Daily Calendar for March 16th, 2021

The Old Farmer's Almanac daily calendar gives you quick reference for the significant events on any day throughout the year.

Every Year

• St. Urho's Day

1630s

• 1630: First recorded fire in Boston, Massachusetts

1730s

• Born 1739: George Clymer (merchant)

1750s

• Born 1750: Caroline Herschel (astronomer)

• Born 1751: James Madison (4th U.S. president )

1770s

• Born 1774: Matthew Flinders (navigator & explorer)

1780s

• Born 1789: Georg Ohm (physicist)

1790s

• Born 1799: Anna Atkins (English botanist, photographer)

1800s

• 1802: United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, established

1820s

• 1827: Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in the U.S., was printed in NYC

1830s

• 1830: New York Stock Exchange's predecessor set a record for its slowest trading day in history, with only 31 shares sold. (Nowadays, an average of more than a billion shares are traded each day.)

1850s

• 1850: The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was first published

1880s

• 1881: The Barnum and Bailey Circus made its debut in NYC

1890s

• Born 1897: Conrad Nagel (actor)

• Died 1898: Aubrey Beardsley (artist)

1900s

• Born 1903: Mike Mansfield (politician)

• Born 1908: Robert Rossen (director)

1910s

• Born 1912: Pat Nixon (U.S. First Lady)

1920s

• 1926: Robert Goddard launched first liquid fuel rocket, Auburn, MA

• Born 1926: Jerry Lewis (comedian)

1930s

• 1935: Germany abrogated the Treaty of Versailles by ordering universal military service

1940s

• 1948: Brussels Pact, a 50-year military alliance, signed between Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg

1950s

• 1956: Former heavyweight champion Joe Louis made his debut as a pro wrestler. He knocked out 320 pound cowboy Rocky Lee

1960s

• 1966: Gemini VIII docked with an Agena rocket, the first docking of two vehicles in space. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott were on board the spacecraft. When it began to spin, the docking mission was aborted

• Born 1967: Lauren Graham (actress)

• 1968: My Lai and My Khe villagers were killed by American troops in Vietnam (Vietnam War)

1970s

• Born 1971: Alan Tudyk (actor)

• 1973: Prisoner-of-war Col. Floyd J. Thompson released from N. Vietnam after almost 9 years

• 1974: The Grand Ole Opry moved into its new 4,400-seat Opry House at the Opryland amusement park outside Nashville

• Died 1975: T-Bone Walker (musician)

1980s

• 1984: William Buckley, first secretary of the U.S. embassy's political section and CIA station chief, was kidnapped in Beirut

• 1988: Lt. Colonel Oliver North, Vice Admiral John Poindexter, Richard Secord, and Albert Hakim were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by funneling aid to the Nicaraguan contras (Iran-contra affair)

• 1989: Julie Croteau from St. Mary's College in Maryland became the first woman to play on an NCAA men's baseball team

1990s

• 1994: Tonya Harding pleaded guilty to conspiring to hinder the investigation into the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan

• 1995: Norman Thagard became first American to visit Russian space station Mir

2000s

• Died 2008: Ivan Dixon (actor)

2010s

• Died 2013: Frank Thornton (actor)