Also on this day
Lead Story
1884
On this day in 1884, the first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. The new entertainment was an instant success...
American Revolution
1738
On this day in 1738, Mary Katharine Goddard is born in New London, Connecticut. She went on to publish the first version of the Declaration of Independence to include all of the Congressional signatures.
Mary Goddard’s professional life was inextricably bound with that of her brother, William. They worked together...
Automotive
1903
At 9:30 in the morning on this day in 1903, Henry Ford and other prospective stockholders in the Ford Motor Company meet in Detroit to sign the official paperwork required to create a new corporation. Twelve stockholders were listed on the forms, which were signed, notarized and sent to the...
Civil War
1862
On this day, a Union attempt to capture Charleston, South Carolina, is thwarted when the Confederates turn back an attack at Secessionville, just south of the city on James Island.
In November 1861, Union ships captured Port Royal, South Carolina, which lay about halfway between Charleston and Savannah, Georgia. This gave...
Cold War
1961
Rudolf Nureyev, the young star of the Soviet Union’s Kirov Opera Ballet Company, defects during a stopover in Paris. The high-profile defection was a blow to Soviet prestige and generated international interest. Nureyev became a star of Russian ballet in 1958 when, at barely 20 years old, he was made...
Crime
1999
On this day in 1999, Kathleen Ann Soliah, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), is arrested near her home in St. Paul, Minnesota. Soliah, who now calls herself Sara Jane Olsen, had been evading authorities for more than 20 years.
In the mid-1970s, the SLA, a small, radical...
General Interest
1958
Imre Nagy, a former Hungarian premier and symbol of the nation’s 1956 uprising against Soviet rule, is hanged for treason by his country’s communist authorities.After becoming premier of communist Hungary in 1953, Nagy enacted a series of liberal reforms and opposed Soviet interference in his country’s affairs. He was removed...
1963
On June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to travel into space. After 48 orbits and 71 hours, she returned to earth, having spent more time in space than all U.S. astronauts combined to that date.Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born to a peasant...
1977
Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party since 1964, is elected president of the Supreme Soviet, thereby becoming both head of party and head of state.A member of the Soviet Communist Party since 1931, Brezhnev was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s protege and deputy in the early 1960s....
Hollywood
1943
Oona O’Neill, the daughter of the famed playwright Eugene O’Neill, is an 18-year-old freshly minted high-school graduate and fledgling actress when she marries 54-year-old Charles Chaplin, the internationally renowned actor, filmmaker and Hollywood legend, on this day in 1943, in Santa Barbara, California.
Her famous father (already a Pulitzer Prize-winner for...
Literary
1904
Aspiring writer James Joyce meets his future wife, Nora, a lively, uneducated woman with little interest in literature, on this day in 1904. Joyce will immortalize this day in his masterpiece Ulysses, whose narrative unfolds entirely on June 16, 1904.
James Joyce was born in Dublin, the eldest of 10 children...
Music
1965
By the spring of 1965, Bob Dylan’s presence in the world of music was beginning to be felt well outside the boundaries of his nominal genre. Within the world of folk music, he had been hailed as a hero for several years already, but now his music was capturing the...
Old West
1890
Because of ailments he contracted during an arduous exploration of the Alaskan frontier, Fred Fickett retires from the military to become a civilian lawyer.
A native of Maine, Fickett enlisted as a private in the Army Signal Corps in 1882. By chance, he was assigned to duty in Alaska, a...
Presidential
1858
On this day in 1858, newly nominated senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln addresses the Illinois Republican Convention in Springfield and warns that the nation faces a crisis that could destroy the Union. Speaking to more than 1,000 delegates in an ominous tone, Lincoln paraphrased a passage from the New Testament: “a...
Sports
1968
On June 16, 1968, golfer Lee Trevino wins the U.S. Open at the Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York. His score of 275 for 72 holes tied a U.S. Open record.
Lee Trevino was born in Dallas, Texas, on December 1, 1939, and raised along with two sisters by...
Vietnam War
1961
Following a meeting between President John F. Kennedy and South Vietnam envoy Nguyen Dinh Thuan, an agreement is reached for direct training and combat supervision of Vietnamese troops by U.S. instructors. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem had earlier asked Kennedy to send additional U.S. troops to train the South...
1965
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces that 21,000 more U.S. troops are to be sent to Vietnam. He also claimed that it was now known that North Vietnamese regular troops had begun to infiltrate South Vietnam. The new U.S. troops were to join the U.S. Marines and paratroopers from the...
1970
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks almost completely isolate Phnom Penh. The principal fighting raged in and around Kompong Thom, about 90 miles north of the capital. On June 17, Cambodia’s last working railway line, which ran to the border of Thailand, was severed when communist troops seized a freight...
World War I
1918
On June 16, 1918, the Battle of the Piave River rages on the Italian front, marking the last major attack by the Austro-Hungarian army in Italy of World War I.
After turmoil-plagued Russia bowed out of the war effort in early 1918, Germany began to pressure its ally, Austria-Hungary, to devote...
World War II
1940
On this day in 1940, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, World War I hero, becomes prime minister of the Vichy government of France.
As Germany began to overrun more French territory, the French Cabinet became desperate for a solution to this crisis. Premier Paul Reynaud continued to hold out hope, refusing to ask...