About May 16
May 16, 2025 is the 136th day of the year 2025 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 229 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Friday.
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Taurus is the sun sign of a person born on this day. Emerald is the modern birthstone for this month. Sapphire is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.
According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 277 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
What Happened On May 16
- 1204 –Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire.
- 1532 –Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England.
- 1568 –Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England.
- 1811 –Peninsular War: The allies Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom, defeat the French at the Battle of Albuera.
- 1866 –The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.
- 1868 –President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate.
- 1874 –A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroys much of four villages and kills 139 people.
- 1877 –May 16, 1877 political crisis in France.
- 1891 –The International Electro-Technical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world’s first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electrical current (the most common form today).
- 1918 –The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.
- 1951 –The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
- 1953 –American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechslovakia.
- 1966 –The Communist Party of China issues the “May 16 Notice”, marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
- 1969 –Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.
- 1974 –Josip Broz Tito is re-elected president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This time he is elected for life.
- 1975 –India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state holds a referendum in which the popular vote is in favor of merging with India.
- 1986 –The Seville Statement on Violence is adopted by an international meeting of scientists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO, in Seville, Spain.
- 1988 –A report by United States’ Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.
- 1991 –Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
- 2005 –Kuwait permits women’s suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.
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