On this day: March 16

Events on March 16

• 597 BC Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem and installed Zedekiah as King of Judah. Wikipedia
• 1190 Massacre of Jews at Clifford's Tower, York. Wikipedia
• 1792 King Gustav III of Sweden is shot; he dies on March 29. Wikipedia
• 1872 The Wanderers F.C. win the first FA Cup, the oldest football competition in the world, beating Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London. Wikipedia
• 1898 In Melbourne, the representatives of five colonies adopt a constitution, which would become the basis of the Commonwealth of Australia.[page needed] Wikipedia
• 1926 History of rocketry: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts. Wikipedia
• 1935 Adolf Hitler orders Germany to rearm itself in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht. Wikipedia
• 1941 World War II: Operation Appearance took place to re-establish British Somaliland in Africa. Wikipedia
• 1945 World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ends, but small pockets of Japanese resistance persist. Wikipedia
• 1960 African American civil rights activists in Savannah, Georgia, conducted a sit-in, commencing the Savannah Protest Movement. Wikipedia
• 1966 Launch of Gemini 8 with astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott. It would perform the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit. Wikipedia
• 1968 Vietnam War: My Lai massacre occurs; between 347 and 500 Vietnamese villagers are killed by American troops. Wikipedia
• 1968 Vietnam War: American soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Sơn Mỹ village in the Sơn Tịnh District of South Vietnam. Wikipedia
• 1978 A Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Tupolev Tu-134 crashes near Gabare, Bulgaria, killing 73. Wikipedia
• 1984 William Buckley, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists. Wikipedia
• 1984 William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Lebanon, is kidnapped by Hezbollah; he later dies in captivity. Wikipedia
• 1985 Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut; he is not released until December 1991. Wikipedia
• 1988 Halabja chemical attack: The Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5,000 people and injuring about 10,000 people. Wikipedia
• 1988 The Troubles: Ulster loyalist militant Michael Stone attacks a Provisional IRA funeral in Belfast with pistols and grenades. Three persons, one of them a member of PIRA, are killed, and more than 60 others are wounded. Wikipedia
• 1988 Iran–Iraq War: Iraqi forces began attacking the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons, killing up to 5,000 people. Wikipedia
• 1995 Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865. Wikipedia
• 2005 Israel officially hands over Jericho to Palestinian control. Wikipedia
• 2010 The Kasubi Tombs, Uganda's only cultural World Heritage Site, are destroyed in a fire. Wikipedia
• 2014 Crimea votes in a controversial referendum to secede from Ukraine to join Russia. Wikipedia
• 2021 Atlanta spa shootings: Eight people are killed and one is injured in a trio of shootings at spas in and near Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. A suspect is arrested the same day. Wikipedia
• 2025 A fire breaks out in a nightclub in Kočani, North Macedonia, killing at least 59 people and injuring 155 others. Wikipedia

Born on March 16

• 1399 The Xuande Emperor, ruler of Ming China (died 1435) Wikipedia
• 1750 Caroline Herschel, German-English astronomer (died 1848) Wikipedia
• 1751 James Madison, American academic and politician, 4th President of the United States (died 1836) Wikipedia
• 1774 Matthew Flinders, English navigator and cartographer (died 1814) Wikipedia
• 1789 Georg Ohm, German physicist and mathematician (died 1854) Wikipedia
• 1839 Sully Prudhomme, French poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1907) Wikipedia
• 1859 Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist and inventor (died 1906) Wikipedia
• 1892 César Vallejo, Peruvian poet (died 1938) Wikipedia
• 1911 Josef Mengele, German physician, SS captain and mass-murderer (died 1979) Wikipedia
• 1912 Pat Nixon, American teacher, First Lady of the United States (died 1993) Wikipedia
• 1918 Frederick Reines, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1998) Wikipedia
• 1926 Jerry Lewis, American actor and comedian (died 2017) Wikipedia
• 1927 Vladimir Komarov, Russian pilot, engineer, and cosmonaut (died 1967) Wikipedia
• 1936 Raymond Vahan Damadian, Armenian-American inventor, invented the MRI (died 2022) Wikipedia
• 1941 Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian director and screenwriter (died 2018) Wikipedia
• 1944 Andrew S. Tanenbaum, American computer scientist and academic Wikipedia
• 1953 Richard Stallman, American computer scientist and programmer Wikipedia
• 1953 Isabelle Huppert, French actress Wikipedia
• 1959 Jens Stoltenberg, Norwegian economist and politician, 27th Prime Minister of Norway, 13th Secretary General of NATO Wikipedia
• 1965 Mark Carney, Canadian economist and politician, Prime Minister of Canada Wikipedia
• 1986 Alexandra Daddario, American actress Wikipedia
• 1989 Theo Walcott, English footballer Wikipedia

Died on March 16

• 37 Tiberius, Roman emperor (born 42 BC) Wikipedia
• 455 Valentinian III, Roman emperor (assassinated; b. 419) Wikipedia
• 1185 Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (born 1161) Wikipedia
• 1485 Anne Neville, Queen Consort of Richard III of England (born 1456) Wikipedia
• 1736 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer (born 1710) Wikipedia
• 1914 Charles Albert Gobat, Swiss lawyer and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1843) Wikipedia
• 1930 Miguel Primo de Rivera, Spanish general and politician, Prime Minister of Spain (born 1870) Wikipedia
• 1935 John Macleod, Scottish physician and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1876) Wikipedia
• 1937 Austen Chamberlain, English politician, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1863) Wikipedia
• 1940 Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish author and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1858) Wikipedia
• 1957 Constantin Brâncuși, Romanian-French sculptor, painter, and photographer (born 1876) Wikipedia
• 1979 Jean Monnet, French economist and politician (born 1888) Wikipedia
• 1998 Derek Barton, English-American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1918) Wikipedia
• 2018 Louise Slaughter, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York (born 1929) Wikipedia

Holidays and observances

• Christian feast day: Eusebia of Hamage Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Finian Lobhar (Finian the Leper) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Heribert of Cologne Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Hilarius of Aquileia Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Jean de Brébeuf Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Blessed John Amias and Robert Dalby Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Julian of Antioch Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: March 16 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Wikipedia
• Day of the Book Smugglers (Lithuania) Wikipedia
• Remembrance day of the Latvian legionnaires (Latvia) Wikipedia
• Saint Urho's Day (Finnish Americans and Finnish Canadians) Wikipedia

The events, births, deaths and observances above are from the English Wikipedia article “March 16” and the articles it links to (authors and history), retrieved 2026-10-09 through the Wikimedia “On this day” feed. They are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; this selection is shared under the same licence. We picked the 26 events, 22 births and 14 deaths with the widest coverage across Wikipedia's language editions (counted from Wikidata) and sorted them by year; the wording is unchanged apart from removing references to pictures.