1969 – The U.S. Army announced that several had been charged with massacre and the subsequent cover-up in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam on March 16, 1968.
0013 – General Tiberius’ (later Emperor) triumphant procession through Rome after siege of Germany
0534 – Second and final revision of the Justinian Code published, a codified set of imperial and classical laws begun initially in 528
1491 – An auto de fe, held in the Brasero de la Dehesa outside of Ávila, concludes the case of the Holy Child of La Guardia with the public execution of several Jewish and converso suspects.
1519 – City of Havana moved to its current location to avoid mosquito infestations
1532 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro captures Inca Emperor Atahualpa after a surprise ambush at Cajamarca in the Peruvian Andes
1581 – Tsar Ivan the Terrible attacks his son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, with a scepter after an argument leading to the latter’s death three days later
1632 – Battle of Lützen: Significant battle of Thirty Years’ War – Swedish and Saxon forces defeat the Holy Roman Empire, at cost of the death of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus
1676 – 1st colonial prison organized in Nantucket, Massachusetts
1764 – Native Americans surrender to British in Indian War of Chief Pontiac
1776 – British troops captured Fort Washington during the American Revolution.
1798 – Kentucky becomes first state to nullify an act of Congress
1840 – New Zealand officially becomes a British colony
1849 – Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor
1871 – The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) was first chartered in the State of New York.
1885 – Canadian rebel Louis Riel was executed for high treason.
1894 – 6,000 Armenians massacred by Turks in Kurdistan
1907 – Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th state.
1915 – Coca-Cola had its prototype for a contoured bottle patented. The bottle made its commercial debut the next year.
1919 – Admiral Miklós Horthy, head of the Hungarian National Army, seizes Budapest and will later become regent of the restored Kingdom of Hungary
1933 – Brazilian President Getulio Vargas declares himself dictator
1933 – The United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations for the first time.
1938 – LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland
1940 – Warsaw ghetto sealed, The largest Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland, the Warsaw ghetto, was created in October 1940 by a German decree. According to the decree, all Jews in the city had to move to the ghetto, which was closed off by a 10 feet wall and had soldiers and police guarding it from the outside 24 hours a day. The ghetto was the scene of one of the largest Jewish uprisings during the Second World War in 1943.
1945 – UNESCO founded, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a special branch of the United Nations which promotes peace and well-being through education, scientific collaboration and cultural understanding and exchange. It is headquartered in Paris, France and has 195 state members
1947 – 15,000 demonstrate in Brussels against mild sentence of Nazis
1950 – US President Harry Truman proclaims emergency crisis caused by communist threat
1952 – In the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy first held a football for Charlie Brown.
1957 – American murderer and bodysnatcher Ed Gein kills his last victim
1961 – United Kingdom limits immigration from Commonwealth countries
1961 – US President JFK decides to increase military aid to South Vietnam without committing US combat troops
1966 – Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial of charges he had murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954.
1969 – The U.S. Army announced that several had been charged with massacre and the subsequent cover-up in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam on March 16, 1968. https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1
1970 – South Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky defends operations in Cambodia because communist forces could overrun South Vietnam “within 24 hours” if troops operating there were withdrawn
1973 – Skylab 3 carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on an 84-day mission.
1973 – U.S. President Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.
1981 – President Reagan decides on a covert plan to block the Cuban aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador
1981 – A vaccine for hepatitis B was approved. The vaccine had been developed at Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research.
1982 – An agreement was announced on the 57th day of a strike by National Football League (NFL) players.
1985 – Colonel Oliver North was put in charge of the shipment of HAWK anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.
1988 – Estonia’s parliament declared that the Baltic republic “sovereign,” but stopped short of complete independence.
1989 – Six Jesuit priests including Ignacio Ellacuría and two others are assassinated killed by Salvadoran army – one of the most notorious acts of the Salvadoran civil war
1997 – China released Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident from jail for medical reasons. He had been incarcerated for almost 18 years.
1998 – In Burlington, Wisconsin, five high school students, aged 15 to 16, were arrested in an alleged plot to kill a carefully selected group of teachers and students.
1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court said that union members could file discrimination lawsuits against employers even when labor contracts require arbitration.
2000 – Bill Clinton became the first serving U.S. president to visit Communist Vietnam
2002 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein says that he had to accept UN Resolution 1441 because the United States and Israel had shown their “claws and teeth” and declared unitlateral war on the Iraqi people
2002 – The first case of SARS is recorded in Foshan City, Guangdong Province, China, though is not identified until much later. First patient is thought to be a farmer in the city.
2015 – French President François Hollande declares the country at war with ISIS in an address to parliament
2017 – US senator Al Franken accused of groping and forcibly kissing a woman
2018 – CIA concludes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
2019 – Samoa declares state of emergency over measles epidemic closing all schools after six deaths
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
