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From Wikipedia's newest articles:

• ... that the term choral symphony was coined by French composer Hector Berlioz (pictured) when describing his symphony, Roméo et Juliette?
• ... that the Gottlieb Storz House in Omaha, Nebraska is home to the Astaire Ballroom, which is the only memorial to Adele and Fred Astaire in their home city?
• ... that the 1999 Chamoli earthquake in India, in which 103 people died, was also felt in the Baitadi, Dadeldhura and Kanchanpur districts in Nepal?
• ... that former Detroit Red Wings head coach Jacques Demers is the only coach in the National Hockey League to have won the Jack Adams Award twice with the same team?
• ... that Hoi Khanh Temple in Thu Dau Mot was once used as a meeting place by Vietnamese independence activists, including Ho Chi Minh's father?
• ... that A Bayou Legend by William Grant Still was the first opera composed by an African American to be broadcast on television?
  

• A series of bomb blasts in Jaipur, India, kills at least 80 people.
• An earthquake (epicenter shown on map) measuring 7.9 M_w strikes Sichuan, China, with more than 22,000 people reported dead.
• President Boris Tadić's coalition For a European Serbia wins a plurality in Serbia's first parliamentary election since the Kosovo declaration of independence, displacing the Serbian Radical Party as the largest party.
• Sudan cuts diplomatic relations with Chad, blaming it for helping rebels from Darfur to launch an attack on Sudan's capital, Khartoum.
• An international relief operation begins after Cyclone Nargis strikes Burma, with at least 100,000 people reported killed or missing. The Burmese military regime conducts a constitutional referendum days after the cyclone's strike.

May 16: Teacher's Day in Malaysia

• 1204 – Fourth Crusade: Count Baldwin IX of Flanders was crowned the first Latin Emperor in Constantinople.
• 1811 – Peninsular War: An allied force of British, Spanish, and Portuguese troops clashed with the French at the Battle of Albuera south of Badajoz, Spain.
• 1866 – Root beer (pictured) was first prepared commercially by American pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires.
• 1877 – President Patrice de Mac-Mahon dismissed Jules Simon and installed Albert, Duc de Broglie as Prime Minister, triggering a political crisis in the French Third Republic.
• 1929 – The first Academy Awards were handed out at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.
• 1966 – Chinese leader Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution officially as a campaign to rid China of its liberal bourgeoisie elements and to continue revolutionary class struggle.

More events: May 15 – May 16 – May 17