1532        May 16, Sir Thomas More resigned as English Lord Chancellor.

 

1777        May 16, Button Gwinnet, US revolutionary leader, died from wounds.

 

1957        May 16, Pope Pius XII published his encyclical Invicti Athletae.

1977        May 16, In Mali former Pres. Modibo Keita (1915-1977) died in prison. His reputation was rehabilitated in 1992 following the overthrow of Moussa Traore and subsequent the election of president Alpha Oumar Konare. A monument for Modibo Keita, was dedicated in Bamako on June 6, 1999.

1987        May 16, Kentucky Derby winner Alysheba captured the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore. Alysheba fell short in the Belmont Stakes, failing to become the first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed.

1990        May 16, Sammy Davis Jr. (64), entertainer, died in Los Angeles. Davis owed the IRS $5 million at his death. A settlement was later reached for $300,000. In 2003 Wil Haygood authored “In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.”

 

1996        May 16, Romano Prodi was named head of the center-left Olive Branch alliance that won April elections. PM Prodi led Italy’s 55th postwar government with the leftists in power for the first time in 50 years.

 

1997        May 16, Pres. Clinton spoke an apology for the government’s Tuskegee syphilis study from 1932-1972, in which 399 black men were kept untreated by government scientists in order to study the progression of the disease.

1997        May 16, From Hong Kong Fei Long (Fat Dragon) was described as a local celebrity for his articles on prostitution on Portland St., the heart of the red-light district. His columns have been compiled as the “Fat Dragon Handbook.”

1997        May 16, In Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko ended 32 years of autocratic rule, giving control of the country to rebel forces.

2001        May 16, Timothy McVeigh was scheduled for execution by injection and the event was set to show on closed-circuit TV at an Oklahoma City site restricted to 200 people. The execution was postponed to June 11.

2002        May 16, David Berg (81), Mad magazine artist, died. He began his “The Lighter Side of” comic strips for Mad Magazine in 1961 and continued for 365 subsequent issues. He also wrote and drew 17 Mad books along with “My Friend God and “Roger Kaputnik and God.”

2002        May 16, PLO Pres. Yasser Arafat agreed to revamp his cabinet and hold elections within 6 months.

2003        May 16, President Bush launched his re-election campaign.

2006        May 16, Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden, the winningest coaches in Division I-A football, were elected to the college football Hall of Fame.

2006        May 16, The Nigerian Senate rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed President Olusegun Obasanjo to run for a third term in office in 2007.

2006        May 16, Vietnam’s PM Phan Van Khai (70) said he has nominated Deputy PM Nguyen Tan Dung (56) as his successor.

2007        May 16, Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, British army chief of staff, announced that Prince Harry would not go to Iraq because of “specific threats” to his life that would expose the prince and his fellow soldiers to unacceptable risk. The prince did end up serving in Afghanistan for 10 weeks, until word of his deployment got out.

 

2007        May 16, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed limited political reforms in the oil-rich country he has headed since the Soviet era, including shortening the presidential term from seven years to five and strengthening the powers of parliament.

2008        May 16, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez was favored to win a third term, despite concerns over long-serving politicians in this Caribbean nation with a painful history of rule by strongmen.

2008        May 16, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe acknowledged he had suffered an electoral disaster in losing a first round against arch rival Morgan Tsvangirai, as the date for a run-off was fixed for June 27.

2010        May 16, Clotilde Reiss (24), a young French academic who battled spying charges in Iran for more than 10 months, returned to France and thanked President Nicolas Sarkozy and other officials for insisting on her innocence and pressing for her release.

2010        May 16, Prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi resigned from the helm of Al-Watan daily in a move believed linked to official displeasure with articles critical of the state’s harsh Islamic rules.

 

2012        May 16, Greece appointed Panagiotis Pikrammenos (67), head of the Council of State, to head a caretaker government until new elections expected on June 17.

2013        May 16, Indonesia’s Pres. Yudhoyono extended a 2-year moratorium on forest clearing concessions for another 2 years.