Today is Friday, May 16, the 136th day of 2025. There are 229 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On May 16, 1966, the Chinese Communist Party issued the May 16 Notification, a document that criticized “counterrevolutionary revisionists” within the party and marked the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
Also on this date:
In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
In 1868, having already been impeached by the House of Representatives, President Andrew Johnson narrowly avoided impeachment by the Senate, which voted 35-19 in favor of impeachment—one vote shy of the required two-thirds majority.
In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented. “Wings” won the award for Outstanding Picture, while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named Best Actor and Best Actress.
In 1943, the nearly monthlong Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the city’s Great Synagogue.
In 1960, the first working laser was demonstrated at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, by physicist Theodore Maiman.
In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for the notorious 40-year Tuskegee Experiment, in which government scientists deliberately allowed Black men to weaken and die of treatable syphilis.
In 2018, officials at Michigan State University said they had agreed to pay $500 million to settle claims from more than 300 women and girls who said they were assaulted by sports doctor Larry Nassar.
In 2022, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 reached 1 million.
Today’s Birthdays:
- Actor Danny Trejo is 81.
- Actor Pierce Brosnan is 72.
- Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Olga Korbut is 70.
- Baseball Hall of Famer Jack Morris is 70.
- Actor Debra Winger is 70.
- Olympic marathon gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson is 68.
- Actor Mare Winningham is 66.
- Rock musician Krist Novoselic (Nirvana) is 60.
- Singer Janet Jackson is 59.
- Football Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas is 59.
- Singer Ralph Tresvant (New Edition) is 57.
- Actor David Boreanaz is 56.
- Political commentator Tucker Carlson is 56.
- Tennis Hall of Famer Gabriela Sabatini is 55.
- Actor Tori Spelling is 52.
- Actor Melanie Lynskey is 48.
- Actor Megan Fox is 39.
- Actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster is 35.