Virginia Tech vigil

2007

Virginia Tech shooting leaves 32 dead

Born on This Day

Selena Archive

Selena

1971 - 1995

Mexican-American singer dubbed the Queen of Tejano, a quick-paced Latin dance music. Tragically shot and killed in 1995 at age 23.

Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham

1919 - 2009

Modern dancer and choreographer who pushed the discipline to more abstract, even random performance styles.

"Kareem: Minority Of One" New York Premiere

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

1947 -

Basketball giant who dominated the NBA in the 1970s and '80s with his signature sky hook. Led the L.A. Lakers to five championships.

Selena

Getty Images

Merce Cunningham

Getty Images

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Getty Images

1912

APR

16

Harriet Quimby, the first woman to earn a pilot’s license in the United States, becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel. She dies in an airplane accident just months later, at age 37.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on April 16th

1881

Western gunslinger, Bat Masterson, fights in last shootout

On the streets of Dodge City, famous western lawman and gunfighter Bat Masterson fights what is the last documented gun battle of his life. Bartholomew “Bat” Masterson had made a living with his gun from a young age. In his early 20s, Masterson worked as a buffalo hunter, operating out of the wild Kansas cattle […]

2:42m read read

1889

Hollywood legend Charlie Chaplin born

On April 16, 1889, future Hollywood legend Charlie Chaplin is born Charles Spencer Chaplin in London, England. Chaplin, one of the most financially successful stars of early Hollywood, was introduced to the stage when he was five. The son of London music hall entertainers, young Chaplin was watching a show starring his mother when her […]

2:36m read read

1917

Lenin returns to Russia from exile

On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870, Lenin was drawn to the revolutionary cause after his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Czar Alexander III. […]

3:40m read read

1929

Cleveland becomes first MLB team to play with numbers on back of jerseys

On April 16, 1929, the Cleveland Indians open the season with numbers on the back of each player’s jersey, the first Major League Baseball team to do so. The numbers make it easier for scorekeepers, broadcasters and fans to identify players. Cleveland wins the game against the Detroit Tigers in 11 innings, 5-4. The New York […]

1:12m read read

1943

Hallucinogenic effects of LSD discovered

In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumes LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hofmann was disturbed by unusual […]

1:28m read read

1945

Hitler calls for last stand on the Eastern front

On April 16, 1945, Adolf Hitler proclaims from his underground bunker that deliverance was at hand from encroaching Russian troops—and that his beloved capital city of Berlin would remain German. A “mighty artillery is meeting the enemy,” proclaims Der Fuhrer. “This time the Bolsheviks will experience Asia’s old fate. That is, he must and will bleed […]

0:48m read read

1946

Arthur Chevrolet dies by suicide

On April 16, 1946, Arthur Chevrolet, an auto racer and the brother of Chevrolet auto namesake Louis Chevrolet, dies by suicide in Slidell, Louisiana. Louis Chevrolet was born in Switzerland in 1878, while Arthur’s birth year has been listed as 1884 and 1886. By the early 1900s, Louis and Arthur, along with their younger brother […]

1:52m read read

1947

Fertilizer explosion kills more than 500 in Texas

A giant explosion occurs during the loading of fertilizer onto the freighter Grandcamp at a pier in Texas City, Texas, on April 16, 1947. Nearly 600 people lost their lives and thousands were injured when the ship was literally blown to bits. Ammonium nitrate was used as an explosive by the U.S. Army in World […]

2:06m read read

1947

Bernard Baruch popularizes the term “Cold War”

Multimillionaire and financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coins the term “Cold War” to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The phrase stuck, and for over 40 years it was a mainstay in the language of American diplomacy. […]

1963

Martin Luther King Jr. writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

On April 16, 1963, days after being jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, for a series of anti-segregation protests, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pens a response to his critics on some scraps of paper. This open letter, now known as his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” offered a forceful defense of the protest campaign. It is […]

2:22m read read

1972

Apollo 16 departs for moon

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S. lunar landing missions, is successfully launched on its 238,000-mile journey to the moon. On April 20, astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke descended to the lunar surface from the Command Module, which remained in orbit around the moon with a third astronaut, […]

0:46m read read

2018

Kendrick Lamar becomes the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize

On April 16, 2018, the Pulitzer Prize Board awards the Pulitzer Prize for Music to rapper Kendrick Lamar for his 2017 album, DAMN. It was the first time the award had gone to a musical work outside the genres of classical music and jazz, a watershed moment for the Pulitzers and Lamar and a sign […]

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