| 16 March 37 | Roman Empire [births and deaths] | Tiberius, second Roman emperor 14–37, dies in Capri, Italy (78). |
| 16 March 1322 | England [wars] | King Edward II of England defeats Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, at Boroughbridge, England. In the course of the battle the Earl of Hereford is killed, the Earl of Lancaster and his captains surrendering to Edward the following day. |
| 16 March 1787 | Germany [births and deaths] | Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist who discovered Ohm's law, which relates electric current to voltage, born in Erlangen, Bavaria, Germany (–1854). |
| 16 March 1844 | Greece [law and government] | A constitution is granted by King Otto I of Greece, establishing a representative system of two chambers, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. |
| 16 March 1851 | Spain [political events] | Spain agrees a concordat with the papacy by which Catholicism becomes the sole faith in Spain and the church gains control of education and the press. |
| 16 March 1872 | UK [cricket] | A crowd of 2,000 at the Oval cricket ground in London, England, watch Wanderers, a team of ex-public school players, defeat the Royal Engineers 1–0 to win the inaugural Football Association (FA) Cup final. |
| 16 March 1926 | USA [transport] | US inventor Robert Hutchings Goddard achieves the first flight of a liquid-propelled rocket, at Auburn, Michigan. It reaches an altitude of 12 m/41 ft. |
| 16–17 March 1934 | Italy, Austria, Hungary [diplomacy] | Protocols are signed in Rome between Italy, Austria, and Hungary to form a Danubian bloc against the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia). |
| 16 March 1934 | Germany [law and government] | German chancellor Adolf Hitler announces the creation of an army of half a million soldiers, in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles. |
| 16 March 1935 | Germany [diplomacy] | Germany repudiates the disarmament clauses of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the Führer Adolf Hitler reintroduces general military conscription. |
| 16 March 1968 | USA, South Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | US soldiers massacre 450 men, women, and children at the village of My Lai, in South Vietnam. When news of the massacre emerges, some twenty months later, the troops will insist that they acted under the orders of lieutenant William L Calley, Jr. |
| 16 March 1973 | France [banking and finance] | Finance ministers of the European Economic Community (Common Market) countries, meeting in Paris, France, agree to establish a floating exchange rate system. |
| 16 March 1986 | France [elections] | The opposition parties win a narrow majority in the French general election, ending five years of Socialist rule. On 20 March, Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist leader, is appointed prime minister. |
