Today in History: April 16, the Virginia Tech shooting
Today is Wednesday, April 16, the 106th day of 2025. There are 259 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On April 16, 2007, Seung-hui Cho, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus before taking his own life. It remains the deadliest school history in US history.
Also on this date:
In 1945, a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoed the ship MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers. As many as 7,000 people died as the ship broke apart and sank minutes after being struck.
In 1947, the French cargo ship Grandcamp, carrying over 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, blew up in the harbor in Texas City, Texas. A nearby ship, the High Flyer, which was carrying ammonium nitrate and sulfur, caught fire and exploded the following day. The combined blasts and fires killed nearly 600 people and injured 5,000 in the worst industrial accident in U.S. history.
In 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which the civil rights activist responded to a group of local clergymen who had criticized him for leading street protests. King defended his tactics, writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
In 1972, Apollo 16 blasted off for the moon with astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly on board.
In 2010, the U.S. government accused Wall Street’s most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs & Co. had sold mortgage investments without telling buyers the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail. (In July 2010, Goldman agreed to pay $550 million in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but it did not admit wrongdoing.)
In 2012, a trial began in Oslo, Norway, for Anders Breivik (AHN’-durs BRAY’-vihk), charged with killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in July 2011. (Breivik was found guilty of terrorism and premeditated murder and given a 21-year prison sentence.)
Today’s Birthdays:
- Singer Bobby Vinton is 90.
- Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is 78.
- Football coach Bill Belichick is 73.
- Actor Ellen Barkin is 71.
- Singer Jimmy Osmond is 62.
- Actor Jon Cryer is 60.
- Actor-comedian Martin Lawrence is 60.
- Actor Peter Billingsley is 54.
- Actor Lukas Haas is 49.
- Actor-singer Kelli O’Hara is 49.
- Actor Claire Foy (TV: “The Crown”) is 41.
- Rapper Chance the Rapper is 32.
- Actor Anya Taylor-Joy is 29.
- Actor Sadie Sink is 23.