May 16 in Military History

The marriage of Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette to the French Dauphin was a military-diplomatic alliance designed to secure peace between Austria and France. The alliance would shape European power politics for decades and its collapse contributed to the French Revolutionary Wars.

Grant defeated General John Pemberton's Confederate force at Champion Hill, Mississippi, in the decisive battle of the Vicksburg Campaign. The victory cut off Pemberton's line of retreat and forced him to fall back into the Vicksburg defenses, setting the stage for the 47-day siege that followed.

Britain and France secretly agreed to divide the Ottoman Empire's Middle Eastern territories into spheres of influence after World War I. The agreement, which contradicted British promises to the Arabs, drew arbitrary borders that created many of the region's enduring conflicts and remains a source of deep resentment.

Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, criminalizing disloyal speech against the American war effort in World War I. The law was used against socialists, pacifists, and labor organizers, and contributed to a postwar Red Scare that reshaped American military counter-intelligence practices.

The first Academy Awards ceremony named Wings, a silent epic about American fighter pilots in the Great War, as the inaugural Best Picture. Its aerial combat cinematography, filmed with real U.S. Army Air Service aircraft, set the technical template for aviation films for decades.

RAF 617 Squadron used bouncing bombs to breach the Mohne and Eder Dams in Germany's industrial heartland.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, ended after nearly a month of fighting as the Germans destroyed the ghetto block by block. SS General Jurgen Stroop reported the uprising crushed and dynamited the Great Synagogue of Warsaw as a symbol of victory.

Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, twelve days after an avalanche buried her team at Camp II. The climb drew on mountaineering techniques refined by military high-altitude programs and demonstrated the viability of small-team expeditionary logistics.

The guided-missile frigate USS Stark was struck by two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi Mirage F-1 fighter jet in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 sailors. Iraq claimed the attack was accidental. The incident highlighted the dangers of the naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq War.

Endeavour lifted off on STS-134, its twenty-fifth and final spaceflight, carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. The mission closed out a vehicle that had flown more than 122 million miles over twenty years of service.