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May 16 · This Day in America

1868
Republic

The Senate spares Andrew Johnson by a single vote

The galleries are packed and silent as the clerk calls the roll on the eleventh article of impeachment. For the first time in history, the Senate is deciding whether to remove a President of the United States. It needs two-thirds. When the count ends, it is 35 to convict, 19 to acquit — one vote short. Seven Republicans break with their own party to spare a president most of them despise, judging that the charge does not rise to a crime worth undoing an election over. Johnson stays. The verdict is bitterly disputed then and argued over still. But the precedent it sets is enormous and quietly load-bearing: in America, impeachment is a remedy for high crimes, not for political enemies — and the bar is meant to be hard to clear.

Source: www.senate.gov

Also on this day · 1929

The first Academy Awards last fifteen minutes

In the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, about 270 people finish dinner and hand out gold statuettes in roughly a quarter of an hour. The winners had been announced months earlier; there is no suspense, no broadcast, no envelope. Wings takes Best Picture. Nobody yet calls the statue "Oscar." The smallest, quietest award show in history would become the most-watched night in entertainment.

Source: www.oscars.org

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