May 16 : The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on.

On this day, 16 May...

1866 - Root beer was invented by Charles Elmer Hires.

1931 - London's first trolleybus service was started. It replaced trams and the trolleybus ran on electricity drawn from a "trolley" running along overhead lines. Trolleybuses had pneumatic tires to run on the same road surface with other traffic. London trams were abandoned by 1952. Yet by 1959, the era of the trolleybus was closing, as diesel-fuelled buses became economical alternatives. London's last trolleybus ran from Wimbledon to Fulwell on 8 May 1962.

1943 - During WW II, "bouncing bombs" invented by Dr. Barnes Wallis were dropped on the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr Valley. Wallace had realized 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 largely, 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.

1975 - India annexes Principality of Sikkim and it becomes 22nd State of the country.

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 [technically till 01-06-1996]).

1998 - India rejects China's charges on N-tests.

1999 - Senior Congress leaders oppose Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister.

2014 - The Bharatiya Janata Party wins India's general election, defeating the Indian National Congress; the results appear to signal a desire for greater economic progress.

Born

1931 - Natwar Singh, politician.

1983 - Kulraj Randhawa, actor.

RIP

1994 - Phani Mujumdar, veteran film producer and director.

2014 – Russy Modi, chairman and managing director of Tata Steel and a leading member of the Tata Group.

Titbits

2010 - Japan conducts the first wedding in which the couple was married by a robot. The couple had a connection to the robotics industry and wished for the robot, the I-Fairy, to officiate their wedding in Tokyo. 

You may have known...

The average cumulous cloud weighs roughly 1.1 million pounds.