A. Walker takes an X-15 to 32,600 metres.
1963 Term Limits Are Called Elections: Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia breaks House Speaker Sam Rayburn's record of service in the US Congress, as he celebrates serving 48 years, 8 months and 13 days.
1969 Apollo 11, the first manned moon-landing mission, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Butterfield
1973 Watergate: Alexander P. Butterfield spills the Oval beans and informs the Senate committee investigating the Watergate affair of the existence of recorded tapes. Note: The tapes could have been legally destroyed at any time prior to this revelation. Now they become evidence in a criminal investigation, and the tooth paste will never quite get back into the tube again.
1979 Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq after forcing Hasan al-Bakr to resign.
1980 Former California Governor Ronald Reagan is unanimously nominated as the Republican candidate for president at the GOP National Convention in Detroit. He chooses George H. W. Bush as his running mate after former President Jerry 'Pardon Me' Ford declines the probably not completely sincere offer to join the ticket.
1981 One Of The Few Good Ones: Singer-Songwriter Harry Chapin dies in a car crash at the age of 38. As usual, he is on his way to a benefit concert. Note: Harry was a champion for the hungry and homeless and organised a massive effort to provide food for the needy.
Gorbachev and Kohl
1990 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announce that Moscow has agreed to drop its objection to a united Germany's membership in NATO.
1991 At its London summit, the Group of Seven agree to support the Soviet Union's economic reforms and its admission to the International Monetary Fund.
1992 Texas billionaire Ross 'Fix It' Perot withdraws from the presidential race. Note: He will later change his mind and re-enter.
1994 Fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet begin striking Jupiter.
Richardson Hussein
1995 Republican Bill Richardson, D-New Mexico, meets in Baghdad with Saddam Hussein to discuss two American businessmen, William Barloon and David Daliberti, jailed in Iraq after accidentally crossing the border from Kuwait. Following the meeting, Hussein announces he has pardoned the men and orders their release.
1999 The Closest America Has To Royals: The private plane of a pampered rich kid plummets into the water off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, MA, killing the man who refused to listen to good advice and not fly just then, along with his wife and sister-in-law. Millions will morn this latest tragedy in the saga of America's most beloved soap opera family.
2004
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