Today in History....November 16

* 1776 the United Provinces (Low Countries) recognize the independence of the United States, the first country in the world to do so (This is a controversial statement, because other sources say that the Kingdom of Morocco was the first to extend diplomatic recognition to the new United
States)

* 1821, Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail

* 1896, the first transmission of electricity between a power plant and a city was sent from the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant to industries in Buffalo, New York

* 1904, John Ambrose Fleming invents the vacuum tube

* 1914, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens

* 1933, the United States and the Soviet Union establish formal diplomatic relations

* 1940, New York City's Mad Bomber places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison. ALSO: In occupied Poland, Nazis, ym"sh, close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world

* 1945, the United States Army secretly admits 88 German scientists & engineers to help in the production of rocket technology

* 1965, the Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet
* 1966, Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial of charges he'd murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954

* 1973, US President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline

* 1981, Luke and Laura marry on the U.S. soap opera General Hospital; it is the highest-rated hour in daytime television history

* 1985, a research assistant is injured as a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes