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Today in History, March 16th

On March 16, 1926, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts. Plus West Point's founding and My Lai.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published March 16, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

March 16 is best known for 1926, when Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket from a farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. The date also marks the founding of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1802 and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968.

The big story: Goddard’s Rocket Leaves the Ground (1926)

The launch site was his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. Robert Goddard’s rocket stood about 10 feet tall, a spindly frame of thin pipes burning gasoline and liquid oxygen. When it lit, it climbed for about two and a half seconds, topped out at 41 feet and came down 184 feet away. That is not far. It was still the first flight ever made by a liquid-fueled rocket, the kind that would later carry people to the Moon. Goddard had taken plenty of mockery for his ideas. In 1920 The New York Times had suggested he lacked basic high school science; the paper ran a correction in July 1969, three days before the first Apollo landing. Goddard kept building rockets, later testing them in Roswell, New Mexico, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland carries his name.

More events on March 16

Year	What happened
1521	Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for Spain, reached the Philippines.
1621	Samoset, an Abenaki man, walked into Plymouth Colony and greeted the Pilgrims in English (Old Style date).
1802	The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, was founded as a training school for the Army’s Corps of Engineers.
1827	Freedom’s Journal, the first Black-owned and Black-run newspaper in the U.S., published its first issue in New York City.
1850	Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter was published.
1968	U.S. soldiers killed as many as 500 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai during a search-and-destroy mission in Vietnam.
1978	The tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off Brittany, France, and broke apart, spilling nearly 69 million gallons of crude oil, the largest oil spill on record at the time.
1985	Militants in Beirut kidnapped Associated Press journalist Terry Anderson.
1995	Mississippi’s legislature voted to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, 130 years after it became part of the Constitution. The ratification was not made official until 2013.
2008	On a Sunday, Bear Stearns agreed to sell itself to J.P. Morgan Chase for $2 a share to avoid bankruptcy, with help from the Federal Reserve. The final price was later raised to $10.
2014	Crimea held a referendum in which a reported 97 percent of voters backed leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. Ukraine did not recognize the vote.

Born on March 16

1750: Caroline Herschel, German-born astronomer who discovered eight comets.
1751: James Madison, Founding Father and fourth U.S. president, born in Port Conway, Virginia (March 5 by the Old Style calendar).
1912: Pat Nixon, first lady, born in Ely, Nevada.
1926: Jerry Lewis, comedian, actor and director from Newark, New Jersey.