Today in History, April 16th
On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd from exile. Plus King's Letter from Birmingham Jail and Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer.
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April 16 is best known for 1917, when Vladimir Lenin arrived back in Petrograd from exile, months before his Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The date also saw Martin Luther King Jr. write his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in 1963 and Kendrick Lamar become the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018.
The big story: Lenin returns to Russia (1917)
In March 1917, food riots and strikes in Petrograd brought down Czar Nicholas II, and Russia was left with an uneasy split of power between a provisional government and the workers’ councils known as soviets. Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, watched from Switzerland, where he had spent years in exile. Germany saw an opening. Its leaders reasoned that putting antiwar radicals back into Russia would weaken their enemy’s war effort, so they let Lenin and his comrades cross German territory in a sealed railway car on the way to Sweden and then home. He reached Petrograd on April 16, 1917, by the modern calendar, and immediately pushed for a second, socialist revolution. It did not go smoothly at first: by July he had to flee to Finland. But on November 7, 1917, Bolshevik-led Red Guards overthrew the provisional government and proclaimed soviet rule. Germany’s gamble worked in the short run and reshaped the century that followed.
More events on April 16
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1746 | British forces under the Duke of Cumberland crushed Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite army at Culloden, near Inverness, Scotland, in about 40 minutes (Old Style date). |
| 1881 | Bat Masterson fought what is documented as his last gunfight, in Dodge City, Kansas. |
| 1912 | Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. |
| 1929 | Cleveland became the first Major League Baseball team to put numbers on the backs of its jerseys. |
| 1943 | Chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally absorbed LSD-25 and discovered its hallucinogenic effects. |
| 1947 | A ship loaded with fertilizer exploded in Texas City, Texas, killing nearly 600 people. |
| 1947 | Financier Bernard Baruch popularized the term “Cold War” in a speech. |
| 1963 | Jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” |
| 1972 | Apollo 16 launched for the Moon from Cape Canaveral. |
| 2007 | A gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, before killing himself. |
| 2018 | Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his album DAMN., the first rap work to receive it. |
Born on April 16
- 1867: Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer who with his brother Orville built the first fully practical airplane, born near Millville, Indiana.
- 1889: Charlie Chaplin, comedian and filmmaker, born in London.
- 1947: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball center who dominated the game in the 1970s and early 1980s, born in New York City.
Sources
- Lenin returns to Russia from exile, History.com
- This Day in History: April 16, History.com
- What happened on April 16, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Battle of Culloden, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Wilbur Wright, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Charlie Chaplin, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Encyclopaedia Britannica
