Tuesday, August 16, 2005
On Aug. 16, 1977, singer Elvis Presley died at Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tenn., at age 42.
On this date in:
1777 American forces won the Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington, Vt.
1812 Detroit fell to British and Indian forces in the War of 1812.
1829 The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, arrived in Boston to be exhibited to the Western world.
1858 A telegraphed message from Britain's Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan was transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
1913 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus.
1948 Baseball hall-of-famer Babe Ruth died at age 53.
1954 Sports Illustrated was first published by Time Inc.
1956 Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1960 Britain granted independence to Cyprus.
1987 Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed while trying to take off from a Detroit airport, killing 156 people; the sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl.
1987 Thousands of people worldwide began a two-day celebration of the ''harmonic convergence,'' which heralded what believers called the start of a new, purer age of humankind.
1988 Vice President George H.W. Bush tapped Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to be his running mate on the Republican ticket.
2002 Terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal was found shot to death in Baghdad, Iraq.
2000 Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles nominated Vice President Al Gore for president.
2003 A car driven by U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow ran a stop sign on a rural road in South Dakota and collided with a motorcyclist, who died in the accident. (Janklow was later convicted of manslaughter and resigned from Congress.)
2003 Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda, died in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.