On Aug. 16, 1812, Detroit fell to British and Indian forces in the War of 1812.
In 1845 Gabriel Lippman, the inventor of color photography, was born in Hollerich, Luxembourg.
In 1858 a telegraphed message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan was transmitted over the newly laid trans-Atlantic cable.
In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
In 1894 George Meany, who would become the first president of the AFL-CIO, was born in New York City.
In 1896 gold was discovered at Bonanza Creek in the Yukon (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
In 1923 Shimon Peres, Israel’s eighth prime minister, was born in Wolozyn, Poland.
In 1948 baseball great Babe Ruth died of cancer in New York City at 53.
In 1954 Sports Illustrated magazine was first published by Time Inc.
In 1956 Adlai E. Stevenson II was nominated for president at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
In 1960 Britain granted independence to the colony of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
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 1978 the Carter administration modified a proposed fighter plane and missile sale to Iran, forcing the shah’s government to accept an older system.
In 1982 the Saturday Review literary magazine ended publication after 58 years.
In 1983 the U.S. 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 of cocaine conspiracy charges.
In 1987 a Northwest Airlines jet crashed on takeoff from Detroit’s airport, killing 156 people. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl.
In 1989 a rare lunar eclipse could be seen across most of the United States.
