TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 16
1743 Earliest boxing code of rules formulated in England (Jack Broughton)
1777 France declares a state of bankruptcy.
1812 American General William Hull surrenders Detroit without resistance to a smaller British force under General Issac Brock.
1858 U.S. President James Buchanan and Britain’s Queen Victoria exchange messages inaugurating the first transatlantic telegraph line.
1861 Pres Lincoln prohibits Union states from trading with Confederacy
1896 Gold first discovered in Klondike, found at Bonanza Creek, Alaska by George Carmack
1900 In preparation for war with Great Britain, the Boers had started importing vast quantities of food as early as 1898.
1934 US explorer William Beebe descends 3,028′ (1922 m) in Bathysphere
1945 Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor on May 6, 1942, is released from a POW camp in Manchuria by U.S. troops.
1945 Puyi, the last Chinese Emperor and ruler of Manchukuo is captured by Soviet troops
1946 Direct Action Day: Widespread riots erupt in Calcutta between Muslims and Hindus over whether Pakistan should be a separate state, killing over 4,000 and leaving 100,000 homeless
1954 Sports Illustrated was published for the first time. It was claimed that 250,000 subscriptions had been sold before the first issue came off of the presses.
1965 The Watts riots end in south-central Los Angeles after six days.
1977 Elvis Presley dies of a heart attack in the upstairs bedroom suite area of his Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
1986 Sudanese rebels shoot down a Sudanese Airways plane, killing 57 people.
1987 Astrological alignment of sun, moon and six planets marks what believers maintain is the dawning of a New Age.
1990 Iraq orders 2,500 Americans and 4,000 British nationals in Kuwait to Iraq, in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of that country.
2003 Libya Accepts Responsibility for Lockerbie Bombing in 1988 in a letter to a United Nations Security Council meeting formally taking responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
2003 Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana has been shot dead by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison when his camera is mistaken for a rocket propelled grenade launcher.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
