May 16th

Today's Highlight in History:
On May 16th, 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie "Wings" won "best production" while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.

On this date:
In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis the 16th of France, who was 15.

In 1866, Congress authorized minting of the five-cent piece.

In 1868, the Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of eleven articles of impeachment against him.

In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized in Rome.

In 1946, the musical "Annie Get Your Gun" opened on Broadway.

In 1948, the body of CBS News correspondent George Polk was found in Solonica Harbor in Greece, several days after he'd left his hotel for an interview with the leader of a Communist militia.

In 1960, a Big Four summit conference in Paris collapsed on its opening day as the Soviet Union leveled spy charges against the US in the wake of the U-2 incident.

In 1965, the musical play "The Roar of the Greasepaint -- the Smell of the Crowd" opened on Broadway.

In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

In 1977, five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.

Ten years ago: Death claimed entertainer Sammy Davis Junior in Los Angeles at age 64 and "Muppets" creator Jim Henson in New York at age 53.

Five years ago: The Clinton administration threatened punitive tariffs that would double the prices for Japan's most popular luxury cars. Japanese police arrested doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, holding him in connection with the nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's subways two months earlier.

One year ago: The Justice Department said preliminary figures from the FBI indicated a decline in serious crime in 1998 for the seventh consecutive year.

"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."

-- Alfred North Whitehead, English philosopher- mathematician (1861-1947).