Thursday, June 16

This Day In History

• 1567   Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle in Scotland.
• 1858   Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said in a speech in Springfield, Ill., "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
• 1897   The United States signed a treaty of annexation with Hawaii.
• 1903   Ford Motor Co. was incorporated.
• 1932   President Herbert Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis were renominated at the Republican national convention in Chicago.
• 1955   Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron, a ban that was lifted eight years later.
• 1961   Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West while his troupe was in Paris.
• 1963   The first female space traveler, Valentina Tereshkova, was launched into orbit by the Soviet Union aboard Vostok 6.
• 1977   Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.
• 1978   President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Panama Canal treaties.
• 1987   A jury in New York acquitted Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four young blacks he said were going to rob him; he was convicted of illegal weapons possession.
• 1992   Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was indicted on felony charges in the Iran-Contra affair. (He was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush.)
• 1996   Russian voters went to the polls in their first independent presidential election; the result was a runoff between President Boris Yeltsin, the eventual winner, and Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.
• 1996   Sportscaster Mel Allen died at age 83.
• 1999   Vice President Al Gore announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
• 2000   Federal regulators approved the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE Corp., creating the nation's largest local phone company.
• 2000   Empress dowager Nagako, widow of Japan's Emperor Hirohito, died in Tokyo at age 97.

Happy Birthday To

• 1890   Stan Laurel (Arthur Stanley Jefferson) (actor, comedian: Laurel & Hardy)
• 1917   Katharine Graham (publisher: The Washington Post; won Pulitzer Prize for her memoir, Personal History [1998]; died July 17, 2001)
• 1943   Joan Van Ark (actress: Knots Landing)