16 March History
- 37 - On a trip to the Italian mainland from his home on Capreae, the emperor Tiberius dies on the Bay of Naples.
- 1190 - The Crusades begin the massacre of Jews in York, England.
- 1527 - The Emperor Babur defeats the Rajputs at the Battle of Kanvaha, removing the main Hindu rivals in Northern India.
- 1621 - The first Indian appears to colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
- 1833 - Susan Hayhurst becomes the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college.
- 1850 - Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is published.
- 1865 - Union troops push past Confederate blockers at the Battle of Averasborough, N.C.
- 1907 - The British cruiser Invincible, the world's largest, is completed at Glasgow shipyards.
- 1913 - The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania is launched at Newport News, Va.
- 1917 - Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne.
- 1926 - Physicist Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket.
- 1928 - The United States plans to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua.
- 1935 - Adolf Hitler orders a German rearmament and violates the Versailles Treaty.
- 1939 - Germany occupies the rest Czechoslovakia.
- 1945 - Iwo Jima is declared secure by U.S. forces although small pockets of Japanese resistance still exist.
- 1954 - CBS introduces The Morning Show hosted by Walter Cornet to compete with NBC's Today Show.
- 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson submits a $1 billion war on poverty program to Congress.
- 1968 - U.S. troops in Vietnam destroy a village consisting mostly of women and children, the action is remembered as the My-Lai massacre.
- 1984 - Mozambique and South Africa sign a pact banning support for one another's internal foes.
- 1985 - Associated Press newsman, Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut.
16 March Birthdays
- 1751 - James Madison, fourth President of the United States (1809-17).
- 1789 - George S. Ohm, German physicist.
- 1822 - Rosa Bonheur, French painter and sculptor.
- 1822 - John Pope, Union general in the American Civil War.
- 1861 - Maxim Gorky, Russian dramatist
- 1912 - Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan Nixon, first lady to President Richard Nixon.
- 1926 - Jerry Lewis, American comedian and film actor.