Today in History - July 16
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276 Jul 16,
Marcus Annius Florianus, emperor of Rome (276), was murdered.
(MC, 7/16/02)
390 Jul 16, Brennus and Gauls
defeated the Romans at Allia.
(MC, 7/16/02)
622 Jul 16, Islamic Era began.
Mahomet began his flight from Mecca to Medina (Hegira).
(MC, 7/16/02)
1099 Jul 16, Crusaders herded the
Jews of Jerusalem into a synagogue and set it afire.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1212 Jul 16, Battle of Las Navas
de Tolosa marked the end of Muslim power in Spain.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1429 Jul 16, Joan of Arc led
French army in the Battle of Orleans. [see May 9]
(MC, 7/16/02)
1439 Jul 16, Kissing was banned in
England in order to stop germs from spreading.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1519 Jul 16, There was a public
debate between Martin Luther and theologian John Eck.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1548 Jul 16, La Paz, Bolivia, was
founded.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1557 Jul 16, Anne of Cleves
(41), queen of England and 4th wife of Henry VIII, died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1723 Jul 16, Sir Joshua Reynolds,
British portrait painter and first president of the royal Academy of
Arts, was born.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1728 Jul 16, Henri Moreau,
composer, was born.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1764 Jul 16, Ivan VI (23), Emperor
of Russia (1740-41), was murdered.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1765 Jul 16, Prime Minister of
England Lord Greenville resigned and was replaced by Lord Rockingham.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1769 Jul 16, Father Junipero Serra
founded Mission San Diego de Alcala, the 1st mission in Calif. The
Franciscan friars soon planted cuttings of olive trees. California’s
first olive press was established in Ventura County in 1871.
(http://missions.bgmm.com/sdiego.htm)(SSFC, 8/27/06,
p.F2)
1774 Jul 16, Russia and the
Ottoman Empire signed the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their
six-year war.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1775 Jul 16, John Adams graduated
from Harvard.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1779 Jul 16, American troops under
General Anthony Wayne, aka Mad Anthony Wayne, captured Stony Point, NY,
with a loss to the British of more than 600 killed or captured.
(HN, 7/16/98)(http://hhr.highlands.com/stpt.htm)
1782 Jul 16, Mozart's opera "Das
Entfuehrung aus dem Serail" premiered in Vienna.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1790 Jul 16, The District of
Columbia was established as the seat of the United States government.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1791 Jul 16, Louis XVI was
suspended from office until he agreed to ratify the constitution.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1796 Jul 16, Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot (d.1875), French painter, was born. His work included "Madame
Corot" (1833-1835) and "Interrupted Reading" (1870-1873). He led the
way toward new forms of perspective and composition that was later
mined by impressionism and photography.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 10/25/96, p.A15)(WSJ,
3/25/97, p.A16)(MC, 7/16/02)
1798 Jul 16, US Public Health
Service formed and a US Marine Hospital was authorized.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1801 Jul 16, Pope Pius VII and 1st
consul Napoleon signed a concord.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1809 Jul 16, A well-prepared
revolutionary insurrection burst out in La Paz, Bolivia.
(http://flagspot.net/flags/bo-l.html)
1821 Jul 16, Mary Baker Eddy
(d.1910), founder of the Christian Science movement (1879), was born.
(HN, 7/16/98)(WSJ, 9/26/03, p.W17)
1825 Jul 16, Alexander Gordon
Laing (32), British Army Major, set off on camel from Tripoli in an
attempt to become the 1st European to cross the Sahara Desert and reach
the fabled city of Timbuktu (Mali).
(SSFC, 1/1/06, p.M2)(ON, 11/06, p.5)
1827 Jul 16, Josiah Spode, potter,
died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1858 Jul 16, Eugene Ysaye,
violinist, conductor, composer (Pierill Houou), was born in Belgium.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1862 Jul 16, Ida Bell Wells, first
president of the American Negro League, was born.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1862 Jul 16, David G. Farragut
became the first rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1862 Jul 16, Two Union soldiers
and their servant ransacked a house and raped a slave in Sperryville,
Virginia.
(HN, 7/16/99)
1867 Jul 16, D.R. Averill patented
a ready-mixed paint.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1867 Jul 16, Joseph Monier
patented reinforced concrete.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1872 Jul 16, Roald Amundsen
(d.1928), Norwegian explorer, discoverer of the South Pole, was born.
(Ind, 4/27/02, 5A)(MC, 7/16/02)
1875 Jul 16, The new French
constitution is finalized.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1882 Jul 16, Mary Todd Lincoln,
the widow of Abraham Lincoln, died of a stroke.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1887 Jul 16, "Shoeless" Joe
Jackson, black sox player (Say it ain’t so, Joe), was born.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1894 Jul 16, Many negro miners in
Alabama were killed by striking white miners.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1896 Jul 16, Trygve Lie, first
secretary-general of the United Nations (1946-52), was born in Norway.
(HN, 7/16/98)(MC, 7/16/02)
1896 Jul 16, William Hamilton
Gibson, illustrator, author, novelist, died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1907 Jul 16, Orville Redenbacher,
agronomist and popcorn entrepreneur, was born in Brazil, Indiana. "Do
one thing and do it better than anyone."
(AH, 10/01, p.36)(AP, 7/16/07)
1907 Jul 16, Barbara Stanwyck
(d.1990), Oscar winning actress, was born in New York as Ruby Stevens.
(HN, 7/16/98)(AP, 7/16/07)
1907 Jul 16, The SF supervisors,
under pressure from graft prosecutors, named Edward Robeson Taylor
(67), a doctor and lawyer, as mayor. He quickly replaced 16 of 18
supervisors, forced the police chief to quit and replaced many city
officials with honest and competent men.
(SFC, 11/6/07, p.B5)
1911 Jul 16, Ginger Rogers
(d.1995), actress and dancer, was born as Virginia Katherine McMath.
(HN, 7/16/01)(MC, 7/16/02)
1912 Jul 16, A Naval torpedo,
launched from an airplane, was patented by B.A. Fiske.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1914 Jul 16, A Socialist
conference in Brussels was attended by Kautsky, Trotsky & Rosa
Luxemburg.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1915 Jul 16, Barnard Hughes, actor
(Tron, Where's Poppa, Best Friends), was born in Bedford Hills, NY.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1917 Jul 16, Ludwig Philipp
Scharwenka (70), German composer (Album Polonaise), died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1920 Jul 16, Gen. Amos Fries was
appointed 1st US army chemical warfare chief.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1926 Jul 16, National Geographic
took the 1st natural-color undersea photos.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1927 Jul 16, Augusto Sandino began
a 5-year war against the US occupation of Nicaragua.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1928 Jul 16, Anita Brookner,
writer (Hotel du Lac), was born.
(HN, 7/16/01)
1929 Jul 16, Col. Charles
Lindbergh was severely angered when he realized a sound-camera man had
recorded a private conversation using a concealed microphone. The
“voice that has never been filmed” left San Francisco’s Mills Field
airport on the cameraman’s reel.
(SFC, 7/16/04, p.F4)
1934 Jul 16, The nation’s 1st
general strike was called in San Francisco in response to violence and
disregard of worker’s rights in the waterfront strike. Some 140,000
workers walked off their jobs. It collapsed after 4 days. Seven men
were killed and thousands were injured. The general strike ended after
4 days and went into arbitration. In the fall arbitrators gave the
union a hiring hall, a 6-hour day and a small wage increase. [see May
9, Jul 5]
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.5)(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.4)(SFC,
9/27/02, p.D11)(PCh, 1992, p.826)
1935 Jul 16, The first parking
meters were installed, in Oklahoma City. Carlton Magee's automatic
meter, the "Park-O-Meter" was installed by the Dual Parking Meter
Company in Oklahoma City. The parking meters were divided by 20-foot
spaces painted on the pavement and accepted nickels.
(AP, 7/16/97)(HNQ, 8/4/02)
1936 Jul 16, 1st x-ray photo of
arterial circulation was made in Rochester, NY.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1940 Jul 16, Adolf Hitler ordered
the preparations to begin on the invasion of England, Operation Sea
Lion.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1941 Jul 16, Dag Solstad,
Norwegian novelist and playwright, was born.
(HN, 7/16/01)
1942 Jul 16, The first large-scale
roundups of Jews began under protests by only a half-dozen Catholic
church leaders. French police arrested 8,000 Jews over 2 days in Paris
in the Velodrome d’Hiver round-up.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A22)(MC, 7/16/02)(Econ, 7/24/04,
p.49)
1942 Jul 16, Jews were transported
from Holland to an extermination camp.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1944 Jul 16, Soviet troops occupy
Vilna, Lithuania, in their drive towards Germany.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1945 Jul 16, The first US test
explosion of the atomic bomb was made at Alamogordo Air Base, south of
Albuquerque, New Mexico, equal to some twenty thousand tons of TNT. The
bomb was called the Gadget and the experiment was called Trinity from a
poem by John Donne (Batter my heart, three-person’d God), and it was
conducted in a part of the desert called Jornada del Muerto, (Dead
Man’s Trail), and measured the equivalent of 18,600 (21,000) tons of
TNT. It was the culmination of 28 months of intense scientific research
conducted under the leadership of physicist Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer
under the code name Manhattan Project. The successful atomic test was
witnessed by only one journalist, William L. Laurence of the New York
Times, who described seeing the blinding explosion: "One felt as though
he had been privileged to...be present at the moment of the Creation
when the Lord said: Let There be Light." Oppenheimer’s own thoughts
from the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita were very different: "I am become death,
the shatterer of worlds." The event is described in Richard Thode’s
"The Making of the Atomic Bomb." In 2005 Diane Preston authored
“Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima.”
(NOHY, 3/1990, p.212-213)(HNPD, 7/16/98)(SFC,
12/31/98, p.D4)(SFEC, 12/19/99, Par p.15)(SSFC, 7/10/05, p.E3)
1945 Jul 16, The US cruiser
Indianapolis left SF with an atom bomb to be assembled at Tinian Island
in the western Pacific.
(SSFC, 7/31/05, p.B1)
1946 Jul 16, US court martial in
Dachau condemned 46 SS to hang for the Malmedy massacre of disarmed GIs.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1947 Jul 16, Raoul Wallenberg,
Swedish diplomat jailed by the Soviets who believed that he was an
American spy, reportedly died at the Lubyanka prison in Moscow of an
alleged heart attack. He had saved more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews from
Nazi death camps. A 2001 Swedish report failed to confirm his death.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-7)(SFC, 12/23/00, p.A12)(SFC,
1/13/01, p.A14)(WSJ, 2/28/09, p.A7)
1948 Jul 16, Ruben Blades,
songwriter and actor, was born.
(HN, 7/16/01)
1948 Jul 16, Pinchas Zukerman,
violinist and conductor, was born in Tel Aviv Israel.
(HN, 7/16/01)(MC, 7/16/02)
1950 Jul 16, Brazil, host for
soccer’s World Cup, lost the final game to Uruguay 2-1.
(Econ, 11/3/07,
p.43)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_FIFA_World_Cup)
1951 Jul 16, J.D. Salinger's
coming-of-age novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," was first published.
Holden Caulfield became recognized as the quintessential American
teenager.
(SFC, 1/17/97, p.D7)(AP, 7/16/98)(WSJ, 12/15/07,
p.W10)
1952 Jul 16, Stewart Copeland,
drummer (Police: Fall Out, Every Breath You Take, LP: The Equalizer
& Other Cliffhangers), was born.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1953 Jul 16, Joseph Hilaire Pierre
Belloc (82), author (Path to Rome), died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1957 Jul 16, Marine Maj. John
Glenn set a transcontinental speed record when he flew a jet from
California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1958 Jul 16, Michael Flatley,
Irish choreographer (Lord of Dance), was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1958 Jul 16, The science-fiction
film "The Fly" opened in San Francisco.
(AP, 7/16/08)
1960 Jul 16, Albrecht von
Kesselring (74), German field marshal (Italy), died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1960 Jul 16, The 1st UN troops
reached Congo to replace Belgian troops.
(www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/onucB.htm)
1964 Jul 16, In accepting the
Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater
said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and that
"moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
(AP, 7/16/97)
1965 Jul 16, Mount Blanc Road
tunnel between France & Italy opened.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1966 Jul 16, "Half a Sixpence"
closed at Broadhurst Theater in NYC after 512 performances.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1967 Jul 16, A prison brawl
ignited barracks, killing 37 in Jay, Florida.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1969 Jul 16, Apollo XI set out
from Cape Canaveral (Cape Kennedy), Florida, with Neil Armstrong, Edwin
Aldrin, and Michael Collins on the first manned mission to the surface
of the moon.
(V.D.-H.K.p.182, 341)(AP, 7/16/97)
1969 Jul 16, Vu Ngoc Nha (d.2002),
top aide to presidents Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu, was arrested
in Saigon. The CIA uncovered him as the head of a Communist espionage
ring. He and 2 others were convicted of treason and sentenced to
life in prison.
(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A20)
1973 Jul 16, In testimony before
the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the
Ervin Committee), former presidential assistant Alexander Butterfield
disclosed to lawyer Donald Sanders (d.1999 at 69) that President
Richard Nixon had tape recorded all of his conversations in the White
House and Executive Office Building. Butterfield's revelations led to
Nixon's assertion of executive privilege and his refusal to release the
tapes to the Ervin Committee on July 17 or to special prosecutor
Archibald Cox on July 23. Judge John Sirica ordered Nixon to turn over
the tapes on August 29, an order subsequently upheld by U.S. Court of
Appeals on October 12. When a Nixon "compromise" of release of written
summaries of the tapes was turned down by Cox, Nixon ordered Attorney
General Elliot L. Richardson and deputy attorney general William
Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Both refused and resigned. Solicitor General
Robert Bork complied with Nixon's order on Saturday, October 20,
resulting in the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre."
(AP, 7/16/97)(HNQ, 10/15/98)(SFC, 9/28/99, p.A26)
1979 Jul 16, Saddam Hussein
succeeded Premier al-Bakr and became president of Iraq and chairman of
the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). He established a multilayered
security system with 3-5 secret police units. He later put his son
Qusai in charge of his 10,000 member Special Guards.
(AP, 7/16/97)(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A10)(SFC, 2/24/98,
p.A9)
1980 Jul 16, Ronald Reagan won the
Republican presidential nomination at the party's convention in Detroit.
(AP, 7/16/97)(SFEM,11/2/97, p.12)
1980 Jul 16, Juan Antonio
Samaranch (b.1920) of Spain was elected president of the Int’l. Olympic
Committee (IOC). His reign lasted 21 years.
(www.olympic.org/uk/organisation/ioc/presidents/samaranch_uk.asp)
1981 Jul 16, Singer Harry Chapin
(38) was killed when his car was struck by a tractor-trailer on New
York’s Long Island Expressway.
(AP, 7/16/01)
1982 Jul 16, George Shultz
(b.1920) was sworn in as the US Sec. of State under Ronald Reagan. He
served until Jan 20, 1989.
(SFEM,11/2/97,
p.8)(www.state.gov/secretary/former/40807.htm)
1982 Jul 16, In NYC the Rev. Sun
Myung Moon, Korean founder of the Unification Church, was sentenced to
18 months for tax fraud.
(www.cedmagic.com/home/ced-digest/ced-digest-vol-07/ced-digest0728.html)
1987 Jul 16, Former White House
political director Lyn Nofziger was charged with violating federal
ethics laws in a six-count indictment. His convictions on three counts
of illegally lobbying White House officials were overturned by a
federal appeals court.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1988 Jul 16, The Rev. Jesse
Jackson arrived in Atlanta for the Democratic national convention,
telling cheering supporters he was seeking "shared responsibility" with
nominee-apparent Michael Dukakis.
(AP, 7/16/98)
1989 Jul 16, Leaders of the seven
major industrial democracies called at their economic summit in Paris
for "decisive action" against global pollution.
(AP, 7/16/99)
1989 Jul 16, Conductor Herbert von
Karajan (b.1908) died near Salzburg, Austria.
(AP, 7/16/99)
1990 Jul 16, NYC's Empire State
Building caught fire, but there were no fatalities.
(www.nycfiremuseum.org/inner/history/5alarm.htm)
1990 Jul 16, A 7.7 earthquake in
Philippines killed some 5,000 people.
(www.drj.com/drworld/content/w1_116.htm)
1990 Jul 16, Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced that
Moscow had agreed to drop its objection to a united Germany’s
membership in NATO.
(AP, 7/16/00)
1990 Jul 16, The Ukraine
Parliament approved a declaration of State Sovereignty. The people's
deputies vote 339-5 to proclaim July 16 a national holiday.
(www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2001/340119.shtml)
1991 Jul 16, Leaders of the Group
of Seven nations holding their economic summit in London issued a
communiqué calling for a "new spirit of cooperation" in the
international community.
(AP, 7/16/01)
1991 Jul 16, Robert Motherwell
(b.1915), US painter (Elegies to Spanish Rep), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Motherwell)
1991 Jul 16, Frank Rizzo (70),
(Mayor-D-Phila, 1972-80), died of a heart attack.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Rizzo)
1992 Jul 16, Bill Clinton
delivered his acceptance speech a day after winning the Democratic
presidential nomination at the party's convention in New York City. To
the dismay and anger of supporters, Ross Perot announced he would not
run for president. He later changed his mind.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1993 Jul 16, The surging
Mississippi River charged through a levee at West Quincy, Mo., closing
the Bayview Bridge, the only bridge across the river to Illinois for
more than 200 miles.
(AP, 7/16/98)
1994 Jul 16, "Sisters Rosensweig"
closed at Barrymore Theater in NYC after 556 performances.
(www.theatredb.com/QShow.php?sid=s0449)
1994 Jul 16, The 3 tenors, Placid
Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Jose Carreras, performed in Los Angeles,
Ca.
(www.kviestore.org/vhthte19lan.html)
1994 Jul 16, The first of 21
pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter. The comet was
initially discovered by astronomer Eugene Shoemaker (d.1997 at 69).
(HFA, '96, p.34)(SFC, 7/19/97, p.A21)(AP, 7/16/99)
1995 Jul 16, William Barloon and
David Daliberti, the two Americans who were imprisoned in Iraq for
crossing the border from Kuwait four months earlier, were released.
(AP, 7/16/00)
1995 Jul 16, Amazon.com went live
on the Internet. The 1st book sold on the site was “Fluid Concepts and
Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of
Thought.”
(SFC, 7/5/05, p.E2)
1995 Jul 16, Stephen Spender
(b.1909), English poet and critic, died. In 2004 John Sutherland
authored “Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography.”
(HN, 2/28/01)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.81)
1995 Jul 16, Early reports of
massacres in Bosnia emerged as the first survivors of the long march
from Srebrenica began to arrive in Muslim-held territory. Following
negotiations between the UN and the Bosnian Serbs, the Dutch were at
last permitted to leave Srebrenica, leaving behind weapons, food and
medical supplies.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/675945.stm)
1996 Jul 16, President Clinton
told the National Governors Association he was granting states new
powers to deny benefits to recipients who refuse to move from welfare
to work.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1996 Jul 16, Russian President
Boris Yeltsin met a day late with Vice President Al Gore, easing some
of the concerns about his fragile health.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1996 Jul 16, US states were
adopting laws that would allow drug users and their families to sue
drug dealers.
(WSJ, 7/16/96, p.B1)
1996 Jul 16, Handwriting analysis
tagged Newsweek columnist and CBS commentator Joe Klein as the
anonymous author of Primary Colors, a satire of the 1992 Clinton
campaign.
(WSJ, 7/17/96, p.A2)
1996 Jul 16, Pres. Clinton waived
for 6 months sanctions on Cuba that would have allowed US courts to sue
foreign companies for the use of property confiscated by the Castro
regime.
(WSJ, 7/16/96, p.A1)
1996 Jul 16, An ambush in Algeria
killed the former head of a militant Muslim group.
(WSJ, 7/29/96, p.A1)
1996 Jul 16, Hong Kong authorities
arrested a US immigration agent on charges of smuggling illegal
immigrants through Central America. Jerry Wolf Stuchiner, a 19 year
veteran, was found with forged Honduran passports at Hong Kong’s Kai
Tak Airport.
(SFC, 7/17/96, A7)
1996 Jul 16, Ukrainian Prime
Minister Pavlo Lazarenko escaped an assassination attempt. He proceeded
to the Donbass coalfields where 200,000 miners were on strike.
(WSJ, 7/17/96, p.A1)
1997 Jul 16, Hundreds of FBI
agents, some handing out photos in gay bars and hotels, blanketed south
Florida in the continuing hunt for alleged prostitute-turned-serial
killer Andrew Phillip Cunanan, who was suspected of killing designer
Gianni Versace.
(AP, 7/16/98)
1997 Jul 16, Jerold Mackenzie was
awarded $26.6M for being fired from Miller Brewing in 1993 for sexual
harassment for relaying a Seinfeld episode to a co-worker. Higher
courts later threw the entire award out. In 2003 Mackenzie accepted an
out-of-court settlement for $625,000.
(MC,
7/16/02)(http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jun03/146469.asp)
1997 Jul 16, In Recife, Brazil,
the 18,000 man police force went on strike. The crime and murder rate
immediately surged and some 3,000 soldiers were called to try to
maintain order.
(SFC, 7/23/97, p.A10)
1997 Jul 16, In Cambodia Hun Sen
named a new co-premier, Ung Huot, the foreign minister and a member of
Ranariddh’s Funcinpec Party. Exiled legislators said was the
appointment was illegal.
(SFC, 7/17/97, p.A8)(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A1)
1997 Jul 16, In Cuba Vladimiro
Roca, Martha Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne, and Rene Gomez Manzano were
detained for issuing a document "La Patria es de Todos," criticizing
the political system. They were scheduled for a trial on charges of
sedition in 1999. The Prosecution recommended a 6 year sentence for
Roca and 5 year sentences for the others after the 4 rejected a
government offer to go into exile. Roca was sentenced to 5 years,
Manzano and Bonne to 4 years, and Roque to 3 ½ years.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.13A)(SFC, 2/27/99, p.A17)(SFC,
3/3/99, p.A10)(SFC, 3/16/99, p.A8)
1997 Jul 16, In Mexico Benjamin
Flores Gonzalez (29), a newspaper editor of La Prensa, was gunned down
in San Luis Colorado across the border from Yuma, Ariz.
(SFC, 7/17/97, p.A9)
1998 Jul 16, The U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to block Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr from calling President Clinton's Secret Service
protectors before a grand jury.
(AP, 7/16/99)
1998 Jul 16, In Stockton, Ca., a
jury awarded $30 million in damages to 2 brothers for enduring years
sexual abuse from Rev. Oliver O’Grady.
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 16, The US FDA
approved the use of thalidomide as a treatment for leprosy.
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 16, In Gudermes,
Chechnya, fighting broke out and over 50 people were reported killed in
a battle between Chechen security forces and Muslim Wahabist
paramilitary, a conservative arm of Sunni Islam.
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.A16)
1998 Jul 16, China’s leaders
announced a war on smuggling and the formation of a new anti-smuggling
police force.
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 16, The Russian
parliament agreed to a 5% sales tax.
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 16, In Turkey some 2000
soldiers were flown into northern Iraq to hunt Kurdish rebels who fled
there after killing 22 Turkish troops in a raid.
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.A16)
1999 Jul 16, Stanley Kubrick’s
final film, "Eyes Wide Shut" starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman,
made its debut.
(AP, 7/16/00)
1999 Jul 16, US Representative
Michael Forbes of New York announced his switch from the Republican to
the Democratic Party.
(SFC, 7/20/99, p.A5)
1999 Jul 16, Scientists announced
plans to develop "chemically assembled electronic nanocomputers"
(CAENs).
(SFC, 7/16/99, p.A1)
1999 Jul 16, John F. Kennedy Jr.
(38), his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister, Lauren Bessette,
were killed when the Piper Saratoga, which he piloted crashed into the
Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, p.A1)(AP, 7/16/07)
1999 Jul 16, In Wiener Neustadt,
Austria, the 3-day Woodstock '99 "One World" experienced music festival
was projected to have an audience of 250,000.
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D9)
1999 Jul 16, In Burundi peace
talks ended in a deadlock.
(SFC, 7/17/99, p.A14)
1999 Jul 16, In Mexico a judge cut
the 50 year prison sentence of Raul Salinas in half and a Swiss court
overturned the seizure of his stashed fortune, though the money
remained frozen pending further investigation.
(SFC, 7/17/99, p.A11)
1999 Jul 16, A NATO memorandum
warned soldiers and workers of a "possible toxic threat" from the use
depleted uranium ordnance used by the US during the air campaign across
Yugoslavia. The "hazard awareness" document was not released and was
not made public until 2001.
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A9)(SFC, 1/9/01, p.A14)
1999 Jul 16, A Russian supply ship
for Mir was launched from Baikomur in Kazakhstan. It proceeded to
successfully dock with Mir.
(WSJ, 7/19/99, p.A1)
2000 Jul 16, Families and friends
of the victims of the TWA Flight 800 explosion broke ground for a new
memorial on the Long Island shore not far from where the plane went
down in 1996, killing all 230 people on board.
(WSJ, 7/18/96, p.A1)(AP, 7/16/01)
2000 Jul 16, An oil leak in
Brazil’s Parana state began near the Getulio Vargas Refinery in
Araucaria and dumped over 1 million gallons of crude into a tributary
of the Iguacu River. Petrobras was later fined $94 million for the
country’s worst spill in 25 years.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A12)(SFC, 8/3/00, p.A13)
2000 Jul 16, In Indonesia a 2nd
day of fighting left 20 people dead after Indonesian troops joined
Muslim militants against Christian gangs in the Maluku Islands.
(SFC, 7/17/00, p.A12)
2000 Jul 16, In Nigeria another
pipeline blast killed over 100 people between the villages of Ifie and
Ijala. The line was punctured to steal fuel.
(SFC, 7/17/00, p.A13)(WSJ, 7/17/00, p.A1)(WSJ,
7/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 16, In Pakistan a bomb
exploded on a train leaving Hyderabad and 10 people were killed.
(SFC, 7/17/00, p.A13)
2001 Jul 16, The IOC in Moscow
elected Jacques Rogge (59), a Belgian surgeon, to succeed Juan Antonio
Samaranch.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 16, In northwest China an
illegal cache of explosives blew up in Mafang and 41 people were killed.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A7)
2001 Jul 16, In India the leaders
of Pakistan and India failed to reach an accord on their half-century
dispute over Kashmir, ending a landmark three-day summit on a solemn
note. They did agree to meet later in the year in Pakistan.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A6)(AP, 7/16/02)
2001 Jul 16, In Israel a
Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and 2 Israelis at a bus stop
north of Tel Aviv. The bombing was believed to be an effort to mar the
opening of the Maccabiah, the Jewish Olympics in Jerusalem. Israel
retaliated by shelling Palestinian police posts in 2 West Bank towns.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A6)(WSJ, 7/17/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 16, In Serbia authorities
began exhuming bodies from another mass grave near Belgrade.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A7)
2002 Jul 16, The body of Samantha
Runnion (5), who had been kidnapped a day earlier from her home in
Stanton, Calif., was found in a heavily forested area about 50 miles
away.
(AP,
7/16/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Runnion)
2002 Jul 16, Belgian banks signed
agreements to pay some $54 million to the country's Jewish community
for property lost during the Nazi occupation.
(SFC, 7/17/02, p.A9)
2002 Jul 16, In Chechnya
separatist fighters attacked Russian army convoys and checkpoints and 6
people were killed.
(WSJ, 7/17/02, p.A1)
2002 Jul 16, In Ecuador Julia
Butterfly Hill was arrested with 7 other demonstrators in Quito for
protesting a proposed oil pipeline from the Amazon Basin to the port of
Esmeraldas that would run through the Mindo-Nambillo Reserve. Hill was
deported July 18.
(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A12)(SFC, 7/19/02, p.A14)
2002 Jul 16, In Ecuador rains
caused a landslide that buried 11 vehicles including a bus with 40
people.
(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A15)
2002 Jul 18, Greek police reported
the capture of Alexandros Giotopoulos (58), the alleged head of the
November 17 terror group. Police also reported confessions from other
members to bombings and assassinations.
(SFC, 7/19/02, p.A14)
2002 Jul 16, In India-controlled
Kashmir a grenade wounded at least 13 people in Anantnag.
(SFC, 7/17/02, p.A7)
2002 Jul 16, The Irish Republican
Army issued an unprecedented apology for hundreds of civilian deaths
over 30 years.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2002 Jul 16, In the West Bank
Palestinian gunmen ambushed a bus at the Emmanuel settlement left 8
Israelis dead.
(SFC, 7/17/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Jul 16, Russia and China
signed their first friendship treaty in more than half a century.
(AP, 7/16/02)
2003 Jul 16, The Environmental
Protection Agency announced it was starting big-money, long-term
cleanups at 10 Superfund toxic waste sites and putting ten other sites
aside for later.
(AP, 7/16/04)
2003 Jul 16, New research
indicated that frequent masturbation, particularly in the 20s, helps
prevent prostate cancer later in life.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 16, In Santa Monica, Ca.,
10 people were killed and over 70 injured when a car driven by George
Russell Weller (87) plowed through a crowded street market in an
apparent accident. In 2006 a jury convicted Weller on 10 counts of
felony manslaughter. He was sentenced to 5 years probation due to his
failing health. Weller was also ordered to pay about $107,100 in fines
and restitution.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A1)(SFC, 11/21/06, p.A3)(AP,
7/16/08)
2003 Jul 16, Celia Cruz (b.1925),
Cuban-born Latin music singer, died in Fort Lee, NJ. In 2004 Eduardo
Marceles authored “Azucar! The biography of Celia Cruz.” An
autobiography based on recorded material was also published as “Celia:
My Life,” by Celia Cruz and Christina Reymundo.”
(SFC, 7/17/03, p.A21)(SSFC, 8/15/04, p.M6)
2003 Jul 16, Carol Shields (68),
the Pulitzer-prize winning author who wrote "The Stone Diaries" (1995)
and more than 20 other books, died at her home in Victoria, British
Columbia.
(AP, 7/17/03)(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A29)
2003 Jul 16, Salvatore Mancuso,
head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, said the largest
paramilitary group agreed to lay down weapons because of the
government's success in retaking control of wide swaths of land from
leftist rebels.
(AP, 7/18/03)
2003 Jul 16, In northern India
more than 100 people were feared dead in flash floods caused by a heavy
rain in a remote hill area of Himachal Pradesh state.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 16, In Sao Tome, an
island nation off West Africa, Pres. Fradique de Menezes was ousted in
a coup led by army Maj. Fernando Pereira. The revolt changed control of
the impoverished country's new oil wealth.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2004 Jul 16, Domestic icon Martha
Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home
confinement by a federal judge in New York for lying about a stock
sale. On March 4, 2005, Stewart was released from Alderson Federal
Prison Camp, aka “Camp Cupcake,” in West Virginia. She was then placed
under home confinement and required to wear an ankle bracelet for an
additional 5 months.
(AP,
7/16/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_case_and_conviction)
2004 Jul 16, PNC Financial, based
in Pennsylvania, agreed to by Riggs National of Washington DC for $779
million. Riggs was fined $25 million in May for violating money
laundering regulations.
(Econ, 7/24/04, p.69)
2004 Jul 16, George Busbee 76,
former Georgia Gov., died in Savannah.
(AP, 7/16/05)
2004 Jul 16, New Zealand's prime
minister and media heaped vitriol on Israel over the case of two
Israelis imprisoned for passport fraud, saying there's "no doubt" the
pair are spies.
(AP, 7/17/04)
2004 Jul 16, A Saudi transport
company said it had pulled out of Iraq to save the life of an Egyptian
truck driver taken hostage by kidnappers who demanded the firm leave
the country.
(Reuters, 7/16/04)
2004 Jul 16, In Thailand the 15th
Int’l. AIDS Conference ended in Bangkok.
(SFC, 7/17/04, p.A14)
2005 Jul 16, J.K. Rawling’s latest
book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the 6th of the series,
went on sale.
(SSFC, 7/17/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 16, In Australia Sir
Ronald Wilson (82), a former World War II fighter pilot who became a
respected Australian judge and headed a national inquiry into the
"stolen generations" of Aboriginal children, died.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, The death toll from
the July 7 bombings in London rose to 55 as a badly wounded young
architect succumbed 9 days after being rescued. British PM Tony Blair
warned that an "evil ideology" of Islamic extremism was bent on
spreading terror through the West.
(SSFC, 7/17/05, p.A17)(AP, 7/16/06)
2005 Jul 16, A small plane from
Costa Rica, piloted by the son of a former owner of the San Jose Sharks
hockey team, crashed off the Pacific Coast, killing six people.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, A Russian-made plane
that disappeared from radar shortly after takeoff in Equatorial Guinea
crashed with 55 people aboard.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, In Finland
Indonesia's government and Aceh rebels reached a tentative peace deal
to end a 29-year insurgency in the tsunami-devastated province. They
agreed to sign a peace accord on Aug 15 in exchange for more autonomy.
(AP, 7/17/05)(WSJ, 7/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 16, Security forces in
India's portion of Kashmir killed at least 17 suspected Islamic
militants, including 13 rebels who had entered the region from Pakistan.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, Iran said it had
arrested 200 people and deported another 800, all of whom were said to
be linked to al-Qaida.
(SSFC, 7/17/05, p.A3)
2005 Jul 16, In Baghdad a suicide
car bomber attacked police commandos in the southern district of Dura,
killing one commando and three civilians, two of them children. A 2nd
Baghdad suicide bomber blew up a car in an attack targeting a passing
US military convoy. One civilian was killed. A 3rd bomber blew himself
up in a police station in Mosul, killing 4 policemen and wounding 18
more. A 4th bomber blew himself up in the Jabala area, when Iraqi
police tried to arrest him. The explosion wounded two policemen and
four civilians. 3 British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in a
rare attack in the relatively stable southern part of the country.
(AFP, 7/16/05)
2005 Jul 16, In Iraq a suicide
bomber blew up a fuel truck near a crowded vegetable market outside a
Shiite mosque in Musayyib killing 98 people. A suspected mastermind of
the attack was captured later during a raid by Iraqi forces in which
two of his associates were killed.
(Reuters, 7/17/05)(AP, 7/23/05)
2005 Jul 16, US forces in Iraq
began setting up a base 3 miles from the Rawah, a crossroads town and
smuggling route near the Syrian border.
(SSFC, 7/31/05, p.A20)
2005 Jul 16, Israeli troops raided
towns across the West Bank, arresting 26 suspected Palestinian
militants. Israeli aircraft launched a series of airstrikes in Gaza
City and the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
(AP, 7/16/05)
2005 Jul 16, Hurricane Emily
skirted Jamaica with winds spiking at 155 mph.
(SSFC, 7/17/05, p.A3)
2005 Jul 16, In Lagos a court
convicted Amaka Anajemba, a Nigerian woman, of helping defraud a
Brazilian bank of $242 million in the country's biggest international
fraud case. She was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and ordered to
give up $25.5 million in cash and assets. Banco Noroeste of Sao Paolo,
Brazil, was reportedly fleeced of some $242 million over seven years
until 2001.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, Pakistani security
officials said 3 of the 4 London suicide bombers recently visited
Pakistan. Investigators probed whether they met with Al-Qaeda-linked
militant groups.
(AP, 7/16/05)
2005 Jul 16, Pakistani soldiers
fought militants in a northwestern tribal region near the Afghan
border. 18 people, mostly women and children, died in the clash.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, A Russian air force
helicopter carrying border guards crashed in mountainous southern
Chechnya, killing eight people.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 16, In Turkey a bomb
blast destroyed a minibus near Kusadasi, a popular Aegean Sea beach,
killing 5 people, including at least 2 foreigners. Initial reports
implicating a female suicide bomber were soon changed to a remote
controlled or timer bomb as the cause.
(Reuters, 7/16/05)(AP, 7/17/05)
2006 Jul 16, President Bush and
other Group of Eight world leaders meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia,
urged Israel to show "utmost restraint" and blamed Hezbollah and Hamas
for escalating violence in the Middle East. G8 leaders adopted
statements on the summit's three priority areas of energy security,
education and the fight against infectious diseases.
(AP, 7/16/06)(AP, 7/16/07)
2006 Jul 16, US federal officials
arrested David Carruthers in Texas, the British boss of BetonSports, as
he changed planes enroute from London to Costa Rica. He was charged the
next day, along with 10 others, with conspiracy and fraud related to
online gambling.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.61)
2006 Jul 16, Robert Brooks
(b.1937), chairman of Hooters of America, died in South Carolina. He
made a fortune selling chicken wings served by scantily clad waitresses.
(www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/16/obit.hooters.ap/index.html)(Econ, 7/29/06,
p.78)
2006 Jul 16, In Afghanistan Amir
Gul Hassanyar was arrested in northern Kunduz province. He allegedly
carried out numerous roadside bombings and trafficked in weapons and
drugs.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 16, A British soldier was
killed and 3 others wounded in two different attacks near Iraq's main
southern city of Basra. 17 people were killed in rebel violence across
Iraq. Six of 29 people seized at an Iraqi Olympic Committee meeting
were released in Baghdad.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Seven Canadians from
the same Montreal family, including four young children, were killed in
Lebanon when Israeli aircraft bombed a house in the south of the
country.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 16, Hundreds of exhausted
evacuees flew into Cyprus as Western countries moved their citizens
from the Middle East amid continued Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, A small German
tourist plane crashed on takeoff from the Italian island of Elba,
killing four people aboard and seriously injuring one.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Iran said that
Western incentives to halt its nuclear program were an "acceptable
basis" for talks, and it is ready for detailed negotiations.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, A suicide bomber
detonated explosives inside a cafe packed with Shiites in Tuz Khormato,
a mostly Turkomen city 130 miles north of Baghdad. 26 people were
killed and 22 injured. In the south, a British soldier was killed and
another wounded during a raid against a "terrorist suspect" in Basra.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 16,
Lebanese guerrillas fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the
northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing eight people at a railway depot
and wounding seven in a dramatic escalation of a five-day-old conflict
that has shattered hopes for Mideast peace. Israeli airstrikes reduced
entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in
swaths of Beirut.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, In Mexico City Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador led hundreds of thousands of marchers demanding a
full recount of in the disputed election.
(SFC, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 16, North Korea rejected
a UN Security Council resolution sanctioning the communist nation for
recent missile tests and warned the measure was a prelude to a renewed
Korean War.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Turkish PM Recep
Tayyip Erdogan signaled that his government was planning a tough
response to mounting violence by Kurdish rebels after 13 members of the
security forces were killed in the southeast over the past week.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Ugandan negotiators
at talks to end one of Africa's longest wars demanded on that Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA) rebels disarm and hand over all their weapons in
order to receive amnesty.
(Reuters, 7/16/06)
2007 Jul 16, Pres. Bush said he
would call Israel, the Palestinians and others in the region to a peace
conference and urged Arabs to send Cabinet-level officials to a Fall
meeting to be led by Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice.
(SFC, 7/17/07, p.A7)(AP, 7/16/08)
2007 Jul 17, The US freed 16
Saudis from Guantanamo and flew them home, where they were taken into
custody for investigation of possible links to terrorism.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 16, A man carrying a gun
and declaring "I am the emperor" was shot and killed by security
outside the offices of Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2007 Jul 16, Dikembe Mutombo (41),
NBA basketball star, said he wants to score for his native Democratic
Republic of Congo by financing a new hospital and training young hoops
players. Mutombo invested $15 million (11 million euros) in the
construction of the hospital, more than half the total cost.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corp. reached a tentative agreement to buy Dow Jones & Co.,
publisher of the Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion.
(SFC, 7/17/07, p.A3)
2007 Jul 16, IHOP Corp. announced
that it had sealed a deal to buy Applebee’s for about $2.1 billion.
This would make IHOP the nation’s largest sit-down restaurant chain
with 3,250 locations and sales of nearly $7 billion.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A2)
2007 Jul 16, An Amtrak train hit a
car at a Florida crossing killing 4 occupants.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 16, Mark Sneed (50),
president of Phillips Foods, died of a heart attack at his home in
Riva, Md. He drove the company’s expansion to Asian suppliers for crab.
(WSJ, 1/21/07, p.A4)
2007 Jul 16, Afghanistan's
government fired Abdul Sattar Murad, the governor of Kapisa province,
days after he said Afghans are distancing themselves from Pres. Hamid
Karzai and that a "vacuum of authority" is allowing the Taliban,
al-Qaida and other groups to gain power. In southern Kandahar province
suspected Taliban militants ambushed two police officers riding a bike
in Zhari district, killing both.
(AP, 7/17/07)(AP, 7/19/07)
2007 Jul 16, Argentina’s President
Nestor Kirchner's economy minister resigned after a prosecutor ordered
her to testify about $64,000 in cash that was found in a bag in her
office bathroom. Kirchner accepted Felisa Miceli's resignation and
appointed economist and Industry Secretary Gustavo Peirano as her
replacement.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Bangladesh police
arrested former PM Sheikh Hasina on extortion charges, and she was
ordered jailed pending trial.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Britain ordered the
expulsion of four Russian diplomats because of Moscow's refusal to
extradite the lead suspect in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB
officer in London.
(AP, 7/17/07)
2007 Jul 16, The High Court in
London upheld a ban on a teenager from wearing a so-called "purity
ring" at school to signal her refusal of sex before marriage.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, The Canadian
government agreed to disburse C$1.4 billion ($1.3 billion) in aid over
20 years to Quebec's 15,000 Cree to improve health, security and other
services for the native Indians.
(Reuters, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Orascom Construction
Industries S.A.E. of Cairo said it is investing $115 million to acquire
a 50% stake in a North Korean cement plant.
(WSJ, 1/16/07, p.A6)
2007 Jul 16, In Ethiopia a court
sentenced 35 opposition politicians and activists to life in prison and
denied them the right to vote or run for public office for inciting
violence in an attempt to overthrow the government. They had protested
the alleged rigging of ’05 elections. Those facing life imprisonment
include the leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, Hailu
Shawel; Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa; former
Harvard scholar Mesfin Woldemariam; and former UN special envoy and
former Norfolk (Va.) State University professor, Yacob Hailemariam.
(AP, 7/16/07)(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 16, A group representing
thousands of children of Holocaust survivors filed a class-action
lawsuit against the German government, demanding that Germany pay for
their psychiatric care.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Haitian radio
reported that US Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested Guy
Philippe (39), a former rebel leader and presidential candidate with
alleged ties to drug traffickers.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Reliance
Communications, India's second largest telecom company, said it paid
300 million dollars to buy US-based telecom firm Yipes Holdings to
expand data services.
(AFP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, A court in Iran
sentenced Adnan Hassanpour (27), a journalist for the closed
Kurdish-Persian weekly, to death on charges of endangering national
security and propaganda against the state. Abdolvahed “Hiva” Botimar
(29) was also sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal in Marivan.
(http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15054)
2007 Jul 16, In Iraq twin suicide
car bombings exploded within 20 minutes of each other in Kirkuk,
killing at least 85 people and wounding around 150 in attacks targeting
a Kurdish political office and ripping through the Haseer outdoor
market. A string of attacks in Baghdad killed at least 14 people. An
American soldier died from wounds received the day before by a bombing
in Ninevah province. American soldiers killed about a dozen insurgents
during a three-hour gunfight in Fadhil. A US Marine died in a
non-combat related incident in Anbar province.
(AP, 7/16/07)(AP, 7/17/07)(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 16, A 6.8 earthquake
struck northwestern Japan, destroying hundreds of homes, buckling
seaside bridges and causing a fire at one of the world's most powerful
nuclear power plants. 11 people were killed and hundreds were injured.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant suffered a slew of problems,
including spilled waste drums, leaked radioactive water, fires and
burst pipes.
(AFP, 7/16/07)(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.A1)(Econ, 7/21/07,
p.41)(AP, 7/16/08)
2007 Jul 16, In northern Lebanon
fierce fighting erupted at a besieged Palestinian refugee camp as army
troops pounded the remaining hideouts of al-Qaida-inspired militants
holed up inside with artillery and tank fire. 4 soldiers were killed in
fighting. Troops captured two militants while pursuing the fighters in
the camp's old neighborhoods.
(AP, 7/16/07)(AP, 7/17/07)
2007 Jul 16, Health officials in
Malawi prepared to launch a massive HIV testing program to identify
tens of thousands of people unknowingly infected with the virus.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, In Mexico police
fired tear gas to prevent hundreds of leftist protesters from reaching
the venue of an international folk festival in Oaxaca, in the worst
outbreak of violence in the troubled Mexican city since November.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Pakistan held crisis
talks with tribal elders to save a peace deal with pro-Taliban
militants, amid fears of fresh violence after 3 weekend suicide attacks
left more than 70 dead.
(AFP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Scotland’s University
of Edinburgh confirmed that it had withdrawn an honorary doctorate
awarded to Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe in 1984, because of
concern over his human rights record.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Public schools
reopened in South Africa after seven weeks following a month-long
strike by teachers and winter holidays.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, In Venezuela RCTV
resumed broadcasting on cable and satellite TV channels. The station
had been pushed off public access on May 28.
(Econ, 7/21/07,
p.38)(www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22903)
2007 Jul 16, Zimbabwean Roman
Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube was named in an adultery case. State
radio reported that a woman, identified as Rosemary Sibanda, "admitted
the affair" to the state broadcasting company. The radio report said
the woman's husband, Onesimus Sibanda, was demanding $160,000 in
damages.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2008 Jul 16, The United States
signed a pair of agreements to boost trade and investment ties with
countries in southern and eastern Africa. These included the Trade,
Investment and Development Cooperation Agreement with the Southern
Africa Customs Union (SACU), which includes Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia,
South Africa and Swaziland; and the Trade Investment and Framework
Agreement (TIFA) with the East African Community, which includes
Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
(Reuters, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, The US Postal Service
released a series of stamps honoring black cinema.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
2008 Jul 16, California state
educators said 24% of the state’s high school students had dropped out
of school during the 2006-2007 school year.
(SFC, 7/17/08, p.A1)
2008 Jul 16, Jo Stafford (b.1917),
pop star singer during the 1940s and 1950s, died in Los Angeles. Her
songs included “You Belong To Me,” a big hit in 1952.
(SFC, 7/19/08, p.B5)
2008 Jul 16, The governor of
Kandahar said eight militants were killed during an operation in the
southern province's Khakrez district in the past two days. A regional
Taliban commander, Mullah Mahmoud, who controlled about 250 fighters,
was among those killed. Several militants were killed in the Nahr Surkh
district of Helmand. Coalition and Afghan security forces uncovered and
destroyed a large weapons cache in northern Jawzjan province.
(AP, 7/16/08)(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, Thousands of British
local government employees began a two-day strike over pay. Unions
expected more than half a million workers in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland to join the walkout that began after midnight.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Anglican bishops from
around the world gathered in Canterbury for the Lambeth Conference,
with the 10-yearly meeting set to be dominated by deep splits over the
roles of women and homosexuals.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Cambodia assembled
its troops near the Thai border in the second day of alleged incursions
by Thai soldiers amid tensions over disputed border land near a
historic temple.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, The government of
China’s Gansu province told the Ministry of Health about an unusual
surge of kidney stones among infants who had all drunk the same brand
of milk.
(Econ, 9/20/08, p.57)
2008 Jul 16, In Egypt a truck
ploughed into traffic at a closed level crossing, pushing a bus, truck
and several cars into the path of a passenger train. Four people died
from their injuries overnight bringing the total number of dead to 41.
(AFP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, In France the first
stone was laid at the Louvre's new Arts of Islam gallery, the first
major modern architectural addition to the museum since its famed glass
pyramid was built in the 1980s.
(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, In eastern India at
least 20 special commando police officers were killed when their
vehicle struck a land mine planted by communist rebels in Orissa state.
(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, Coalition forces
handed the Iraqi government control of a province south of Baghdad,
reflecting security improvements across the country. US and Polish
forces operated in the mostly Shiite province of Qadisiyah, the tenth
of 18 provinces to revert to Iraqi authority. A car bomb killed at
least 7 children and 11 other people in the northern city of Tal Afar.
90 people also were injured in the blast at a popular outdoor market. A
car bomb killed two civilians in Mosul.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Hezbollah handed over
two black coffins with the bodies of two Israeli soldiers and Israel
freed 5 Lebanese militants, including Samir Kantar, who killed a
4-year-old girl and her father in 1979.
(AP, 7/16/08)(WSJ, 7/17/08, p.A1)
2008 Jul 16, An Italian
parliamentary panel gave initial approval to a plan to fingerprint
everyone in the country, a move that could defuse criticism over a
mandatory program to fingerprint Gypsies.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Malaysian police
arrested opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on suspicion that he sodomized
a male aide, pre-empting his voluntary appearance at the police
headquarters to answer the allegation. He was interrogated for more
than eight hours and made to sleep on a "cold cement" floor in a
holding cell before being released the next day.
(AP, 7/16/08)(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, Mexico's navy seized
a homemade submarine carrying a drug shipment off the Pacific coast and
arrested its four-man crew.
(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, In Nigeria about 30
armed men in speedboats attacked a navy vessel that was guarding key
oil facilities in southern Rivers state. Three militants, a naval
serviceman and a civilian were killed. MEND said it was not involved.
(Reuters, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, In southwestern
Pakistan a roadside bomb wounded seven security personnel and two
passers-by. In the northwest a military operation began to expel
insurgents from Zargari. 10 militants were killed and five troops
wounded.
(AP, 7/16/08)(AP, 7/18/08)
2008 Jul 16, The Philippine
government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front reached a deal to create
an ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims.
(WSJ, 7/17/08, p.A8)
2008 Jul 16, Gold production was
severely disrupted in parts of South Africa as thousands of mineworkers
downed tools to protest rising living costs.
(AFP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, In South Korea former
Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee saw the suspension of his prison sentence
in a tax-evasion conviction, a move that confirmed South Koreans' view
that tycoons are immune from jail.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, In Spain King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia kicked off an interfaith conference in Madrid,
an effort to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews closer together amid a
world that often puts the three faiths at odds.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Sri Lankan soldiers
captured a key naval base used by the Tamil Tiger rebels in the
northern part of the country. Fighting in the north killed 24 rebels
and 3 soldiers.
(AP, 7/16/08)(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 16, In Sudan a
peacekeeper with the United Nations-African Union was shot and killed
in Darfur. The peacekeeper, believed to be a Nigerian company
commander, died while on patrol near a peacekeeping camp.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Turkey’s military
said 11 Kurdish rebels were killed in an ongoing operation in Hakkari
province, near the border with Iraq.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Jul 16, Zimbabwe’s central
bank's governor said the annual rate of inflation, already the highest
in the world, has hit a new record level of 2.2 million percent.
(AFP, 7/16/08)
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