Here is your Today in History -
March 16 -
St. Urho's Day, Patron saint of Finnish vineyard workers. Attributed to him is the miracle of banishing grasshoppers from Finland which he accomplished with a few choice Finnish phrases, thereby saving the season's grape crop. But in reality a bunch of very drunk people made this up in 1956.
March 16 1190 -
More than 150 and perhaps as many as 500 Jews, secured in Clifford's Tower at York, die from suicide and massacre after they are sieged by townspeople under Richard Malebys. Malebys was a nobleman who owed money to the Jews; after their siege all records relating to moneylending were destroyed. It is the largest massacre of Jews in the history of the United Kingdom.
March 16 1792 -
At a masquerade ball, a disgruntled Captain Jacob Johan Ankarstroem shoots Swedish King Gustav III near the heart with a bullet composed of lead and carpet tacks. It took him almost two weeks to die. Ouch!!!
Shakespeare never wrote about Gustavus, probably because Gustavus was born well after Shakespeare's death, but Giuseppe Verdi (in English, "Joe Green") wrote an opera about the affair called Un Ballo in Maschera ("A Bull in Mascara"). And for his effort, the bad Captain is decapitated, drawn, and quartered. Ouch!!!
March 16 1949 -
Erik Estrada's birthday. Reason enough to live another day.
March 16 1968 -
Soldiers of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade Americal Division massacre over 300 civilian men, women, and children in the village of My Lai in South Vietnam.
March 16 1978 -
Italian Red Brigades kidnap former Italian Premier Aldo Moro for release of imprisoned comrades. Moro was murdered and his body found on 9 May 1978.
March 16 1994 -
Figure skater and future foxy boxer Tonya Harding arrested for obstruction of prosecution during the fallout from the Nancy Kerrigan figure skate clubbing. Why, why?
And so it goes.
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