Today
in History ~ March 16
Events
1190 - Jews of York England
commit mass sucide rather than submit to baptism as Crusaders warm-up for their
invasion of the Holy Land by massacring Jews in and around York [H]
1521 - Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches Philippines
1690 - French king Louis XIV sends troops to Ireland
1792 - Murder of popular Swedish King Gustavus III by Count Ankarstrom at opera
-- inspiration for Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera
1802 - United States Military Academy Established at West Point, New York. [H]
1830 - London reorganises police force (Scotland Yard)
1836 - Texas approves a constitution
1850 - Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" published
1861 - Arizona Territory votes to leave the Union
1865 - Battle of Averasboro, NC (1,500 casualities)
1881 - Barnum & Bailey Circus debuts
1882 - US Senate ratifies treaty establishing the Red Cross
1894 - Jules Massenet's opera "Thais," premieres in Paris
1912 - Mrs William Howard Taft plants 1st cherry tree in Wash DC -- gift of
Japan
1915 - Brit battle cruisers Inflexible & Irresistible hit mines in
Dardanelle
1915 - Federal Trade Commission organizes
1922 - Sultan Fuad I crowned king of Egypt, England recognizes Egypt
1926 - Robert Goddard launches 1st liquid fuel rocket, goes 184' (56 meters)
1930 - USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) floated out to become a natl shrine
1933 - Hitler names Hjalmar Horace Greeley Shacht president of Bank of Germany
1935 - Hitler orders German rearmament, violating Versailles Treaty
1940 - German air raid on British fleet base Scapa Flow
1941 - Blizzard hits North Dakota & Minnesota killing 60
1945 - Allies secure Iwo Jima
1951 - Hastened by short winter, all spring flowers open in Minneapolis
1955 - President Eisenhower upholds the use of atomic weapons in case of war
1962 - US Lockheed Super-Constellation disappears above Pacific Ocean, kills 167
1968 - Robert F Kennedy announces presidential campaign
1968 - During the Vietnam War, the My Lai massacre was
carried out by U.S. troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley Jr.
1969 - Peter Stone & Sherman Edward's "1776," premieres in NYC
1976 - British premier Harold Wilson resigns
1977 - US president Carter pleads for Palestinian homeland
1978 - Red Brigade kidnaps former premier Aldo Moro in Italy, 5 killed
1984 - Gunmen kidnap William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut
1985 - Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson taken hostage in Beirut,
Lebanon, by Islamic militants
1988 - Federal grand jury indicts North & Poindexter in Iran-Contra affair
1988 - US sends 3000 soldiers to Nicaragua's neighbor Honduras
1991 - In a broadcast address, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
promised to allow multiparty democracy.
1991 - New York Mayor David Dinkins was booed as he marched with an
Irish-American gay group during the city's St. Patrick's Day parade.
1991 - Seven members of country singer Reba McEntire's band were killed in a
plane crash near San Diego.
1991 - U.S. skaters Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan swept the
World Figure Skating Championships in Munich, Germany.
1994 - Tonya Harding pleads guilty to felony attack on Nancy Kerrigan
1995 - Mississippi formally abolishes slavery & ratifies 13th Amendment
1996 - In his weekly radio address, President Bill Clinton accused the
Republican-controlled House of bowing to "the back-alley whispers of the
gun lobby" by gutting anti-terrorism legislation he'd submitted in response
to the Oklahoma City bombing.
1996 - For the first time, ordinary citizens were allowed inside the central
archives of the Stasi, the former East German secret police.
2000 - White house denied that Hillary Rodham Clinton or senior White House
officials had sought FBI background files of Republicans.
Birthdays
Today
1739 - George Clymer, US merchant (signed Declaration of
Independence, Constitution)
1750 - Caroline Lucretia Herchel, Hanover, Germany, 1st woman astronomer
1751 - James Madison, Port Conway Va., 4th US president (1809-1817)
1787 - Georg Simon Ohm, physicist (discovered Ohm's Law)
1806 - Norbert Rillieux, inventor (sugar refiner)
1836 - Andrew S Hallidie, inventor (cable car)
1849 - James E Smith, became father at 100 with woman 64 years younger
1896 - Conrad Nagel (actor: The Mysterious Lady, The Kiss, The Divorcee)
1911 - Josef Mengele, MD, PhD, SS ("The Angel of Death at Auschwitz"), Gunzburg, Germany
1912 - Pat Nixon (Ryan) (former U.S. First Lady: Married to 37th U.S. President Richard M. Nixon)
1920 - Leo McKern, Sydney Aust, actor (Blue Lagoon, Help, Mouse that Roared, Rumpole of the Bailey)
1926 - Jerry Lewis (Joseph Levitch)
1927 - Daniel Patrick Moynihan (U.S. Senator from New York)
1927 - Ruby (Reuben) Braff (modern jazz musician: trumpet, cornet; actor: Pipe Dream)
1928 - Christa Ludwig, Berlin Germany, soprano (Vienna State Opera, Met Opera)
1930 - Hobie (Hobert) Landrith (baseball)
1932 - Betty Johnson (singer: I Dreamed, Little White Lies, The Little Blue Man, Dream)
1932 - Don Blasingame (baseball)
1932 - R. Walter Cunningham (astronaut)
1940 - Chuck Woolery, Ky, TV game show host (Love Connection)
1942 - Jerry Jeff Walker (Paul Crosby) (country singer, guitarist: Mr. Bojangles, Good Loving Grace, My Old Man, Hill Country Rain, Charlie Dunn)
1942 - MacArthur Lane (football)
1942 - Roger Crozier (hockey)
1947 - Tom Bradley (baseball)
1949 - Bertha Knox Gilkey, welfare & tenament rights for urban women
1949 - Erik Estrada (actor: C.H.I.P.S., Twisted Justice, Night of the Wilding, Caged Fury, The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal
Mission, Cross & Switchblade, Lightblast)
1950 - Tim Stokes (football)
1951 - Mary Louise Bochnak, the patron saint of embattled nonprofit committee chairmen
1954 - Brian McKenzie (hockey)
1954 - Hollis Stacy (golfer: U.S. Open Champion [1977, 1978, 1984]; Du Maurier Classic Champion: [1983])
1959 - Michael J Bloomfield, Flint Mich, Major USAF/astronaut (STS 86)
1963 - Phung Vuong, Saigon Vietnam, murderer (FBI Most Wanted List)
Famous
deaths
1736 - Giovanni B Pergolesi,
Italian composer (Stabat Mater), dies at 26
1881 - Modest P Mussorgsky, Russian composer (Boris Godunov), dies at 42
1882 - Charles R Darwin, English naturalist (Origin of species), dies at 73
1935 - John J R Macleod, Scot/Canadian physiologist (Nobel 1923), dies at 58
1959 - John Sailling, last documented Civil War vet, dies at 111
1968 - Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, composer, dies at 72
1971 - Thomas E Dewey, US president candidate (R 1944, 48), dies at 68
1978 - Aldo Moro, 5 times PM of Italy, assassinated by terrorists
1991 - 7 members of Reba McIntire's band, killed in a plane crash
1993 - Mohammed Hussein Nagdi, Iran diplomat/resistance fighter, murdered
2000 - Thomas Wilson Ferebee, the Enola Gay bombardier who dropped the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, died in Windermere, Fla., at age 81.
If
you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please
E-mail me
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