Today is Wednesday, March 16, the 76th day of 2016. There are 290 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1521 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines, where he is killed by natives the following month.
1527 – Mogul Emperor Barbar defeats Hindu Confederacy at Kanwanha, India.
1534 – England severs all relations with Roman Catholic Papacy.
1690 – France’s King Louis XIV sends troops to Ireland to fight for King James II.
1792 – Sweden’s King Gustavus II is shot and killed during a masquerade party at the Royal Opera of Stockholm.
1802 – Congress authorizes the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
1812 – Austria, in alliance with France, agrees to provide army for Napoleon Bonaparte.
1844 – Greece adopts Constitution with two chambers.
1850 – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter” is published in the United States.
1851 – Spanish Concordat with Papacy goes into effect, whereby Catholicism becomes sole faith in Spain and Church gains control of education and the press.
1906 – Japan nationalizes its railways.
1910 – Magician Harry Houdini becomes the first man to fly an airplane in Australia. He also drove a car for the first time on that trip. After that, he never did either again.
1917 – Russia’s Czar Nicholas II abdicates and Prince George Lvov, Paul Milivkov and Alexander Kerensky form ministry.
1922 – Britain recognizes Kingdom of Egypt under Fuad I, with joint Anglo-Egyptian sovereignty over Sudan.
1926 – The first liquid-fuel rocket is successfully launched by Prof.
Robert Goddard at Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket travels 56 meters (184 feet) in 2.5 seconds.
1934 – Rome protocols signed between Italy, Austria and Hungary to form Danubian bloc against Little Entente of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.
1935 – Germany repudiates disarmament clauses of Versailles Treaty that ended World War I.
1945 – Japanese resistance to U.S. assault on Iwo Jima in Pacific comes to end in World War II.
1968 – During the Vietnam War, the My Lai massacre is carried out by U.S. troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley Jr.
1978 – Italian politician Aldo Moro is kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas, who later murder him.
1985 – American journalist Terry Anderson of The Associated Press is captured by Muslim extremists in Beirut. He is released almost seven years later.
1993 – Bomb in Calcutta, India, kills 69.
1994 – Russia agrees to phase out production of weapons-grade plutonium.
1995 – In a first for Russian-American cooperation in space, a Soyuz space capsule carrying an American astronaut docks with the orbiting Russian space station Mir.
1998 – Rwanda, with 125,000 suspects for 500,000 murders, begins mass trials for the country’s 1994 genocide.
1999 – The entire European Commission, the top executive body of the European Union, resigns after allegations of corruption and inefficiency.
2003 – Anti-war protesters demonstrate across the United States to show their support for peace, including an estimated 10,000 protesters in Chicago.
2005 – Syrian military intelligence agents leave Beirut, ending an 18-year presence in Lebanon.
2009 – Iran’s most prominent reformer former President Mohammed Khatami pulls out of the race against the country’s hardline president, saying he does not want to split the pro-reform vote.
2012 – Apple’s latest iPad draws the customary lines of die-hard fans looking to be first and entrepreneurs looking to make a quick profit.
The new, third model comes with a faster processor, a much sharper screen and an improved camera.
2013 — One of the highest ranking military officers yet to abandon Syrian President Bashar Assad defects to neighboring Jordan and says that morale among those still inside the regime has collapsed.
2014 — Just two weeks after Russian troops seized their peninsula, Crimeans vote to leave Ukraine and join Russia.
2015 — A Roman Catholic archbishop in Australia is charged with covering up a pedophile priest during the 1970s.
Today’s Birthdays:
James Madison, U.S. president (1751-1836); Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist (1787-1854); Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer (1839-1881); Reza Shah Pahlavi, shah of Iran (1878-1946); Jerry Lewis, U.S. comedian (1926–); Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian film director (1941–); Kate Nelligan, Canadian born actress (1951–).
Thought For Today:
He who does not enjoy his own company is usually right — Coco Chanel, French fashion designer (1883-1971).
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