History of the Day for:
January 16
- 1547: Ivan the Terrible was crowned first Czar of Russia.
- 1868: A patent for a refrigerator car was granted to William Davis, a fish dealer in Detroit.
- 1870: Virginia became the eighth state readmitted to the United States after the Civil War.
- 1883: The United States Civil Service Commission was established as the Pendleton Act went into effect.
- 1909: British explorer Ernest Shackleton found the magnetic south pole.
- 1920: The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages.
- 1925: Leon Trotsky was dismissed as the chairman of Russian Revolution Military Council.
- 1936: The Screen Actors Guild was incorporated, with King Vidor as president.
- 1936: The first photo finish camera was installed at Hialeah Race track in Hialeah, Fla.
- 1938: Benny Goodman refused to play at Carnegie Hall when black members of his band were barred from performing.
- 1939: The comic strip "Superman" debuted.
- 1942: While returning from a war-bond promotion tour in Indianapolis, actress Carole Lombard was killed when her plane crashed near Las Vegas.
- 1944: General Dwight Eisenhower assumed the post of Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force in London.
- 1945: This date is generally regarded as marking the end of the failed German Ardennes offensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge.
- 1957: The Cavern Club, the bar which launched the Beatles' career, opened in Liverpool, England.
- 1964: The musical "Hello, Dolly!," starring Carol Channing, began a run of 2,844 performances.
- 1965: "The Outer Limits" last aired on ABC.
- 1967: The first black southern sheriff since Reconstruction, former paratrooper Lucius Amerson, was sworn in at Tuskegee, Ala.
- 1970: National Football League owners voted to split the football league into three divisions and add two new teams: the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
- 1973: NBC aired the 440th and final episode of "Bonanza."
- 1974: Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- 1976: Peter Frampton released his now-platinum live album "Frampton Comes Alive," which became the biggest-selling live album of all time.
- 1985: "Playboy" magazine announced its 30-year tradition of stapling centerfold models in the bellybutton and elsewhere would come to an end.
- 1979: The Shah of Iran flees Iran with his family and relocates to Egypt.
- 1986: First meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force.
- 1991: The United States goes to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War (U.S. Time).
- 1992: El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City ending a 12-year civil war that claimed at least 75,000.
- 2001: Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards.
- 2001: US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish-American War.
- 2002: The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and the remaining members of the Taliban.
- 2003: The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.
- 2006: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state.