The United States Military Academy—the first military school in the United States—is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science. Located at West Point, New York, the U.S. Military Academy is often simply known as West Point. Located on the high west bank […]

An Israeli-owned bulldozer kills 23-year-old American woman Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2003, as she protests a demolition campaign that destroyed over a thousand homes in the Gaza Strip. Following the death of their daughter, Corrie’s parents filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Israel, asserting she had been intentionally killed—or that the soldier driving […]

On March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns, the 85-year-old investment bank, narrowly avoids bankruptcy by its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. at the shockingly low price of $2 per share. Bear Stearns seemed to be riding high with a stock market capitalization of $20 billion in early 2007. But its increasing involvement in the […]

On March 16, 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution, recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist Papers and fourth president of the United States, is born on a plantation in Virginia. Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a […]

Francisco “Chico” Forster is shot to death by Lastania Abarta.

On March 16, 1970, Motown star Tammi Terrell died of complications from the malignant brain tumor that caused her 1967 collapse. Over a span of just 12 months beginning in April 1967, the duo of Terrell and Marvin Gaye and enjoyed a string of four straight hits with some of the greatest love songs ever […]

Infamous gunslinger John Wesley Hardin is pardoned after spending 15 years in a Texas prison for murder. Hardin, who was reputed to have shot and killed a man just for snoring, was 41 years old at the time of his release. Hardin probably killed in excess of 40 people during a six-year stretch beginning in […]

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of adultery and betrayal in colonial America, The Scarlet Letter, is published. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Although the infamous Salem witch trials had taken place more than 100 years earlier, the events still hung over the town and made a lasting impression on the young Hawthorne. Witchcraft figured […]

On March 16, 2005, after a three-month-long criminal trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a jury acquits Robert Blake, star of the 1970s television detective show “Baretta,” of the murder of his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. Blake, who was born Mickey Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, made his movie debut at the age […]

On March 16, 1903, Roy Bean, the self-proclaimed “law west of the Pecos,” dies in Langtry, Texas. A saloonkeeper and adventurer, Bean’s claim to fame rested on the often humorous and sometimes-bizarre rulings he meted out as a justice of the peace in western Texas during the late 19th century. By then, Bean was in […]