Here we are, another day another list of history tidbits! Today we’re celebrating June 16th. Hope you’re having a good day and this list somehow adds to it… and thanks for coming by!

1624 Virginia becomes an English crown colony following the bankruptcy of the London Company

1738 Patriot printer, publisher and postmistress, Mary Katharine Goddard, born. She went on to publish the first version of the Declaration of Independence to include all of the Congressional signatures.

1858 Abraham Lincoln says “A house divided against itself cannot stand” accepting Illinois Republican Party’s nomination for the Senate

1879 Gilbert & Sullivan’s “HMS Pinafore” debuts at Bowery Theater NYC

1880 Salvation Army forms in London

1882 17″ hailstones weighing 1.75 lbs fall in Dubuque Iowa

1883 1st baseball “Ladies’ Day” (NY Gothams beat Cleve Spiders 5-2)

1884 1st roller coaster used (Coney Island NY.) Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. The new entertainment was an instant success http://tinyurl.com/3kw5nfs

1893 RW Rueckheim invents Cracker Jack “The More You Eat The More You Want” Clone of Cracker Jack (with a 5 star rating!) http://allrecipes.com/recipe/237265/clone-of-a-cracker-jack/

1894 8th U.S. Women’s National Championship: Helen Hellwig beats Aline Terry (7-5, 3-6, 6-0, 3-6, 6-3)

1896 Temperature hits 127°F at Fort Mojave, California

1896 Tsunami ravages Japanese coast. Taking the lives at between 22K and 27K people, the tsunami waves may have reached as high as 115 feet in some places. Many coastal towns of Japan’s mainland island of Honshu were completely wiped out, and many fishermen who were out to sea had no idea of the tsunami until they returned to their villages. [ Excellent description from the time of the tsunami, describing not only the tsunami but the aftermath: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1896/09/japan-tsunami/scidmore-text ]

1897 A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later

1903 Ford Motor under Henry Ford incorporates. A month after the Ford Motor Company was established, the first Ford car was assembled at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit . A month after the Ford Motor Company was established, the first Ford car was assembled at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit . http://tinyurl.com/2a33oxa

1904 Bloomsday (date of events in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”)

1907 Tsar Nicolas II of Russia dissolves the Second Duma (parliament) and issues an edict that will increase representation of propertied classes while reducing that of peasants, workers and national minorities

1908 The Republican Party convenes in Chicago where President Theodore Roosevelt picks William Howard Taft as his successor

1909 1st US airplane sold commercially, by Glenn Curtiss for $5,000

1911 A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Columbia County, Wisconsin damaging a barn. That’s 1# 9oz!

1922 Henry Berliner demonstrates his helicopter to US Bureau of Aeronautics

1932 Germany forbids SA/SS-gang fights

1932 President Hoover & VP Charles Curtis renominated by Republican Convention

1933 National Industrial Recovery Act becomes law (later struck down)

1933 US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) created

1935 US Congress accepts FDR’s “New Deal”

1937 Marx Brothers’ “A Day At The Races” opens in LA

1940 Communist government installed in Lithuania

1940 General De Gaulle arrives in Bordeaux

1941 1st US federally owned airport (Regan Airport) opened Washington, D.C.

1944 US bombs Kyushu Japan

1947 Pravda denounces Marshall Plan

1949 Gas turbine-electric locomotive demonstrated at Erie, Pennsylvania http://tinyurl.com/js2n2qn

1954 Ngô Đình Diệm elected Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam)

1955 Pope Pius XII ex-communicates Argentine President Juan Perón

1960 “Psycho”, starring Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, and Vera Miles, opens in New York City

1961 Dave Garroway is fired as Today Show host

1961 Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects to West at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. The high-profile defection was a blow to Soviet prestige and generated international interest. http://tinyurl.com/y7evm5vh

1963 Valentina Tereshkova (USSR) is 1st woman in space, aboard Vostok 6. After 48 orbits and 71 hours, she returned to earth, having spent more time in space than all U.S. astronauts combined to that date. http://tinyurl.com/89nhgtk

1964 Quake strikes Niigata, Japan

1966 Rowan & Martin host The Dean Martin Show, Summer Series, on NBC-TV

1967 50,000 attend Monterey International Pop Festival

1969 Supreme Court rules suspension of Adam Clayton Powell Jr from House

1970 Kenneth A Gibson elected 1st black mayor of Newark, NJ

1972 The largest single-site hydro-electric power project in Canada starts at Churchill Falls, Labrador.

1975 Supreme Court rules uniform minimum legal fees are a violation

1977 “Beatlemania” opens on Broadway

1977 Leonid Brezhnev named Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union

1977 Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates

1978 Ringo releases “Bad Boy” album; Wings releases “I’ve Had Enough”

1979 “Logical Song” by Supertramp peaks at #6***

1979 Carl Yastrzemski hits his 1,000th extra base hit

1979 Muslim Brotherhood kills 62 sheiks in Aleppo Syria

1980 “Blues Brothers” premieres in Chicago

1980 US Supreme Court rules new forms of life created in labs could be patents

1983 Pope John Paul II visits Poland

1983 Ringo releases “Old Wave” album in West Germany

1985 Willie Banks of USA sets triple jump record (58 feet 11 inches) in Indianapolis

1987 New York City subway gunman Bernhard Getz acquitted on all but gun possession charges after shooting 4 black youths who tried to rob him

1988 In Santa Barbara, CA, a team of 32 divers begin cycling underwater on a standard tricycle, to complete 116.66 mi in 75 hrs 20 mins

1989 “Ghostbusters II” premieres

1990 “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer peaks at #8

1991 Boris Yeltsin elected President of Russian SSR

1992 Caspar Weinberger (Sec of Def 1981-87), indicted on Iran-contra charge

1995 “Batman Forever” opens with a record $528 million weekend

1996 1st competitive game played on turf in Holland (in third grade)

1999 SLA member captured after more than 20 years. Kathleen Ann Soliah, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), is arrested . She was indicted for two counts of rigging police cars with bombs in 1976. She settled with her husband a doctor and three children in St. Paul. She was released from a California jail in March of 2009. http://tinyurl.com/ybgm9bsu

2000 Israel complies with UN Security Council Resolution 425 after 22 years, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel withdraws from all of Lebanon, except the disputed Sheba Farms.

2012 Coca-Cola begins business in Myanmar after 60 years of US government imposed sanctions are relaxed. Coca-Cola has business in all but 2 countries in the world.

2013 “Despicable Me 2” directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud with voices by Steve Carrel and Kristen Wiig premieres at the Champs-Elysées Film Festival

2016 Philadelphia is the first US state to pass a tax on sweetened drinks

**Bonus Video: Supertramp “Logical Song”