TODAY IN HISTORY: MAY 16

May 16 1900 - Boer War: Mafeking

The siege was relieved by a 'flying' column which has sped its was straight from Kimberley (reinforced further by Canadian troops).

May 16 1907

Nairobi was selected to be the capital of British East Africa.

May 16 1907

Britain, France, and Spain signed the Pact of Cartagena -- an agreement to maintain the status quo in the Mediterranean and West Africa.

May 16 1918: U.S. Congress passes Sedition Act

On May 16, 1918, the United States Congress passed the Sedition Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect America’s participation in World War I.

Along with the Espionage Act of the previous year, the Sedition Act was orchestrated largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson. The Espionage Act, passed shortly after the U.S. entrance into the war in early April 1917, made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces’ prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies.

Aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, the Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on anyone found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against the production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts. Those who were found guilty of such actions, the act stated, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both. This was the same penalty that had been imposed for acts of espionage in the earlier legislation.

Though Wilson and Congress regarded the Sedition Act as crucial in order to stifle the spread of dissent within the country in that time of war, modern legal scholars consider the act as contrary to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution, namely to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. One of the most famous prosecutions under the Sedition Act during World War I was that of Eugene V. Debs, a pacifist labor organizer and founder of the International Workers of the World (IWW) who had run for president in 1900 as a Social Democrat and in 1904, 1908 and 1912 on the Socialist Party of America ticket.

May 16 1941- World War II: North Africa

Believing that yesterdays advance by British forces into Sollum and Fort Capuzzo was the start of an attack on Torbruk, General Rommel attacks and forces the British back to Halfaya Pass.

May 16 1958

French government announced a state of national emergency, giving it special powers to deal with the Algerian revolt and associated unrest in mainland France.

May 16 1968: Protests mount in France

In France, the May 1968 crisis escalated as a general strike spreading to factories and industries across the country, shutting down newspaper distribution, air transport, and two major railroads. By the end of the month, millions of workers were on strike, and France seemed to be on the brink of radical leftist revolution.

After the Algerian crisis of the l950s, France entered a period of stability in the 1960s. The French empire was abolished, the economy improved, and President Charles de Gaulle was a popular ruler. Discontent lay just beneath the surface, however, especially among young students, who were critical of France’s outdated university system and the scarcity of employment opportunity for university graduates. Sporadic student demonstrations for education reform began in 1968, and on May 3 a protest at the Sorbonne (the most celebrated college of the University of Paris) was broken up by police. Several hundred students were arrested and dozens were injured.

In the aftermath of the incident, courses at the Sorbonne were suspended, and students took to the streets of the Latin Quarter (the university district of Paris) to continue their protests. On May 6, battles between the police and students in the Latin Quarter led to hundreds of injuries. On the night of May 10, students set up barricades and rioted in the Latin Quarter. Nearly 400 people were hospitalized, more than half of them police. Leftist students began calling for radical economic and political change in France, and union leaders planned strikes in support of the students. In an effort to defuse the crisis by returning the students to school, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou announced that the Sorbonne would be reopened on May 13.

May 16 1996

A team of American palaeontologists announced the discovery of a 1.5 million year old skull of the shark-toothed reptile Carcharodontosaurus saharicus in the Sahara desert, Morocco.


Source: history.com, africanhistory.about.com