Today in history, June 16
June 16
Today in history
Today is June 16. On this date in:
1487: England, led by King Henry VII, won the Wars of the Roses when it defeated the Yorkist rebellion in the final battle.
1846: Pope Pius IX began his 32-year reign as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the final pope to rule over the Papal States before Italian nationalists rebelled, forcing its first separation of church and state.
1858: In accepting the nomination for a U.S. Senate seat, Abraham Lincoln threw down the gauntlet against slave states in a speech to the Illinois Republican State Convention, saying, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.”
1911: IBM was founded in Endicott, New York, under the name Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. during a merger of four companies. In 1924, it was renamed International Business Machines Corp.
1933: Four years into the Great Depression, Congress enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to stimulate the economy. The law suspended antitrust laws, established worker rights to collective bargaining that ultimately failed and called for codes of fair practice for industries, with the resulting codes leading to higher prices and a worsening economy. A 1935 U.S. Supreme Court case nullified the codes.
1965: The U.S. Navy scheduled reactivation of the USS Repose, the first hospital ship activated during the Vietnam War. The ship earned 10 campaign stars for Vietnam service after it had earned nine battle stars in the Korean War. Its final decommissioning came in May 1970, nearly 26 years after it first launched.
1967: The pivotal Monterey International Pop Festival began in California, sparking the Summer of Love. The three-day concert included performances from Simon and Garfunkel, the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and the Papas, the Steve Miller Band, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Lou Rawls, Canned Heat, Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Byrds, Ravi Shankar, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield and more.
1972: RCA Records released glam rocker David Bowie’s concept album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”
1977: Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates incorporated Software Development Laboratories, which in 1982 became Oracle Corp. The company’s initial 900-square-foot office was in Santa Clara, California.
1996: The inaugural Tibetan Freedom Concert, organized by the Beastie Boys, concluded its second and final day after drawing about 100,000 fans to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It raised over $800,000 for the Milarepa Fund, established by Beasties co-founder Adam Yauch to raise awareness of China’s oppressive rule in Tibet. Major acts included the organizers, the Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, A Tribe Called Quest, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, Foo Fighters, Yoko Ono, Richie Havens, De La Soul, the Fugees, Bjork, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Biz Markie, Sonic Youth and Pavement.
2012: The U.S. Air Force’s X-37B uncrewed robotic spacecraft landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after a 15-month classified mission in orbit.
2015: At Trump Tower in New York City, businessman and TV personality Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign for the 2016 election.
2020: Federal health officials announced that free COVID-19 vaccines would be provided to older adults and other groups experiencing disproportionate impacts from the pandemic, once they were developed and ready for distribution.
– USA TODAY Network