Today is Saturday, May 16, the 137th day of 2020. There are 229 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 16, 1943, the nearly month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.
On this date:
In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
In 1868, at the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, 35 out of 54 senators voted to find Johnson guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict; the trial ended 10 days later after two other articles of impeachment went down to defeat as well.
In 1984, comedian Andy Kaufman died in Los Angeles at age 35.
In 1990, death claimed entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in Los Angeles at age 64 and “Muppets” creator Jim Henson in New York at age 53.
In 1991, Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the United States Congress as she lauded U.S.-British cooperation in the Persian Gulf War.
In 2006, the Pentagon released the first video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters and killing 189 people on 9/11.
One year ago: Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was ordered back to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. (Manning was released in March, 2020 after prosecutors reported that the grand jury that subpoenaed her had disbanded.) “The Big Bang Theory” closed out its run as television’s top-rated comedy; the series had won 10 Emmy Awards, including four acting honors for Jim Parsons.
Today’s Birthdays: Former U.S. Senator and Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker is 89. Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is 77. Jazz musician Billy Cobham is 76. Actor Danny Trejo is 76. Actor Bill Smitrovich is 73. Actor Pierce Brosnan is 67. Actress Debra Winger is 65. Olympic gold medal gymnast Olga Korbut is 64. Olympic gold medal marathon runner Joan Benoit Samuelson is 62. Actress Mare Winningham is 61. Rock musician Boyd Tinsley (The Dave Matthews Band) is 56.
Thought for Today: “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” — Studs Terkel, American author and historian (born this date in 1912, died 2008).
