June 16

1760 – During the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers and his Rangers surprise French held Fort Sainte Thérèse on the Richelieu River near Lake Champlain. The fort is raided and burned.

1829 –  Goyaałé of the Bedonkohe Chiricahua Apache – known to the Spanish as Geronimo -is born near what is now Turkey Creek Arizona.

1858 – Accepting the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as that state’s US Senator, Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech at Springfield, Illinois in which he declares “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

1884 – The first purpose built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway”, opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park.

1897 – A treaty between the governments of the Republic of Hawaii and the United States to annex the nation is signed, to take effect the next year.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1911 – IBM is founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.

1933 – As part of the ‘New Deal’, the National Industrial Recovery Act is signed into law by President Roosevelt, allowing businesses to avoid antitrust prosecution if they establish voluntary wage, price, and working condition regulations on an industry-wide basis.

1944 – George Junius Stinney Jr., age 14, convicted in South Carolina for the rape and murder of two preteen girls, becomes the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century.

1963 – Aboard Vostok 6, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL), by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

1981 – Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, for helping 6 Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979–81

2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco.

2012 – The United States Air Force’s robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.

2016 – Shanghai Disneyland Park, the first Disney Park in Mainland China, opens to the public.