Nicosia, Cyprus. A number of major events have occurred on March 16 across politics, conflict, and international affairs. The date includes milestones ranging from government transitions to killings and environmental disasters.
Political developments and government changes
In 1917, Russia’s Grand Duke Michael, brother of Tsar Nicholas II who had abdicated the day before, refused to take the throne, and a provisional government under Prince Georgi Lvov took office.
In 1939, Slovakia was placed under German “protection,” and Hungary annexed Ruthenia, formerly part of Czechoslovakia.
In 1999, all 20 members of the EU Commission resigned a day after a report into fraud and cronyism accused them of losing control over the Brussels bureaucracy.
Deaths of political figures
In 1930, Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera died.
In 1937, Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain, a British statesman, died. As British foreign secretary he negotiated the Locarno Pact in 1925 and won that year’s Nobel peace prize with U.S. Vice President Charles Gates Dawes.
Conflict, violence, and crime
In 1968, U.S. soldiers killed at least 100 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai in what became known as the My Lai massacre.
In 1978, Red Brigades guerrillas kidnapped former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. He was found dead on May 9, 1978.
In 2002, two men killed the unescorted Isaias Duarte Cancino, the Archbishop of Cali in Colombia, as he left the Buen Pastor Church after celebrating an evening mass wedding.
Environmental disaster
In 1978, the tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off France’s Brittany coast, spilling about 220,000 tons of oil.
Which of these March 16 events do you want to learn more about?
