This Day in History

March 16th in History

Massacre in My Lai, Nebuchadnezzar captures Jerusalem to begin the Babylonian Captivity, Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, and Mississippi outlaws slavery...in 1995. It's the birthday of Jerry Lewis, Pat Nixon, Josef Mengele, Henny Youngman, and Georg Ohm; RIP Arthur Godfrey, T. Bone Walker, Judge Roy Bean, and Emperor Tiberius of Rome. In Latvia, it's the Day of the Book Smugglers; in parts of Minnesota it's St. Urdu's Day, celebrating the hero who drove the grasshoppers from Finland!

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Quote of the Day

"You have been tried by twelve good men and true...and they have said you are guilty. Time will pass and seasons will come and go. Spring with its wavin' green grass and heaps of sweet-smellin' flowers on every hill and in every dale. Then sultry Summer, with her shimmerin' heatwaves on the baked horizon. And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growin' brown and golden under a sinkin' sun. And finally Winter, with its bitin', whirlin' wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow. But you won't be here to see any of 'em; not by a damn sight, because it's the order of this court that you be took to the nearest tree and hanged by the neck til you're dead, dead, dead, you...son of a billy goat."

Judge Roy Bean, law west of the Pecos died March 16, 1903