Today is Monday, May 16, the 136th day of 2005. There are 229 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
One hundred years ago, on May 16, 1905, actor Henry Fonda was born in Grand Island, Neb.
On this date:
In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
In 1866, Congress authorized minting of the five-cent piece.
In 1868, the Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him.
In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized in Rome.
In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie “Wings” won “best production,” while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.
In 1955, 50 years ago, American author and critic James Agee died in New York at age 45.
In 1960, a Big Four summit conference in Paris collapsed on its opening day as the Soviet Union leveled spy charges against the U.S. in the wake of the U2 incident.
In 1965, the musical play “The Roar of the Greasepaint — the Smell of the Crowd” opened on Broadway.
In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
In 1977, five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
Ten years ago: The Clinton administration threatened punitive tariffs that would double the prices for Japan’s most popular luxury cars. Japanese police arrested doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, holding him in connection with the nerve-gas attack on Tokyo’s subways two months earlier.
Five years ago: The Federal Reserve raised its federal funds rate by one-half point, the biggest increase in five years. The New York Democratic Party, meeting in Albany, nominated First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the U.S. Senate.
One year ago: The United States announced a new initiative to speed up the approval process for new combination AIDS drugs that was designed to bring cheap, easy-to-use treatment to millions of people in Africa and the Caribbean. Pope John Paul II named six new saints, including Gianna Beretta Molla, revered by abortion foes because she’d refused to end her pregnancy despite warnings it could kill her. (Beretta Molla, an Italian pediatrician, died in 1962 at age 39, a week after giving birth to her fourth child.)
Today’s Birthdays: Author Studs Terkel is 93. Actor George Gaynes is 88. Actor Harry Carey Jr. is 84. Jazz musician Billy Cobham is 61. Actor Pierce Brosnan is 52. Actress Debra Winger is 50. Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut is 50. Actress Mare Winningham is 46. Rock musician Boyd Tinsley (The Dave Matthews Band) is 41. Singer Janet Jackson is 39. Country singer Scott Reeves (Blue County) is 39. Actor Brian F. O’Byrne is 38. R&B singer Ralph Tresvant (New Edition) is 37. Actress Tracey Gold is 36. Tennis player Gabriela Sabatini is 35. Country singer Rick Trevino is 34. Actor David Boreanaz is 34. Musician Simon Katz is 34. Actress Tori Spelling is 32. Actress Melanie Lynskey is 28. Actress Megan Fox is 19. Actor Marc John Jefferies is 15.
Thought for Today: “The best actors do not let the wheels show.” — Henry Fonda, American actor (1905-1982).