Also on this day
American Revolution
1780
On this day in 1780, American General Horatio Gates suffers a humiliating defeat at Camden, South Carolina.
Despite the fact that his men suffered from diarrhea on the night of August 15, caused by their consumption of under-baked bread, Gates chose to engage the British on the morning of August 16....
Automotive
1984
After close to 30 hours of deliberation, a jury of six men and six women unanimously acquits the former automaker John Z. DeLorean of eight counts of drug trafficking in Los Angeles, California, on this day in 1984.
A Detroit native and the son of an autoworker, DeLorean began working...
Civil War
1864
On this day in 1864, Confederate General John Chambliss is killed during a cavalry charge at Deep Bottom, Virginia, one of the sieges of Petersburg.Union General Ulysses S. Grant had bottled the army of Confederate General Robert E. Lee behind a perimeter that stretched from Petersburg to the Confederate capital...
Cold War
1955
Famous entertainer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson loses his court appeal to try to force the Department of State to grant him a passport. The continued government persecution of Robeson illustrated several interesting points about Cold War America. Robeson was the most famous African-American entertainer in the world, renowned...
Crime
1984
John DeLorean, the founder of the DeLorean Motor Company, is found not guilty due to entrapment after being charged with smuggling drugs in an effort to raise money for his struggling company.
John Zachary DeLorean was born January 6, 1925, in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in a working-class Detroit neighborhood....
Disaster
1987
A plane crash at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Michigan kills 156 people on this day in 1987. A four-year-old girl was the sole survivor of the accident, which was caused by pilot error.
Northwest Flight 255 was headed to California with a stopover in Phoenix when it pulled away from the...
General Interest
1812
During the War of 1812, American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit and his army to the British without a fight. Hull, a 59-year-old veteran of the American Revolution, had lost hope of defending the settlement after seeing the large English and Indian force gathering outside Detroit’s walls. The general...
1948
On August 16, 1948, baseball legend George Herman “Babe” Ruth dies from cancer in New York City. For two days following, his body lay in state at the main entrance to Yankee Stadium, and tens of thousands of people stood in line to pay their last respects. He was buried...
1972
One year after he survived an abortive coup against his rule, King Hassan II of Morocco nearly perishes when the airliner carrying him back to Rabat was fired on by his own air force. The aircraft braved the brief attack by the Royal Moroccan Air Force, and several members of...
1977
Popular music icon Elvis Presley dies in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 42. The death of the “King of Rock and Roll” brought legions of mourning fans to Graceland, his mansion in Memphis. Doctors said he died of a heart attack, likely brought on by his addiction to prescription barbiturates.
Elvis Presley...
Hollywood
1958
On this day in 1958, Madonna Louise Ciccone, the entertainment icon later known around the world by her first name only, is born near Detroit, Michigan. After rising to stardom as a pop singer and dancer in the 1980s, Madonna added acting to her resume, with roles in such films...
Literary
1920
Charles Bukowski, leader of the “Meat School” of tough, masculine poetry, is born on this day in Andernach, Germany. Bukowski’s writing is filled with images of sex, violence, and heavy drinking.
Bukowski’s family moved to the U.S. when he was a child. The family settled in Los Angeles, where Bukowski set...
Music
1974
Five years to the day after half a million rain-soaked hippies grooved and swayed to the psychedelic sounds of the Grateful Dead at Woodstock, four young men from Forest Hills, Queens, took to the stage of an East Village dive bar in jeans, motorcycle jackets and Converse high-tops to launch...
Old West
1896
Sometime prospector George Carmack stumbles across gold while salmon fishing along the Klondike River in the Yukon.
George Carmack’s discovery of gold in that region sparked the last great western gold rush, but it was pure chance that he found it. In contrast to the discoverers of many of the other...
Presidential
1841
On this day in 1841, President John Tyler vetoes a second attempt by Congress to re-establish the Bank of the United States. In response, angry supporters of the bank gathered outside the White House and burned an effigy of Tyler. The protestors were comprised primarily of members of Tyler’s own...
Sports
1920
On August 16, 1920, Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman is struck in the temple by a ball pitched by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. He died 12 hours later. This was the first and only death to occur as the result of a pitched ball in major league...
Vietnam War
1964
General Nguyen Khanh, elected president by the Military Council, ousts Duong Van Minh as South Vietnamese chief of state and installs a new constitution, which the U.S. Embassy had helped to draft.
Khanh said that he was not becoming a military dictator, but it was clear that he was now the...
1966
The House Un-American Activities Committee investigates Americans who have given aid to the Viet Cong with a view toward introducing legislation to make such activities illegal. Demonstrators disrupted the hearings and before it was over, more than 50 people were arrested for disorderly conduct. The Chairman of the...
1967
President Johnson’s broad interpretation of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is attacked in the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee by the Chairman, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, who feels that Johnson has no mandate to conduct the war on the present scale.
1972
U.S. fighter-bombers fly 370 air strikes against North Vietnam, the highest daily total of the year; additionally, there are eight B-52 strikes in the North. Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes flew 321 missions (including 27 B-52 strikes) in South Vietnam, mostly in Quang Tri province. Despite this heavy air activity,...
World War I
1917
On August 16, 1917, in a renewed thrust of the Allied offensive launched at the end of July in the Flanders region of Belgium—known as the Third Battle of Ypres, or simply as Passchendaele, for the village that saw the heaviest fighting—British troops capture the village of Langemarck from the...
World War II
1945
On this day in 1945, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, (captured by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor, in the Philippines), is freed by Russian forces from a POW camp in Manchuria, China.
When President Franklin Roosevelt transferred Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command in the Philippines to Australia in March...