On March 16…

“What he did was extraordinary, and he paid a price for it the rest of his life. He was shunned. He’d walk into a bar, everyone would leave. It broke Hugh’s heart. It really did. The military was so blind. Here they had an example of the highest military integrity and they didn’t know what to do with it. Instead, they degraded him and assassinated his character.”
~Larry Colburn
Discussing Hugh Thompson, Jr.
The hero of the Mỹ Lai Massacre

1621 – Samoset, a member of the Eastern Abenaki tribe that resided in what now is Maine, visited the settlers of Plymouth Colony and … asked for a beer.
No, he really did, but more on that in a minute.
His first words were actually (in English), “Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset.”
He said he had learned some English from fishermen who came to fish off Monhegan Island and knew many of the fishing captains by name.
Now, about that beer.
“He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all; he asked for some beer, but we gave him strong water and biscuit, and butter, and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of mallard, all which he liked well.”
He spent the night with the Pilgrims on that occasion, then returned at another time with five other Indians who brought deer skins to trade. Samoset came back again on March 22 with Squanto, the last remaining member of the Patuxet tribe.
Samoset and Squanto informed the colonists that the king of the Wampanoag named Massasoit was waiting nearby and wanted to meet with the Pilgrims.
Later that day, Massasoit did appear, with 60 of his men. Although there was some initial reluctance on the part of both parties to send emissaries, they eventually met and exchanged gifts and entertainment. The meeting was the beginning of Massasoit’s long-term friendship and defense pact with the Pilgrims.

1861 – Edward Clark became Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, a man who had been an important leader of the Texas Revolution, and had previously served as the first President of the Republic of Texas.
After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, several Southern states seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America.
A Texas political convention voted to secede from the United States on February 1, 1861, and Houston proclaimed that Texas was once again an independent republic, but he refused to recognize that same convention’s authority to join Texas to the Confederacy.
After Houston (shown above following his removal) refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, the legislature declared the governorship vacant. Two days later, Clark replaced him.

1926 – Rocket science pioneer Robert H. Goddard successfully tested the first liquid-fueled rocket, in Auburn, MA.
Present at the launch were his crew chief Henry Sachs, Esther Goddard, and Percy Roope, who was Clark’s assistant professor in the physics department. Goddard’s diary entry of the event was notable for its understatement:
“March 16. Went to Auburn with Sachs in a.m. Esther and Mr. Roope came out at 1 p.m. Tried rocket at 2.30. It rose 41 feet & went 184 feet, in 2.5 secs., after the lower half of the nozzle burned off. Brought materials to lab.”
Goddard’s rocket didn’t fly high or far, but it was an important demonstration that liquid fuels and oxidizers were possible propellants for larger rockets. The launch site is now a National Historic Landmark.

1968 – Days after President Lyndon Johnson’s narrow victory over challenger Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy declared his own candidacy for president.
He made his announcement in the Caucus Room of the old Senate office building, the same room where his brother had declared his own candidacy eight years earlier.
He stated, “I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I’m obliged to do all I can.”
McCarthy and his supporters criticized Kennedy as an opportunist. With Kennedy joining the race, liberal Democrats thought that votes among supporters of the anti-war movement would now be split between McCarthy and Kennedy.

1968 – It was a watershed in the history of modern American combat, and a turning point in the public perception of the Vietnam War.
In the course of three hours, more than 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed in cold blood at the hands of U.S. troops who – on a “search and destroy” mission to root out communist fighters in Viet Cong territory – gunned down hundreds of unarmed civilians in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province – marked on U.S. Army topographic maps as Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê..
Two platoons moved in shortly after 8:00 a.m., while a third was held back for “mopping up” duties. Both platoons soon splintered and once the shooting started it sparked a chain reaction.
Some of the 120 or so soldiers opted out of the killing spree, but troop commander Lt. William Calley was not one of them. In one incident, Calley ordered two of his men to fire on a group of 60 civilians they had rounded up. When one refused, Calley, standing 10 feet from the crowd, did it himself.
Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., a helicopter pilot from Company B (Aero-Scouts), 123rd Aviation Battalion, Americal Division, saw dead and wounded civilians as he was flying over the village of Sơn Mỹ, providing close-air support for ground forces.
Thompson and his crew – crew chief Spc. 4 Glenn Andreotta and Spc. 4 Larry Colburn – made several attempts to help the wounded. They repeatedly landed the helicopter and confronted their fellow troops and higher-ranking officers at the point of machine guns to save others.
They personally saved a dozen people from certain death, then Thompson reported what he’d seen up the chain of command, ending the operation.
The incident was subsequently covered up, but eventually came to light a year later. An Army board of inquiry, headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers, investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 persons who knew of the atrocity, but only 14, including Calley and his company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, were charged with crimes.
All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, whose platoon allegedly killed 200. He was found guilty of personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army.
Proclaimed by much of the public as a “scapegoat,” Calley was paroled by President Richard Nixon in 1974 after having served about a third of his 10-year sentence.

1971 – At the 13th Grammy Awards, Simon & Garfunkel won six Grammys, including the three major Grammy Awards (Album of The Year, Record of The Year, and Song of The Year (which went to songwriter Paul Simon), all for Bridge Over Troubled Water.
The other Album of The Year nominees were Chicago (Chicago), Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Déjà vu), Elton John (Elton John), James Taylor (Sweet Baby James), and the Carpenters (Close To You).
The other Record of The Year nominees were James Taylor (Fire And Rain), Ray Stevens (Everything Is Beautiful), the Beatles (Let It Be), and the Carpenters (Close To You).
The other Song of The Year (awarded to songwriter) nominees were James Taylor (Fire And Rain), John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Let It Be), Ray Stevens (Everything Is Beautiful) , and Roger Nichols and Paul Williams (We’ve Only Just Begun).

1983 – Arthur Godfrey died of Emphysema at the age of 79.
At the peak of his success in the mid-1950s, Godfrey was the host of two CBS weekly series ( Arthur Godfrey and His Friends and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and a daily 90-minute television mid-morning show, but, by the early 1960s, his presence had been reduced to hosting the occasional TV special and his daily network radio show, which ended in 1972.
Godfrey was well-known for discovering and nurturing young talent. His “Little Godfreys” were regulars on his TV and radio shows. One of these young players was Julius La Rosa, a Brooklyn-born singer who met Godfrey while serving in the Navy. Soon after his discharge La Rosa appeared on Talent Scouts, and was hired by Godfrey immediately following his performance. Over the next two years, La Rosa’s popularity with the shows’ fans grew.
But on Oct. 19, 1953, Godfrey did not invite La Rosa to perform on the first hour of his program. When the television simulcast was complete, and only the radio broadcast was taking place, Godfrey invited La Rosa to sing Manhattan.
After the performance, Godfrey announced to the audience – and a shocked La Rosa – that the tune was La Rosa’s “swan song” on the show, and that he’d no doubt be going on to great solo success.
A post-firing press conference during which Godfrey announced that La Rosa had “lost his humility” backfired.
The “La Rosa incident” was the start of Godfrey’s slow but steady professional decline. The media was increasingly critical of Godfrey, and he became the subject of jokes and parodies. Elia Kazan’s classic A Face In The Crowd was said to be inspired in part by Godfrey’s rise and fall.

1991 – An airplane carrying eight members of Reba McEntire’s touring band crashed near San Diego.
The night before, McIntire and her band had performed at a private performance for IBM executives in San Diego. While Reba and her husband stayed behind at a hotel, the members of her band took off in two separate charter planes shortly before 2:00 a.m. from San Diego en route to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where McEntire had a concert planned.
The second plane (carrying her other band members) made it to Fort Wayne, but the first plane, a Hawker Siddeley DH-125-1A/522 charter jet, ended up having trouble almost immediately after take-off.
When the plane reached an altitude of 3,600 feet above sea level, it ended up losing control and crashed into the side of Otay Mountain, located 10 miles east of the airport.
In addition to the eight band members, pilot Donald Holmes and co-pilot Chris Hollinger also died.

2003 – Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, was killed when she was run over by a bulldozer while trying to block Israeli troops from demolishing a Palestinian home in Gaza.
Corrie, a 23-year old student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, was a member of a pro-Palestinian group called the International Solidarity Movement. On March 16, that group was engaged in a protest against Israeli Defense Forces as they attempted to demolish homes suspected of harboring weapons-smuggling tunnels in the village of Rafah.
Corrie placed herself in the path of an armored bulldozer in the area and was run over and fatally injured.
Fellow activists said the soldier operating the bulldozer deliberately ran Corrie over while she was acting as a human shield, but Israeli eyewitnesses maintain that the death was accidental because the bulldozer operator was unable to see Corrie due to the vehicle’s obstructed view.

2003 – Vice President Dick Cheney made a bold – and incorrect – prediction about the Iraqi people.
In an interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet The Press just before the invasion of Ira, Russert asked the Vice President what would happen if the public did not welcome the Americans, and Iraq turned into a long and bloody occupation.
Cheney responded, “I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want is to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.”
Polling of Iraqis after the 2003 invasion showed that many did welcome the U.S, but quickly turned against it. In April 2003, nearly 50% of Iraqis saw the Americans as liberators. Half a year later in October, that had dramatically changed as only one in six held that view.
In April 2004, poll found that 71% of Iraqis saw the U.S. as occupiers, and 46% said that they had done more harm than good in Iraq.
So yes, many Iraqi people were happy that Saddam was overthrown but the post-war chaos that followed in the wake of the Coalition forces quickly spoiled that mood.

2005 – A judge in Redwood City, CA sent Scott Peterson to death row for the slaying of his pregnant wife, Laci.
On November 12, 2004, the jury convicted Peterson of two counts of murder: first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci, and second-degree murder for killing the fetus she carried.
Judge Alfred A. Delucchi sentenced Peterson to death by lethal injection, calling the murder of Laci “cruel, uncaring, heartless, and callous.”
Fifteen years later, he remains on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison and he will likely stay there for a long, long time unless one of his endless appeals actually wins him a new trial.
California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, and only executed 13 inmates since 1978.

2008 – Actor Ivan Dixon died of kidney failure at the age of 76.
At a time when few black actors were seen in regular roles on American television, Dixon was one of the first, playing Sgt. James “Kinch” Kinchloe, the communications officer for the prisoners-of-war held by the Germans, in the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes from 1965-1970.
Dixon starred in the independent film Nothing But A Man and later turned to directing television series, such as The Waltons, The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, Starsky & Hutch, Magnum, P.I., and The A-Team.
He also directed the controversial 1973 CIA thriller, The Spook Who Sat by The Door.

2008 – Ola Brunkert, drummer with ABBA on virtually all of their songs, died in a tragic accident. He was 61.
He hit his head against a glass door in his dining room, shattering the glass and cutting his throat. He left the house to seek help, but collapsed in the garden.

2016 – President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland – Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – as a Supreme Court Justice to fill the vacancy created by the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
The U.S. Senate refused to hold a hearing or vote on the nomination made during the last year of Obama’s presidency, with the Republican majority insisting that the next elected President should fill the vacancy.
Garland’s nomination lasted 293 days and expired on January 3, 2017, at the end of the 114th Congress. The seat Garland was nominated for was eventually filled by Neil Gorsuch, appointed by President Donald Trump.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2020 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.