May 16: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1843 - The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.
2. 1866 - The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.
3. 1868 - President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate.
4. 1888 - Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.
5. 1919 - A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.
6. 1960 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
7. 1969 - Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet space probe, lands on Venus.
8. 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.
9. 1991 - Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
10. 2011 - STS-134 (ISS assembly flight ULF6), launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th and final flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.
11. Famous Birthdays: Levi P. Morton (American politician, 22nd United States Vice President), David Edward Hughes (Welsh-American scientist, co-invented the microphone), élie Metchnikoff (Ukrainian-French biologist and zoologist, Nobel Prize laureate), Merton Miller (American economist, Nobel Prize laureate), Georg Bednorz (German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 15

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 17

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.