Today in History, June 16th
On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Plus Lincoln's "house divided" speech and the Soweto uprising.
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June 16 is best known for 1963, when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. The date also saw Abraham Lincoln give his “house divided” speech in 1858 and the start of the Soweto uprising in South Africa in 1976.
The big story: Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space (1963)
Valentina Tereshkova did not come from a test-pilot program. She grew up in a peasant family in Maslennikovo, went to work in a textile mill at 18 and took up parachuting with a local flying club at 22. That hobby turned out to be her ticket. Vostok capsules forced the pilot to eject and parachute down at the end of a flight, so in February 1962 the Soviets picked her and four other women to train as cosmonauts. On June 16, 1963, Vostok 6 carried her into orbit. A second craft, Vostok 5 with Valeri Bykovsky aboard, was already up, and at one point the two passed within about three miles of each other. Tereshkova circled Earth 48 times in 71 hours, longer than every U.S. astronaut put together had flown up to then. She never flew again, and no other woman went to space until the 1980s. The first American woman, Sally Ride, followed in 1983.
More events on June 16
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1858 | Newly nominated for the U.S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln told Illinois Republicans in Springfield that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” |
| 1862 | Confederate troops turned back a Union push toward Charleston, South Carolina, at the Battle of Secessionville on James Island. |
| 1884 | The Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway opened at Coney Island in Brooklyn, the first U.S. roller coaster built purely for fun. |
| 1903 | Henry Ford and his fellow investors met in Detroit to sign the papers creating the Ford Motor Company, which listed 12 stockholders. |
| 1911 | The company that became International Business Machines (IBM) was incorporated. |
| 1933 | The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was created as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Hundred Days” of New Deal lawmaking came to a close. |
| 1943 | Noor Inayat Khan became the first woman wireless operator the British sent into occupied France during World War II. |
| 1961 | Kirov Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union during a stopover in Paris. |
| 1965 | Bob Dylan and an electric band recorded the master take of “Like a Rolling Stone” at Columbia’s Studio A in Manhattan. |
| 1976 | Police opened fire on Soweto schoolchildren protesting lessons in Afrikaans, setting off an uprising across South Africa in which more than 600 people were killed. |
| 1977 | Leonid Brezhnev was elected president of the Supreme Soviet, making him head of state as well as head of the Communist Party. |
| 2012 | Liu Yang became the first Chinese woman in space, flying aboard Shenzhou 9. |
Born on June 16
- 1874: Arthur Meighen, Canadian Conservative leader and two-time prime minister, born near Anderson, Ontario.
- 1917: Katharine Graham, publisher who built The Washington Post into a leading U.S. newspaper, born in New York City.
- 1971: Tupac Shakur, rapper and actor, a leading voice of 1990s hip-hop, born in New York City.
Sources
- First woman in space, History.com
- This Day in History: June 16, History.com
- On This Day: June 16, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Soweto uprising, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Arthur Meighen, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Katharine Graham, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Tupac Shakur, Encyclopaedia Britannica
