On March 16, 1751, James Madison, known as “the father of the Constitution,” was born in Virginia. Madison went on to draft of the Constitution, record of the Constitutional Convention, author many of the Federalist Papers and serve for two terms as the fourth president of the United States.
On March 16, 1968, a platoon of American soldiers, led by Lieutenant William Calley, killed between 200 and 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, in a search-and-destroy mission near the northern coast of South Vietnam. Villagers were raped, tortured and dozens of people dragged into a ditch, including children, and murdered in mass. The massacre ended when helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire unless the soldiers ended their attack.