Historical Events On May 16

Today is Friday, May 16, the 136th day of 2014. There are 229 days left in the year. On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented. "Wings" won "best production," while Emil Jannings (YAHN'-ings)
and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.
In 1763, the English lexicographer, author and wit Samuel Johnson first met his future biographer, James Boswell.

In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
In 1868, the U.S. Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on the eleven articles of impeachment against him.

In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized by Pope Benedict XV.
In 1939, the federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.

In 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.
In 1948, CBS News correspondent George Polk, who'd been covering the Greek civil war between communist and nationalist forces, was found slain in Salonika Harbor.

In 1984, comedian Andy Kaufman died in Los Angeles at age 35.
In 1985, actress Margaret Hamilton died at the age of 82. She’s probably best known for playing the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.”

In 1989, during his visit to Beijing, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, formally ending a 30-year rift between the two Communist powers.
In 1991, Queen Elizabeth became the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

In 1997, Zaire’s longtime dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, gave up power and left his country’s capital as rebels closed in.
In 2001, 101-year-old Harold Hoyt Stilson Sr. became the oldest golfer to record a hole-in-one. He aced a 108-yard hole at a course in Florida. He died the following February.

In 2004, The Bush administration announced a new initiative to speed up the approval process for new combination AIDS drugs designed to bring cheap, easy-to-use treatment to millions of people in Africa and the Caribbean. Pope John Paul II named six new saints, including Gianna Beretta Molla, revered by abortion foes because she'd refused to end her pregnancy despite warnings it could kill her. (Beretta Molla, an Italian pediatrician, died in 1962 at age 39, a week after giving birth to her fourth child.)

In 2010, more than 100,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square in a major show of support for Pope Benedict XVI over the clerical sex abuse scandal.
In 2009, The ruling Congress party swept to a resounding victory in India's mammoth national elections.

In 2013, President Barack Obama named a temporary chief for the scandal-marred Internal Revenue Service and pressed Congress to approve new security money to prevent another Benghazi-style terrorist attack. Candice Glover won the 12th season of "American Idol" on Fox.