On March 16th...

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1521 Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines.

1641 The Rhode Island General Court declared Rhode Island a democracy and adopted a new constitution.

1660 The English Long Parliament disbanded.

1689 The 23rd Regiment of Foot was founded.

1750 Astronomer Caroline Herschel was born.

1751 James Madison, 4th President of the United States, was born.

1774 Matthew Flinders, the first European to circumnavigate Australia, was born.

1792 King Gustav III of Sweden was shot by Count Ackarström.

1802 The United States Military Academy was established at West Point, New York.

1815 Wilhelm I was proclaimed King of the Netherlands.

1822 Painter Rosa Bonheur was born.

1827 The first U.S. black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, began publishing, in New York City.

1829 Ohio authorized high school night classes.

1830 The New York Stock Exchange recorded its slowest day ever (31 shares traded).

1833 Susan Hayhurst became the first U.S. woman graduate of a pharmacy college.

1836 The Republic of Texas approved a constitution.

1839 Poet Sully Prudhomme was born.

1847 Physicist Georg S. Ohm was born.

1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was published.

1861 Arizona Territory voted to cede from the Union.
1861 The Confederate States of America appointed commissioners to Britain.

1867 Joseph Lister published an article outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery, in The Lancet.

1869 Hiram Revels made the first official speech by an African-American in the U.S. Senate.

1872 The Wanderers defeated the Royal Engineers at Kennington Oval in London, England, for the first ever FA Cup.

1878 Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, was born.

1881 The Barnum & Bailey Circus debuted.
1881 Composer Modest Mussorgsky died.

1882 The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty establishing the Red Cross.

1883 Susan Hayhurst became the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college in the United States.

1900 Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the Bronze Age city of Knossos, the home of the legendary Minotaur, on the island of Crete.

1906 Comedian Henny Youngman was born.

1911 The Ottawa Senators beat Port Arthur to win the Stanley Cup.
1911 Nazi doctor Josef Mengele was born.

1912 Mrs. William Howard Taft planted the first cherry tree in Washington, D.C.
1912 Pat Nixon, wife of President Richard Nixon, was born.

1915 The Federal Trade Commission was organized.

1916 The United States and Canada signed a treaty protecting migratory birds.

1922 Sultan Fuad I was crowned King of Egypt.

1924 The free port of Fiume was formally annexed by Italy.

1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket.
1926 Comedian Jerry Lewis was born.

1927 U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was born.

1934 The U.S. Congress passed the Migratory Bird Conservation Act.

1938 Temple defeated Colorado to win the first ever National Invitational Tournament.

1939 Germany occupied Czechoslovakia.
1939 Hungary annexed the republic of Karpato-Ukraine.

1941 The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C.
1941 Game show host Chuck Woolery was born.

1949 Actor Erik Estrada was born.

1966 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott successfully docked their Gemini spacecraft with another orbiting craft.

1968 American soldiers killed approximately 400 unarmed civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

1969 A Viasa DC-9 crashed into a heavily populated suburb of Maracaibo, Venezuela, killing all 84 persons aboard the airplane and at least 71 on the ground.
1969 The Boston Bruins scored an NHL record 8 goals in one period.

1970 Singer Tammi Terrell died.

1971 American politician Thomas E. Dewey died.

1978 Yuri Romanenko and Georgi M. Grechko returned from Salyut 6 after a record 96 days in space.
1978 Former Italian Premier Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
1978 A Bulgarian Tupelov-134 en roue to Warsaw, Poland, exploded and plunged to the ground soon after taking off from Sofia, Bulgaria, killing all 73 persons aboard.
1978 Actor Reb Russell died.

1983 Actor Arthur Godfrey died.

1985 Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson was taken hostage in Beirut, Lebanon.
1985 Hockey player Eddie Shore died.

1988 A chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja by Iraqi forces killed about 5,000 civilians.

1989 Basketball player Blake Griffin was born.

1991 Seven members of Reba McEntire'sband were killed in a plane crash.

1995 The Mississippi House of Representatives ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1996 Mike Tyson TKO's Frank Bruno in the 3rd round to win the heavyweight title.

2008 Actor Ivan Dixon died.

2012 A Turkish NATO helicopter crashed into a house in the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 10 persons.

2014 Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

2016 Singer Frank Sinatra, Jr., died.

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This page was last updated on January 16, 2018.