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 It will be repealed less than two years later.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 aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.
1927 – Marines participated in the Battle of La Paz Centro in Nicaragua.
1940 – Roosevelt asks Congress to authorize the production of 50,000 military planes per year and for a $900,000,000 extraordinary credit to finance this massive operation.
1943 – On Attu, the Japanese are forced to pull back as the Americans continue their attacks near Holtz Bay.
1944 – Most Allied forces of the US 5th Army meet reduced resistance to their ongoing offensive. Only the Polish 2nd Corps, at Cassino, continues to have difficulty. The British 13th Corps and the Canadian 1st Corps, in the Liri Valley, are advancing toward Pontecorvo and Piumarola. The US 2nd Corps advances along the western coast. The French Expeditionary Corps capture Monte Petrella and advance toward Monte Revole.
1944 – American forces move from Hollandia toward Wadke Island.
1945 – The Nazi submarine U-234 surrendered to US forces at Portsmouth, NH. It had been bound for Tokyo with 10 containers of uranium oxide. The atomic material ended up in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division (part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps) reports heavy casualties in continuing attacks on Sugar Loaf Hill. Japanese antitank guns knock out a number of American tanks supporting an advance, by US 1st Marine Division, along the valley of the Wana River. Attacks by the US 77th Division to the north of Shuri continue to be unsuccessful. The US 96th Division reaches the edge of the village of Yonabaru. Love Hill, to the west of Conical Hill, continues to be held by Japanese forces.
1945 – On Luzon, the US 152nd Division, part of US 11th Corps, attacks Woodpecker Ridge with heavy artillery support and entrenches on the summit. The capture of the Bicol peninsula by forces of the US 14th Corps is declared to be completed. On Mindanao, Japanese forces hold the American advance along the Talomo River.
1951 – Chinese Communist Forces launched a second step, fifth-phase offensive [in Korea] and gained up to 20 miles of territory.
1953 – American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechoslovakia.
1955 – The US signs an agreement with Cambodia to supply direct military aid.
1960 – In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state. Khrushchev’s outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit. On May 1, 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA spy plane and captured the pilot, Gary Francis Powers. The United States issued public denials that the aircraft was being used for espionage, claiming instead that it was merely a weather plane that had veered off course. The Soviets thereupon triumphantly produced Powers, large pieces of wreckage from the plane, and Powers’ admission that he was working for the CIA. The incident was a public relations fiasco for Eisenhower, who was forced to admit that the plane had indeed been spying on Russia. Tensions from the incident were still high when Eisenhower and Khrushchev arrived in Paris to begin a summit meeting on May 16. Khrushchev wasted no time in tearing into the United States, declaring that Eisenhower would not be welcome in Russia during his scheduled visit to the Soviet Union in June. He condemned the “inadmissible, provocative actions” of the United States in sending the spy plane over the Soviet Union, and demanded that Eisenhower ban future flights and punish those responsible for this “deliberate violation of the Soviet Union.” When Eisenhower agreed only to a “suspension” of the spy plane flights, Khrushchev left the meeting in a huff. According to U.S. officials, the president was “furious” at Khrushchev for his public dressing-down of the United States. The summit meeting officially adjourned the next day with no further meetings between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s planned trip to Moscow in June was scrapped. The collapse of the May 1960 summit meeting was a crushing blow to those in the Soviet Union and the United States who believed that a period of “peaceful coexistence” between the two superpowers was on the horizon. During the previous few years, both Eisenhower and Khrushchev had publicly indicated their desire for an easing of Cold War tensions, but the spy plane incident put an end to such talk, at least for the time being.
1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth in Friendship Seven, ending Project Mercury.
1964 – Governor Nelson Rockefeller accepts President Johnson’s offer to brief all Republican candidates for the presidency; afterwards, he agrees with a questioner that Americans are not getting the full story of the situation. Senator Barry Goldwater openly charges that US pilots have died because of obsolescent planes.
1965 – First US gunfire support in Vietnam by USS Tucker.
1965 – What is described by the United States government as “an accidental explosion of a bomb on one aircraft which spread to others” at the Bien Hoa air base leaves 27 U.S. servicemen and 4 South Vietnamese dead and some 95 Americans injured. More than 40 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes, including 10 B-57s, were destroyed.
1969 – 23rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions conduct Operation Lamar Plain southwest of Tamky in Quangtin Province through 13 August.
1972 – A series of air strikes over five days destroys all of North Vietnam’s pumping stations in the southern panhandle, thereby cutting North Vietnam’s main fuel line to South Vietnam. These strikes were part of Operation Linebacker, an air offensive against North Vietnam that had been ordered by President Richard Nixon in early April in response to a massive communist offensive launched on March 30.
1975 – Congress appropriates $05 million to fund a refugee aid program and authorizes resettlement of South Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in the US. Over 140,000 refugees are flown to the United States under the program in the next few months.
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.
1992 – The space shuttle Endeavour completed its maiden voyage with a safe landing in the California desert.
1996 – US Navy Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda (57), the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.
1996 – UN and Iraqi officials reached a tentative agreement to resume oil sales of $4 billion a year to buy food and medicine. The oil for food program mandated that 13% of the UN resources go to northern Kurdish areas. In 2004 it was reported that illicit trade agreements with neighbors netted Iraq nearly $11 billion between 1990 and 2003. In 2004 the estimate for illicit trade was raised to $21.3 billion.
1997 – The space shuttle Atlantis docked with Russia’s Mir station.
1999 – NATO admitted to some 100 casualties from its air strikes but cited executions by Serb forces of at least 4,600 ethnic Albanians.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/may-16/
