May 16th

Human stem cells are successfully cloned.

Nicolas Sarkozy took over from Jacques Chirac as France's president.

Newsweek magazine retracted a story that claimed investigators had found evidence the Quran was desecrated by interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay. The story had sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan.

Five simultaneous suicide attacks claimed the lives of 33 victims and a dozen suicide bombers in Casablanca, Morocco.

The remains of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were unearthed in Pakistan.

President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire ended 32 years of autocratic rule when rebel forces led by Laurent Kabila expelled him from the country.

Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the United States Congress.

'Muppets' creator Jim Henson died at age 53.

Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

The album "Blonde on Blonde" by Bob Dylan was released.

Theodore Maiman fires the first functional laser. The American physicist's invention, an advancement of earlier research by scientists in the U.S. and the Soviet Union, was patented in 1967.

The Irving Berlin musical, Annie Get Your Gun, opened on Broadway.

1st of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz.

Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs.

The first Academy Awards were given on this night. The term, Oscars, was not used to describe the statuettes given to actors and actresses until 1931.

Joan of Arc (Jeanne D'arc) canonized a saint.

Albert Cushing Read takes off on the first transatlantic flight in history. The crossing from New York State, USA to Lisbon, Portugal on a Curtiss NC-4 flying boat took 19 days.

The U.S. Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him. (He was acquitted of all charges.).

Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.