August 16

August 16 is the 228th day of the year (229th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 137 days remaining.

Events

1777 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Bennington - British forces are defeated by American troops.

1780 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Camden - The British defeat the Americans near Camden, South Carolina.

1812 - War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army.

1819 - Peterloo Massacre at a public meeting at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England.

1841 - U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.

1858 - U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal will force a shutdown of the service in a few weeks.

1896 - George Carmack discovers gold in the Klondike.

1920 - Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit in his head and fatally wounded with a fastball from Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. Chapman will die early the next day, becoming the only person to ever die during a major league baseball game (as of 2003).

1928 - Murderer Carl Panzram is arrested in Washington, DC after killing about 20 people.

1930 - First colour sound cartoon, called Fiddlesticks, was made by Ub Iwerks

1954 - Volume 1, Issue 1 of Sports Illustrated is published.

1960 - Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

1960 - Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,330 m). He sets unbeaten (as of 2003) world records for: high-altitude jump; free-fall by falling 16 miles (25.7 km) before opening his parachute; and fastest speed by a human without an aircraft, 614 mi/h (982 km/h).

1962 - The Beatles fire Pete Best and replace him with Ringo Starr.

1964 - Vietnam War: In a coup, General Nguyen Khanh replaces Duong Van Minh as South Vietnam's chief of state and establishes a new constitution, which the U.S. Embassy helped draft.

1966 - Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong with the intent to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 are arrested.

1972 - The Royal Moroccan Air Force mistakenly fires upon, but fails to bring down, Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he was traveling back to Rabat.

1984 - Carmaker John De Lorean is acquitted of all eight counts of possessing and distributing cocaine.

1987 - A McDonnell Douglas MD-82 carrying Northwest Airlines flight 255 crashes on takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport killing all but one of the 156 people on-board (sole survivor was four-year old Cecelia Cichan). The crew forgot to properly set the planes flaps.

1993 - The Debian GNU/Linux distribution is founded by Ian Murdock.

2004 - Heavy rains cause a river to flood the small coastal town of Boscastle, north-east Cornwall, United Kingdom (– August 17).