Aug. 16 in history
In 1977, Elvis Presley died at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tenn., at age 42.
In 1777, American forces won the Battle of Bennington in what was considered a turning point of the Revolutionary War.
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued Proclamation 86, which prohibited the states of the Union from engaging in commercial trade with states that were in rebellion (i.e. the Confederacy).
In 1948, baseball legend Babe Ruth died in New York at age 53.
In 1962, the Beatles fired their original drummer, Pete Best, replacing him with Ringo Starr.
In 1978, James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told a Capitol Hill hearing he did not commit the crime, saying he’d been set up by a mysterious man called “Raoul.”
In 2002, terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal reportedly was found shot to death in Baghdad, Iraq; he was 65.
In 2014, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, where police and protesters repeatedly clashed in the week since a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a white police officer.
In 2018, Aretha Franklin, the undisputed “Queen of Soul,” died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 76.
In 2020, California’s Death Valley recorded a temperature of 130 degrees amid a blistering heat wave, the third-highest temperature ever measured.
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