On March 29, 1918, Walmart founder Sam Walton was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.
On March 29, 1945, Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army captured Frankfurt, Germany. Patton’s troops then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets.
On March 29, 1971, Lt. William Calley was found guilty of premeditated murder at My Lai by a U.S. Army court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia. Though investigators of the massacre produced a list of 30 people who knew of the atrocity, only 14 were charged with crimes, and all eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley.
Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. He was paroled in 1974 after having served about a third of his 10-year sentence.
On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. combat soldiers left Vietnam.