On Aug. 16, 1777, American troops led by Gen. John Stark defeated a Hessian force under British command near Bennington, Vt., in the Revolutionary War.
In 1812 Detroit fell to British and Indian forces in the War of 1812.
In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
In 1896 gold was discovered at Bonanza Creek in the Yukon (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
In 1914 the British Expeditionary Force landed in France in World War I.
In 1956 Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for president at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
In 1976 former Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was charged in Tokyo with having accepted $1.6 million in bribes to arrange purchases of Lockheed aircraft by All Nippon Airways.
In 1977 singer Elvis Presley died at his home in Memphis at age 42.
In 1982 the Saturday Review literary magazine ended publication after 58 years.
In 1983 the United States expressed “deep regrets” that the Army had hidden former Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie after World War II and employed him as a spy.
In 1984 a federal jury in Los Angeles acquitted automaker John DeLorean on all counts on cocaine conspiracy charges.
