Today in History – February 16 in History
What happened on this day in history – February 16 in History
| 1760 | Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George are killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements. | |
| 1804 | US Navy lieutenant Steven Decatur leads a small group of sailors into Tripoli harbor and burns the USS Philadelphia, captured earlier by Barbary pirates. | |
| 1862 | Fort Donelson, Tennessee, falls to Grant’s Federal forces, but not before Nathan Bedford Forrest escapes. | |
| 1865 | Columbia, South Carolina, surrenders to Federal troops. | |
| 1923 | Bessie Smith makes her first recording “Down Hearted Blues.” | |
| 1934 | Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. | |
| 1937 | Dupont patents a new thread, nylon, which will replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs. | |
| 1940 | The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord. | |
| 1942 | Tojo outlines Japan’s war aims to the Diet, referring to “new order of coexistence” in East Asia. | |
| 1945 | American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines. | |
| 1951 | Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war. | |
| 1952 | The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. | |
| 1957 | A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica. | |
| 1959 | Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana. | |
| 1965 | Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument. | |
| 1966 | The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam. | |
| 1978 | China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties. | |
| Born on February 16 | ||
| 1620 | Frederick William, founder of Brandenburg-Prussia. | |
| 1838 | Henry Adams, U.S. historian, son and grandson of the presidents. | |
| 1852 | Charles Taze Russell, founder of the International Bible Students Association which later became the Jehovah’s Witnesses. | |
| 1845 | Quinton Hogg, English philanthropist. | |
| 1886 | Van Wyck Brooks, biographer, critic and literary historian. | |
| 1903 | Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist and radio comedian. | |
| 1904 | George Kennan, U.S. diplomat and historian. | |
| 1944 | Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (The Sportswriter, Independence Day). | |