Today in History: March 16, US soldiers kill hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese in My Lai massacre
American soldiers look over the remains of a home in My Lai, South Vietnam in this Jan. 8, 1970 file photo. The GIs are in a safe area marked off with white tape, having been swept for booby-traps that have already wounded five soldiers since the investigation of the killing of unarmed civilians by members of the U.S. Army; what would come to be called The My Lai Massacre, began. (AP Photo/File)
Today in History:
On March 16, 1968, the My Lai (mee ly) massacre took place during the Vietnam War as U.S. Army soldiers hunting for Viet Cong fighters and sympathizers killed unarmed villagers in two hamlets of Son My (suhn mee) village; estimates of the death toll vary from 347 to 504.
On this date:
In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew reached the Philippines, where Magellan was killed during a battle with natives the following month.
In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson signed a measure authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
In 1935, Adolf Hitler decided to break the military terms set by the Treaty of Versailles by ordering the rearming of Germany.
In 1945, during World War II, American forces declared they had secured Iwo Jima, although pockets of Japanese resistance remained.
In 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In 1972, in a nationally broadcast address, President Richard Nixon called for a moratorium on court-ordered school busing to achieve racial desegregation.
In 1984, William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped by Hezbollah militants (he was tortured by his captors and killed in 1985).
In 1994, figure skater Tonya Harding pleaded guilty in Portland, Oregon, to conspiracy to hinder prosecution for covering up an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan, avoiding jail but drawing a $100,000 fine.
In 2004, China declared victory in its fight against bird flu, saying it had “stamped out” all its known cases.
In 2014, Crimeans voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia, overwhelmingly approving a referendum that sought to unite the strategically important Black Sea region with the country it was part of for some 250 years.
In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to take the seat of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had died the previous month. (Republicans who controlled the Senate would stick to their pledge to leave the seat empty until after the presidential election; they confirmed Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch in April 2017.)
In 2018, singer Aretha Franklin canceled two upcoming concerts, saying a doctor had told her to stay off the road and rest completely for at least two months. (Franklin died five months later from pancreatic cancer.)
In 2020, amid coronavirus concerns, global stocks plunged again with Wall Street seeing a 12% decline, its worst in more than 30 years, and Ohio called off its presidential primary just hours before polls were to open while Arizona, Florida and Illinois went ahead with their plans.
In 2021, a gunman killed eight people, mostly women of Asian descent, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors in an attack that sent terror through the Asian-American community, which had increasingly been targeted during the pandemic; the white gunman, Robert Long, told police that the attack was not racially motivated, and that he had a “sex addiction.” (Long was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in four of the deaths.)
In 2022, a powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Fukushima in northern Japan.