#TodayInHistory – February 16

February 16 – Some important events on this day

374 👉🏼 9th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet
600 👉🏼 Pope Gregory the Great decrees saying “God bless You” is the correct response to a sneeze
1659 👉🏼 1st known cheque (£400) (on display at Westminster Abbey)
1838 👉🏼 Weenen Massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal are killed by Zulu warriors
1840 👉🏼 American Charles Wilkes discovers Shackleton Ice Shelf, Antarctica
1861 👉🏼 Abraham Lincoln stops his train at Westfield on his way to Washington to thank 11-year old Grace Bedell in person for her advice to grow a beard to gain more votes

1923 👉🏼 Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb and finds the sarcophagus.
In November 1923, a team led by British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun. This would go on to become the most famous discovery of a pharaoh’s tomb, and make Tutankhamun perhaps the most famous pharaoh.
After chipping his way into the tomb in November (using a chisel his grandmother had given him on his 17th birthday), Carter and his sponsor Lord Carnarvon spent the next several months meticulously cataloguing the items inside the tomb’s antechamber.
On this day, Carter discovered that the antechamber did in fact lead to Tutankhamun’s burial chamber when he opened the sealed doorway inside, and glimpsed the sarcophagus of the pharaoh.
Over the years, many legends have emerged around the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, most famously the so-called curse of the pharaohs: that those who disturbed the tomb were doomed to an early death….
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1959 👉🏼 Fidel Castro becomes the 16th Prime Minister of Cuba after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista
1963 👉🏼 Beatles top British rock charts with “Please, Please Me”
2005 👉🏼 The Kyoto Protocol comes into force following its ratification by Russia.
2020 👉🏼 America evacuates 400 citizens from COVID-19-infected cruise ship Diamond Princess quarantined in Yokohama port, Japan
2020 👉🏼 ‘Ghost ship’ cargo vessel MV Alta washed up on the Irish coast near Ballycotton by Storm Dennis, after drifting across the Atlantic from Bermuda