Welcom to Ashabakah

Friday 2025-05-16 Bahrain time
١٨ ذو القعدة ١٤٤٦ هـ
26 الثور 1403 هجري شمسي
فصل الربيع نوء الثريا 5
نجم الشرطين 5

Upcoming Eids and Islamic events

Upcoming International days

• 16 May Vesak, the Day of the Full Moon
• 16 May International Day of Living Together in Peace
• 16 May International Day of Light
• 17 May World Telecommunication and Information Society Day
• 20 May World Bee Day
• 21 May International Tea Day
• 21 May World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
• 22 May International Day for Biological Diversity

Upcoming National days

• 17 May Norway
• 20 May Cameroon
• 20 May East Timor
• 21 May Montenegro
• 22 May Martinique (France)
• 22 May Yemen

Happened this day (16 May) * Source Wikipedia

- Pre-1600
- 946 Emperor Suzaku abdicates the throne in favor of his brother Murakami who becomes the 62nd emperor of Japan.
- 1204 Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire.
- 1364 Hundred Years' War: Bertrand du Guesclin and a French army defeat the Anglo-Navarrese army of Charles the Bad at Cocherel.
- 1426 Gov. Thado of Mohnyin becomes king of Ava.
- 1527 The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes itself as a republic.
- 1532 Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England.
- 1568 Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England.
- 1584 Santiago de Vera becomes sixth Governor-General of the Spanish colony of the Philippines.
- 1601–1900
- 1739 The Battle of Vasai concludes as the Marathas defeat the Portuguese army.
- 1770 The 14-year-old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste, who later becomes king of France.
- 1771 The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called The "Regulators", occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.
- 1811 Peninsular War: The allies Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom fight an inconclusive battle against the French at the Albuera. It is, in proportion to the numbers involved, the bloodiest battle of the war.
- 1812 Imperial Russia signs the Treaty of Bucharest, ending the Russo-Turkish War. The Ottoman Empire cedes Bessarabia to Russia.
- 1822 Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli.
- 1832 Juan Godoy discovers the rich silver outcrops of Chañarcillo sparking the Chilean silver rush.
- 1834 The Battle of Asseiceira is fought; it was the final and decisive engagement of the Liberal Wars in Portugal.
- 1842 The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri, with 100 pioneers.
- 1866 The United States Congress establishes the nickel.
- 1868 The United States Senate fails to convict President Andrew Johnson by one vote.
- 1874 A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroys much of four villages and kills 139 people.
- 1877 The 16 May 1877 crisis occurs in France, ending with the dissolution of the National Assembly 22 June and affirming the interpretation of the Constitution of 1875 as a parliamentary rather than presidential system. The elections held in October 1877 led to the defeat of the royalists as a formal political movement in France.
- 1888 Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.
- 1891 The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opened in Frankfurt, Germany, featuring the world's first long-distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current (the most common form today).
- 1901–present
- 1916 The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic sign the secret wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement partitioning former Ottoman territories such as Iraq and Syria.
- 1918 The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later.
- 1919 A naval Curtiss NC-4 aircraft commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.
- 1920 In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc.
- 1925 The first modern performance of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria occurred in Paris.
- 1929 In Hollywood, the first Academy Awards ceremony takes place.
- 1943 The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.
- 1943 Operation Chastise is undertaken by RAF Bomber Command with specially equipped Avro Lancasters to destroy the Mohne, Sorpe, and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley.
- 1945 Beginning of the Levant Crisis between Britain and France in Syria. The latter try to quell nationalist protests but backs down after threat of military action by the British.
- 1951 The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
- 1954 Beginning of the Kengir uprising in the Gulag.
- 1959 The Tritons' Fountain in Valletta, Malta is turned on for the first time.
- 1960 Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
- 1961 Park Chung Hee leads a coup d'état to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea.
- 1966 The Chinese Communist Party issues the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
- 1969 Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet space probe, lands on Venus.
- 1974 Josip Broz Tito is elected president for life of Yugoslavia.
- 1975 Junko Tabei from Japan becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
- 1988 A report by the Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.
- 1991 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
- 1997 Mobutu Sese Seko, the President of Zaire, flees the country.
- 2003 In Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.
- 2005 Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35–23 National Assembly vote.
- 2011 STS-134 (ISS assembly flight ULF6), launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th and final flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.
- 2014 Twelve people are killed in two explosions in the Gikomba market area of Nairobi, Kenya.