597 BC – Babylonians capture Jerusalem, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king.
1830 – New York Stock Exchange slowest day ever (31 shares traded)
1850 – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” published
1861 – Arizona Territory votes to leave the Union
1881 – Barnum & Bailey Circus debuts
1910 – Barney Oldfield uses a Benz to break the existing records at Daytona Beach Road Course (131.25mph)
1916 – US and Canada sign migratory bird treaty
1926 – Robert Goddard launches first liquid fuel rocket, goes 184′ (56 meters)
1939 – Germany occupies Czechoslovakia
1945 – Würzburg, Germany is 90% destroyed, with 5,000 dead, in only 20 minutes by British bombers
1968 – My Lai massacre occurs. Hundreds die in a mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968.
Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.
Initially, three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several U.S. Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Only after thirty years were they recognized and decorated, one posthumously, by the U.S. Army for shielding non-combatants from harm in a war zone.
1968 – Robert Kennedy announces his Presidential campaign
1968 – General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, the Oldsmobile Toronado.
1984 – Gunmen kidnap William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut
1998 – Pope John Paul II asks God for forgiveness for the inactivity and silence of some Roman Catholics during the Holocaust
