TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2018 On this day in history:

1190 - The Crusaders began the massacre of Jews in York, England.

1898 In Melbourne the representatives of five colonies adopted a constitution that would become the basis of the Commonwealth of Australia. 1926 - Physicist Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket.

1935 - Adolf Hitler orders Germany to rearm in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht - army. 1945 - World War II: 90 per cent of Wurzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers, resulting in 5000 deaths.

1945 - World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ended, but small pockets of Japanese resistance persisted.

1968 - Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre: U.S. troops in Vietnam murder 347-500 Vietnamese civilian villagers (mostly women and children). 1978 - Italian politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas and later murdered.

1979 - Sino-Vietnamese War: The People’s Liberation Army crosses the border back into China, ends the war.

1988 - Halabja chemical attack: The Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10,000.

1989 - In Egypt, a 4400-year-old mummy is found near the Pyramid of Cheops. 1994 - Tonya Harding pleaded guilty in Portland, OR, to conspiracy to hinder prosecution for covering up the attack on her skating rival Nancy Kerrigan. She was fined $100,000. She was also banned from amateur figure skating.

2001 - A series of bomb blasts that took place in the city of Shijiazhuang, China killed 108 people and injured 38 others, was the biggest mass murder in China in decades.

2016 - A bomb detonates in a bus carrying government employees in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 15 and injuring at least 54.

2016 - Two suicide bombers detonate their explosives at a mosque during morning prayer on the outskirts of Maiduguri, Nigeria, killing 22 and injuring 18.