List of March 16th Major News Events

1948 Columbia Plane Crash

1948 : A plane crashed into a mountain in Columbia. Fourteen lives were lost in this crash. A protestant clergy member and his family were among those on board before this tragedy happened.

1953 U.S.A. Right To Work Laws

1953 : The U.S. Supreme Court gave power to enforce right-to-work laws to the state of Virginia. This action made it possible for state courts to stop peaceful picketing demonstrations if this action non-union workers’ employment.

1953 England Marshal Tito

1953 : Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia is the first Communist head of state to visit Great Britain, this follows a visit last September by the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden who visited Yugoslavia to strengthen ties between the two nations.

1964 U.S.A. NFL

1964 : Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers and Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions were reinstated by the National Football League after being suspended and investigated for gambling activities. . Find Out More About More History Of NFL Football including history, teams, growth, and the modern game.

1965 Canada Cancer and Cigarettes

1965 : Doctor William K. Kerr of the Toronto’s Department of Surgery reported the first ever biochemical link between cancer and cigarettes. Kerr was one of the groups of scientists who had studied the affects of cigarettes on persons, rather than just researching statistical studies.

1968 U.S.A. Robert F. Kennedy

1968 : Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, announced his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

1972 Canada Howard Hughes

1972 : Some people believed that Howard Hughes had traveled back to the United States by this time. However, other sources indicate that Hughes was still in Canada. Before this time, he had been in hiding Nicaragua. This was during the period in history when the author Irving had admitted in court that his yet-to-be-published biography about Hughes was a fraud.

1976 UK Harold Wilson

1976 : The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson shocks the political world by announcing his resignation after being the Labour leader for 13 years and prime minister for almost eight years.

1978 Italy Aldo Moro

1978 : The former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is kidnapped in Rome. His escort of five police bodyguards were killed when he was snatched at gunpoint from a car near a cafe in the morning rush-hour. The Red Brigade has claimed responsibility and has said it kidnapped the Christian Democratic leader.

1978 France Amoco Cadiz

1978 : The Amoco Cadiz wrecks off the coast of Portsall, France losing 68 million gallons of oil that caused environmental damage to 240 miles of France’s Brittany coastline.

1985 Lebanon Terry Anderson

1985 : Terry Anderson the Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press is is kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon, by Islamic militants.

1988 U.S.A. Microwaves

1988 : A summary of new weapon research was presented. A radiation specialist from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has made it known that both the U.S. and Soviet Union had plans to use microwaves to their advantage on land, naval, and air bases. A fear regarding the use of microwaves was very present from this time forward. It became possible for enemy forces to use the microwaves to destroy the systems on which most military centers run.

1988 Northern Ireland Murder at Cemetery

1988 : A gunman opens fire and throws grenades into the crowd of mourners at Milltown Cemetery in Northern Ireland killing 3 mourners and injuring at least 50 attending the funeral for IRA members shot dead in Gibraltar.

1988 Iraq Poison Gas Attack On Kurds

1988 : Thousands of people are killed in a poison gas attack cocktail which included mustard gas, the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX and possibly cyanide on the Kurdish city of Halabja in northern Iraq. The attack was believed to have been carried out by Iraq forces on the orders of Saddam Hussein.

1988 U.S.A. Iran-Contra Affair

1988 : Former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, former White House aide Oliver L. North and two others are indicted on charges relating to the Iran-Contra affair.

1990 Spain Seville

1990 : Seville, a small town located along the Guadalquivir River announced the planning of a special celebration. This is the town in Spain where Christopher Columbus resided in between voyages. The name of this celebration coming up was called the Universal Exhibition of 1992. The plan was to make the Monastery of Santa Maria de la Cuevas the central location of this event. Likewise, plans were to present this famous monastery as the Royal Pavilion during Exhibition 1992.

1998 Rwanda Mass Trials for 1994 Genocide

1998 : Rwanda began mass trials for the country's 1994 genocide of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu sympathizers in Rwanda, the trials had started in 1996 following the change of government but the backlog was so bad that mass trials were instituted. The genocide was perpetuated by Rwanda government leaders working in secret with youth group leaders, forming and arming militias called Interahamwe which were responsible for most of the murders, the Red Cross estimated that 500,000 Rwandans were murdered.

2000 U.S.A. Dow Jones

2000 : The Dow Jones Average shot up 500 points. This was one of the busiest trading days in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.

2003 Gaza Rachel Corrie

2003 : Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American in Gaza to protest Israel operations, was killed when she was run over by a bulldozer while trying to block troops from demolishing a Palestinian home.

2006 Iraq New Parliament

2006 : Iraq's newly elected parliament met briefly for the first time.

2006 United States National debt raised to 9 trillion dollars

2006 : The Senate has voted to raise the national debt ceiling to nearly 9 trillion dollars. This might prevent the first ever default on U.S. Treasury notes. The debt limit increase is the fourth since President Bush took office, and the move will allow the government to continue paying for the more expensive governmental packages, like the war in Iraq, without raising taxes. The 9 trillion dollar deficit will average out at about 30 thousand dollars a person.

2008 The Dalai Lama warns of violence in Tibet

2008 : The Dalai Lama has said he fears there will be more deaths in Tibet unless Beijing changes its policies in the Chinese-controlled region. Lhasa, Tibet's main city, has been reported quiet after the protests that took place there, but is under heavy Chinese restrictions. The Dalai Lama has said that the death toll from the protests may be as high as eighty. Indian-based officials have said that this figure has been confirmed by several sources, even though China has put the death toll at ten.

2008 Iraq McCain in Baghdad

2008 : John McCain has gone to Baghdad in a previously unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital. The Republican's presidential candidate will be meeting with U.S. and Iraqi officials during his trip there. He is also scheduled to visit London, Paris and Israel. The senator is well known for his strong support of the current U.S. policy in Iraq, and was one of the most prominent proponents of the 'surge' strategy.

2010 Sony sold the rights to Michael Jackson’s hits and unreleased work

2010 : Michael Jackson's estate has signed the world's biggest recording contract, nine months after the singer's death. The $250 million deal for up to ten recordings by 2017 is a huge bet on the singer's continuing popularity with people who are not familiar with his earlier works. It will give Sony the rights to sell Jackson's back catalog and previously unreleased tracks, as well as the soundtrack to the concert movie that Jackson was filming when he died. This will also allow Sony the right to exploit his music in video games, amusement park rides, television adverts, memorabilia and a DVD compilation.

2010 United States A halt to work on the border fence

2010 : The Obama Administration will be halting further work on the 'virtual fence' that runs along the U.S.-Mexican border. This will divert $50 million of the economic stimulus funds to other purposes. The move signals an almost certain death knell for the troubled five-year plan to drape a chain of tower-mounted sensors and other surveillance gear along most of the 2,000-mile southern border.

2011 Hip-Hop Star Nate Dogg Dies

2011 : Forty-one year old hip-hop and R&B star, Nathaniel Hale, also known as Nate Dogg, died after complications from two strokes. Nate Dogg had begun his career in the early 1990s and had collaborated with such artists as Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Warren G.

2012 Nicolae Timofti Elected President of Moldova

2012 : After three years of political stalemate Nicolae Timofti, an independent judge, was elected to be the president of Moldova in a parliamentary vote. The country had no full-time president since 2009 when the former president Vladimir Voronin resigned. The opposition party of Communists boycotted the vote.

2013 Pakistan Government Completes Term

2013 : An elected government completed a full term for the first time in the country's history. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf's government was the first to complete a full term since the country's formation in 1947. The success was praised for moving in the right direction of democracy as all previous governments had either been overthrown, ended by political infighting, or ended with assassinations and murders.

2014 Italy Venice Polls on Independence

2014 : Independence activists organized an online poll to gauge the opinions of Venice and the surrounding region on breaking away from the rest of Italy. Opinion polls suggested that up to two-thirds of the regions population would be in favor of independence. None of the polls conducted were considered legally binding.