Under Thursday, March 16, the book of history records, among other things:
1888: The Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik Karl Benz in Mannheim sells a car to Paris: the oldest existing invoice for a car sale.
1923: “The Untouchable” by Hugo von Hofmannsthal has its world premiere in Vienna’s Raimundtheater.
1938: Mexico, Chile, the Soviet Union and Republican Spain protest once morest the annexation of Austria by Hitler’s Germany.
1938: When he was arrested by the SA, the cultural historian, writer and actor Egon Friedell committed suicide by jumping out of his apartment window in Vienna-Währing.
1938: The former Heimwehr leader and Vice Chancellor Emil Fey, who played an obscure role in the July putsch of 1934, commits suicide in Vienna.
1938: The writer Ödön von Horvath leaves Vienna and reaches Paris in May via Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.
1948: A conference of the 16 countries involved in the Marshall Plan is held in Paris, chaired by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.
1968: My Lai massacre: US soldiers shoot dead 507 people, including 173 children, in the South Vietnamese village. A year and a half later, the world public learned of the crime that sealed the moral defeat of the USA in the Vietnam War.
1968: US Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and former Attorney General, announces his candidacy for investiture as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
1978: The leader of the Italian Christian Democrats and former Prime Minister Aldo Moro is kidnapped in Rome, and his five bodyguards are shot dead by a commando of the “Red Brigades”. (On May 9, Moro’s body is found in the trunk of a car in central Rome.)
1978: Oil spill off the coast of Brittany: 230,000 liters of oil spilled out of the aground supertanker “Amoco Cadiz” (flying the Liberian flag) and polluted the beach over a length of 200 kilometers.
1978: After 97 days in space, Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Georgy Grechko return to Earth aboard the Soyuz 27 spacecraft.
1988: In Panama, an assassination attempt on military ruler General Manuel Antonio Noriega, attributed to the US secret service CIA, failed.
1988: Protestant terrorist attack in Belfast at an IRA funeral: three dead, 68 injured.
1988: When Iraqi troops attacked the Kurdish city of Halabja in northern Iraq with poison gas, around 5,000 residents, mostly women and children, were killed and thousands later died as a result. The leadership in Baghdad justifies the attack once morest its own population by claiming that the Kurds in this area supported the war enemy Iran.
2003: In the Azores, US President George W. Bush meets the heads of government of Great Britain and Spain, Tony Blair and José María Aznar, to discuss military action once morest Iraq without a UN mandate.
2003: The World Health Organization warns of a mysterious form of pneumonia spreading in Asia. On the same day, the first cases of “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome” (SARS) appear in Europe. The disease is transmitted by droplet infection.
2013: In order to prevent a bank collapse and a state bankruptcy in Cyprus, the euro states and the IMF agree on a 10 billion euro aid program. Because of the compulsory levy for savers and the associated risk of a “bank run”, the Cyprus National Bank freezes the entire banking system. After a ten-day forced break, the banks will reopen their branches at the end of March. A one-off tax of 6.75 percent is levied on credit balances between EUR 20,000 and EUR 100,000, and 9.9 percent on balances over EUR 100,000. Large savers with more than 100,000 euros have to give up 47.5 percent at the Bank of Cyprus, in return they receive shares in the bank. The second largest bank, Laiki Bank, is broken up. At the end of April, following heated discussions, the Cypriot parliament narrowly approved the aid package.
birthdays: Josef Freiherr Schey von Koromla, Austria. jurist (1853-1938); Clemens August Graf von Galen, German Cardinal (1878-1946); Leopold doctor, Austrian dermatologist (1883-1955); Mike Mansfield, US politician, diplomat and historian (1903-2001); Frederick Reines, US physicist; Nobel Prize 1995 (1918-1998); Heinz Wallberg, German conductor (1923-2004); Christa Ludwig, German-Austrian singer (1928-2021); Karlheinz Böhm, Austria Actor and development worker (“People for People”) (1928-2014); Kirsten Dene, German actress (1943); Isabelle Huppert, French actress (according to other sources 1955) (1953).
days of death: Egon Friedell (actually Friedmann), Austrian Writer, cultural historian, actor (1878-1938); William Henry Lord Beveridge, British politician (1879-1963); Elisabeth Petznek (died Princess Windisch-Graetz), daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf (“The Red Archduchess”) (1883-1963); Emil Fey, Austria politician (1886-1938); Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Italian composer (1895-1968); Alfred Müller-Armack, German economist (1901-1978); Bengt Gunnar Ekelöf, Swedish poet (1907-1968); Sir Derek Barton, British chemist; Nobel Prize 1969 (1918-1998).
name days: Heribert, Hilarius, Cyriakus, Herbert, Columba, Jean, Gummer, Rüdiger, Abraham, Julian.
