1527 – Florence becomes a republic
1792 – Denmark abolishes slave trade
1817 – Mississippi River steamboat service begins
1861 – Kentucky proclaims its neutrality
1862 – Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir a Belgian engineer developed the internal combustion engine in 1858. Prior designs for such engines were patented as early as 1807, but none were commercially successful.
1868 – By one vote, Senate fails to impeach President Andrew Johnson
1874 – First recorded dam disaster in US occured in Williamsburg, Mass
1891 – George A Hormel & Co introduce Spam
1903 – First transcontinental motorcycle trip begins in San Francisco by George Wymann)
1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.
1927 – Supreme Court ruled bootleggers must pay income tax
1963 – Gordon Cooper completes 22 orbits in the spacecraft Faith 7.
His was the final manned space mission of the U.S. Mercury program.
The Atlas rocket was No. 130-D, and the Mercury spacecraft was No. 20. Splashdown was at 34 hours 19 minutes 49 seconds after liftoff. Even though there were systems failures, Cooper manager to manually bring the capsule down to within four miles of the USS Kearsarge. He was was orbiting the Earth every 88 minutes 45 seconds at an inclination of 32.55 degrees
to the equator
1977 – 5 die as NY Airway helicopter topples on Pan Am bldg in NYC
In its report about the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board described the event and its probable cause:
About 17:35 e.d.t., on May 16, 1977, the right landing gear of a New York Airways, Inc., Sikorsky Model S-61L helicopter, N619PA, failed while the aircraft was parked, with rotors turning, on the rooftop heliport of the Pan Am Building in New York, New York. The aircraft rolled over on its right side and was substantially damaged. Four passengers had boarded the aircraft and other passengers were in the process of boarding. The passengers and the three crewmembers onboard received either minor or no injuries; however, four passengers who were still outside the aircraft and were waiting to board were killed and one was seriously injured. One pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street was killed and another was seriously injured when they were struck by a separated portion of one of the main rotor blades of the aircraft.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was the fatigue failure of the upper right forward fitting of the right main landing gear tube assembly. Fatigue originated from a small surface pit of undetermined source. All fatalities were caused by the operating rotor blades as a result of the collapse of the landing gear. The heliport was permanently closed after the accident.
1988 – US Surgeon Gen C Everett Koop reports nicotine as addictive as heroin
1988 – US Supreme Court rules trash may be searched without a warrant
1995 – Japanese police arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara and charge him with Nerve-gas attack on Tokyo’s subways two months earlier
2013 – Human stem cells are successfully cloned
Birthdays
1763 – Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin, chemist who discovered chromium and beryllium
1801 – William H. Seward, US Secretary of State, bought Alaska at 2 ยข/acre (d. 1872)
1831 – David Edward Hughes, inventor (microphone, teleprinter)
1912 – Studs Terkel, NYC, author/host (Stud’s Place, Working)
1955 – Olga Korbut, Grodno Belorussia, gymnast (Olympic-2 golds-1972)
Deaths
1691 – Jacob Leisler, becomes first American colonist hanged for treason
1864 – Lean Bear, Cheyenne chief, murdered
1954 – Werner Bischof, Swiss photographer, dies at 38
1955 – James Agee, US critic/writer (A Death in the Family), dies in NY
1957 – Eliot Ness, American federal agent (b. 1903)
1984 – Andy Kaufman, comedian (Latka-Taxi), dies of cancer at 35
1990 – Jim Henson, puppeteer (Sesame Street, Muppet Show), dies at 53
1990 – Sammy Davis Jr, singer/actor (Golden Boy), dies at 64
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches