TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
16 March
◆597 BCE The Babylonians capture Jerusalem.
◆1190 Crusaders initiate massacre of the Jews of York, England, c. 500 die.
◆1322 Battle of Boroughbridge: Sir Andrew Harclay defeats the Earl of Lancaster.
◆1527 Battle of Khanua: Babur's Moghuls defeat the Rajputs.
◆1751 James Madison (d.1836), fourth president of the United States (1809-17), was born in Port Conway, Va. He invented the 1787 electoral college system “to break the tyranny of the majority.” “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Pierce Butler of South Carolina first proposed the electoral college system.
◆1802 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was established for the second time.
◆1802 The United States Military Academy–the first military school in the United States–is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science.★
◆1822 John Pope, Union general in the American Civil War is born.
◆1836 The Republic of Texas approved a constitution.
◆1861 Arizona Territory voted to leave the Union.
◆1862 Union gunboats and mortar boats under Flag Officer Foote commenced bombardment of strongly fortified and strategically located Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River.
◆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.
◆1882 US Senate ratified a treaty establishing the Red Cross.
◆1911 Hulk of USS Maine sunk at sea in deep water with full military honors.
◆1913 The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania is launched.★
◆1916 The new Dutch passenger liner 'Tubatina' is torpedoed off the Netherlands, Germany denies responsibility despite recovery of portions of the torpedo.
◆1922 Marines guarded the U.S. mail during a national crime wave.
◆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.★
◆1928 The United States plans to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua to keep the peace in the civil war there and to help administer and monitor upcoming elections.
◆1930 USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) was floated out to become a national shrine.
◆1935 Adolf Hitler scrapped the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler ordered a German rearmament and violated the Versailles Treaty.
◆1939 Hungary annexes Carpatho-Ukraine district of Czechoslovakia.
◆1940 US envoy and Under-Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, holds talks with Mussolini, Count Ciano, the foreign minister, and King Victor Emmanuel III on the last stop of his mission to discuss conditions for mediation or peace talks in Europe. He receives a cordial but non-committal welcome.
◆1942 Japanese siege guns bombard American forts in Manila Bay. One 240 mm shell detonates beneath a Fort Frank powder room, breaking up the concrete and hurling some 60 (filled) powder cans about. Miraculously, none of them explode or catch fire.
◆1943 Solomon Is: U.S. destroyers shell Vila.
◆1944 The Allied forces of the US 5th Army continue attacking around Cassino. No progress is made. The German 1st Paratroop Division (part of the 76th Panzer Corps, 10th Army) continues to hold.
◆1944 On Los Negros and Manus, American forces are advancing. Japanese resistance is increasing on Manus.
◆1944 US aircraft strike a Japanese convoy off Wewak.
◆1945 Part of the US 41st Division lands on Basilan Island. Here, as on other small islands, the US forces to subdue the Japanese garrison during the first few days of battle and then mostly to withdraw, leaving the mopping up to Filipino irregulars. Meanwhile, fighting continues on Luzon, with US 14th Corps engaged along the Japanese held Shimbu Line, southeast of Manila, while the US 1st Corps is engaged to the north on the Villa Verde track.
◆1945 Bitche is taken as US 7th Army continues its efforts to break through the Siegfried Line.
◆1945 Iwo Jima is declared secured by the U.S. military after months of fiercely fighting its Japanese defenders.
◆1951 In the wake of allied successes of Operation RIPPER, communist forces attempted to disengage and withdraw.
◆1954 France calculates that the greater portion of its expenses in Indochina (Vietnam) has been borne by the United States. The US has opposed a negotiated settlement, believing that this would doom Southeast Asia to Communist control.
◆1955 President Eisenhower upheld the use of atomic weapons in case of war.
◆1959 John Sailling (111), last documented Civil War vet, died.
◆1966 Launch of Gemini 8. Former naval aviator Neil Armstrong flew on this mission which completed 7 orbits in 10 hours and 41 minutes at an altitude of 161.3 nautical miles. Recovery was by USS Leonard F. Mason (DD-852).
◆1968 LBJ decided to send 35-50,000 more troops to Vietnam.
◆1968 My Lai massacre.★
◆1975 The withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum begins, as thousands of civilians join the soldiers streaming down Route 7B toward the sea.
◆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.★
◆1988 Saddam Hussein uses mustard gas to attack Kurds. In the northern Iraqi town of Halabja, nearly 5,000 people are killed.
◆1994 Russia agreed to phase out production of weapons-grade plutonium.