March 16 in History

March 16 is the 76th day of the year. There are 290 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1190 – 150 Jews were massacred in York Castle in England.
• 1621 - Samoset, of the Mohegan tribe, strolled into the Plymouth Colony and greeted the colonists in English.
• 1802 – The Army Corps of Engineers was established to found and operate the US Military Academy at West Point.
• 1872 – The Wanderers F.C. won the first FA Cup, the oldest football  competition in the world.
• 1912 – Lawrence Oates, a member of Robert Falcon Scott’s South Pole expedition who had become ill, his tent into a blizzard, saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time." He died in the blizzard.
• 1926 – Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.
• 1958 – The Ford Motor Company produced its 50 millionth automobile, a Thunderbird.
• 1968 – General Motors produced its 100 millionth automobile, an Oldsmobile Toronado.
• 1988 – The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq was 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.
• 1995 – Mississippi formally ratified the 13th Amendment becoming the last state to aboloish slavery. 
• 1998 – Pope John Paul II asked God for forgiveness for the inactivity and silence of Roman Catholics during the Holocaust.