Also on this day
American Revolution
1751
On this day in 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution, recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist Papers and fourth president of the United States, is born on a plantation in Virginia.
Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University),...
Automotive
2003
On this day in 2003, race car driver Ricky Craven wins the Darlington 500, crossing the finish line .002 seconds ahead of Kurt Busch for the closest recorded finish in National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) history. In May 2009, more than 5,000 racing fans voted Craven’s victory the...
Civil War
1865
On this day in 1865, the mighty army of Union General William T. Sherman encounters its most significant resistance as it tears through the Carolinas on its way to join General Ulysses Grant’s army at Petersburg, Virginia. Confederate General William Hardee tried to block one wing of Sherman’s force, commanded...
Cold War
1988
As part of his continuing effort to put pressure on the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, President Ronald Reagan orders over 3,000 U.S. troops to Honduras, claiming that Nicaraguan soldiers had crossed its borders. As with so many of the other actions taken against Nicaragua during the Reagan years, the...
Crime
1881
Francisco “Chico” Forster is shot to death on downtown Los Angeles street by his jilted lover, eighteen-year old Lastania Abarta. The forty-year old Forster was the son of wealthy Los Angeles land developer and considered one of the city’s most eligible bachelors despite his reputation for womanizing and poorly treating...
Disaster
1978
One of the world’s worst supertanker disasters takes places when the Amoco Cadiz wrecks off the coast of Portsall, France, on this day in 1978. Although the 68 million gallons of oil that spilled from the Cadiz has since been exceeded by other spills, this remains the largest shipwreck in...
General Interest
1926
The first man to give hope to dreams of space travel is American Robert H. Goddard, who successfully launches the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. The rocket traveled for 2.5 seconds at a speed of about 60 mph, reaching an altitude of 41 feet...
1968
On this day in 1968, a platoon of American soldiers brutally slaughter more than 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, one of a cluster of small villages located near the northern coast of South Vietnam.
In March 1968, a platoon of soldiers called Charlie Company received word that Viet Cong guerrillas...
1985
In Beirut, Lebanon, Islamic militants kidnap American journalist Terry Anderson and take him to the southern suburbs of the war-torn city, where other Western hostages are being held in scattered dungeons under ruined buildings. Before his abduction, Anderson covered the Lebanese Civil War for The Associated Press (AP) and also...
2008
On this day in 2008, Bear Stearns, the 85-year-old investment bank, narrowly avoids bankruptcy by its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. at the shockingly low price of $2 per share.
With a stock market capitalization of $20 billion in early 2007, Bear Stearns seemed to be riding high. But...
Hollywood
2005
On this day in 2005, after a three-month-long criminal trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a jury acquits Robert Blake, star of the 1970s television detective show Baretta, of the murder of his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.
Blake, who was born Mickey Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, made his...
Literary
1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of adultery and betrayal in colonial America, The Scarlet Letter, is published.
Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Although the infamous Salem witch trials had taken place more than 100 years earlier, the events still hung over the town and made a lasting impression on the...
Music
1970
Over a span of just 12 months beginning in April 1967, the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell enjoyed a string of four straight hits with some of the greatest love songs ever recorded at Motown Records. Sadly, only the first two of those four hits were released while...
Old West
1903
Roy Bean, the self-proclaimed “law west of the Pecos,” dies in Langtry, Texas.
A saloonkeeper and adventurer, Bean’s claim to fame rested on the often humorous and sometimes-bizarre rulings he meted out as a justice of the peace in western Texas during the late 19th century. By then, Bean was in...
Presidential
1751
Future President James Madison is born on this day in 1751 in Port Conway, Virginia. Madison, one of the key drafters of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, became America’s fourth president in 1809. He is considered the Father of the Constitution, though he humbly referred to its...
Sports
1953
On March 16, 1953, baseball’s owners refuse to allow Bill Veeck to move his struggling St. Louis Browns to Baltimore, which forces Veeck to sell the team. Veeck was the clown prince among baseball owners, prone to boneheaded stunts as well as inspired pranks, all aimed at bringing people to...
Vietnam War
1968
In what would become the most publicized war atrocity committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam, a platoon slaughters between 200 and 500 unarmed villagers at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets in the coastal lowlands of the northernmost region of South Vietnam.
My Lai 4 was situated in a heavily...
1975
The withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum begins, as thousands of civilians join the soldiers streaming down Route 7B toward the sea. In late January 1975, just two years after the cease-fire established by the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese launched Campaign 275. The objective of this campaign was to...
World War I
1916
On this day in 1916, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the man largely responsible for the buildup of the German navy in the years before World War I and the aggressive naval strategy pursued by Germany during the first two years of the war, tenders his resignation to Kaiser Wilhelm II,...
World War II
1945
On this day, the west Pacific volcanic island of Iwo Jima is declared secured by the U.S. military after months of fiercely fighting its Japanese defenders.
The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese defense of Iwo Jima in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25 bombers raided the island for 74...