Today’s Motto: ‘When we sigh -‘Life is hard,’ we need to ask-‘Compared to what’?
As Every Day makes a new beginning in life, it brings new opportunities, opens new avenues, to perform and make a mark, to write a Page in History Book!
This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!
On this day, 16 May….
1866 – Root beer was invented by Charles Elmer Hires, also known as Root Beer King, in North America. Originally made using the root of a sassafras plant can be made of beet root, molasses etc. 
1919 – Albert Cushing Read takes off on the first transatlantic flight in history. He completed in 23 days with six stops on way from Rockaway Beach, USA to Plymouth, England.(pic credit-alchetron.com).
1929 – The first Academy Awards, now known as the Oscars, were presented at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Los Angeles, California. Emil Jennings won 2 Oscars, Jenet Gaynor won 3 the Best Actress awards,. Charlie Chaplin and the prod
ucers Warner Bros. won only cash awards. The ceremony lasted just 15 minutes. (pic credit-oscars.org).
1931 – London’s first trolleybus service was started.
1943 – During WW II, “bouncing bombs” invented by Dr Barnes Wallis were dropped on the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr Valley. Wallis had realised that breaching the dams would destroy vital enemy war factories and hydroelectricity to the industrial Ruhr area. He designed an innovative bomb that could be delivered against the side of the dam. Both were demanding tasks. Carefully planned bomber flights delivered very large, cylindrical bombs rotating backward at high speed that would, when dropped at the right height and place, skip along the surface of the water, right up to the base of the dam. Wallis based his idea on the simple pastime of skipping stones on a pond
1946 – The world’s first magnetic tape recorder was demonstrated for the first time by Jack Mullin (pic credit-History of Recording).
1975 – The kingdom of Sikkim joined the Indian Union and it bec
omes 22nd State of India.
1975 – Junko Tabei, a Japanese mountaineer, author and teacher becomes the first woman to conquer Mount Everest (pic credit-nepaltourism.org).
1996 – Atal Krishna Behari Vajpayee, leader of Bharatiya Janta Party, becomes the 10th Prime Minister for 13 days (from May 16, 1996 to May 28, 1996 [techinally till 01-06-1996).
1999 – Senior Congress leaders oppose Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister.
2003 – Calcutta high court rules Calcutta does not have a birthday and that British East India employee Job Charnock is not the city’s founder as previously claimed.
2009 – India’s General Election results announced: the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) under Manmohan Singh returned with an increased mandate.
2010 – Japan conducts the first wedding in which the couple was married by Kokro’s Robot. The cou
ple had a connection to the robotics industry and wished for the robot, the I-Fairy, to officiate their wedding in Tokyo (pic credit-spectrum-ieee.org).
2019 – New DNA research showing bedbugs are older than humans – 115 million years old and outlived dinosaurs, published in “Current Biology”.
2022 – Sw
eden formally announces it will seek to join NATO after 200 years of neutrality, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Born…. 1931 – K. Natwar Singh, an Indian politician, a former senior bureaucrat, a former Union cabinet minister, and a writer. In August 2014, His autobiography, “One Life is Not Enough’’ was released. He was selected into the Indian Foreign Service but resigned from the service to contest elections as a member of the Indian National Congress. He won the election and served as a union minister of state until 1989.
1988 – Vicky Kaushal, (with Hoshiarpur, Punjab family roots), the popular and creative Bollywood actor, is known for his works across a range of genres, he has received several accolades, including a National Film Award and three Filmfare Awards, Kaushal has fea
RIP…. 1994 – Phani Mujumdar, legendary film producer and director. Produced/directed many popular films like Street Singer (1938), Oonche Log, Ek Chadar Maili Si, Tamasha, Kanydan, Aarti, Akadhdeep, Dhobi Doctor, Badlte Rishte etc. and TV serials. He won 2 National Film Awards.
2004 – Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, was an Indian novelist and journalist. She has been called “one of the most important Indian novelists writing in English” Her first novel, “Nectar in a Sieve’’, an Indian peasant’s narrative of her difficult life remains Markandaya’s most popular work.
2014 – Russy Mody (Rustamji Homusji Mody), chairman and managing director of Tata Steel 
and a leading member of the Tata Group (pic credit-m-Rediff.com).
You may have known….
Karmanasa River in India is considered to be a cursed river and it is believed that touching its water would ruin one’s plans. There’s hardly any development along this river. People around this river just eat dry fruits because cooking food would require water!
{Compiled by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}
