April 16

1457 BC – At the valley of Megiddo, Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III and a large rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by the king of Kadesh engage in a battle considered the first be accepted as recorded in reliable detail

73 – Masada, a Jewish fortress on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the 1st Jewish–Roman War.

1582 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Lerma founds the settlement of Salta, Argentina.

1746 – The Battle of Culloden is fought between the Jacobite Stuarts and the British Hanoverian forces. After the battle, many Highland traditions are banned and the Highlands of Scotland were cleared of inhabitants with many clan members moved to North America.

1818 – Following the end of The War of 1812, the U.S. Senate ratifies the Rush–Bagot Treaty, limiting naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

1862 – During the Civil War, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia, becomes law.

1908 – The Natural Bridges National Monument is established in Utah.

1943 – First made by him in 1938 during experiments with ergot fungus found on grain,  Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of the research drug Lysergic Acid Diethylamide  – LSD.

1945 – U.S. Army troops liberate Nazi prisoner of war camp Offizierslager IV-C at Castle Colditz.

1947 – An explosion on board the French registered vessel SS Grandcamp at Port of Texas City, Texas, Galveston Bay, causes the city to catch fire, killing almost 600 people.

1961 – In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.

1963 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pens his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting against segregation.

1972 – Apollo 16 is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with astronauts
John Young, Thomas ‘Ken’ Mattingly and Charley Duke aboard.

1990 – “Doctor Death”, Jack Kevorkian, participates in his first assisted suicide, aiding Janet Elaine Adkins in a campground near Pontiac, Michigan.

2007 –  Seung-Hui Cho,  previously diagnosed with severe depression, uses two handguns to shoot and kill 32 people and wound 17 more at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in Blacksburg, Virginia, before committing suicide.

2008 – In the case of Baze v. Rees, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that execution by lethal injection does not violate the 8th Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.