Today in History....March 16

On this day in …

* 1802, Congress authorized the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

* 1909, the purchase of movie rights becomes standard industry practice following a federal court's decision in Harper and Bros.
vs. Kalem Co. that the movie studio's 1907 production of Ben-Hur, filmed without the author's permission, was a copyright violation.
Kalem paid the author's estate $25,000 in damages

* 1915, the Federal Trade Commission began operations

* 1926, rocket science pioneer Robert H. Goddard successfully tested the first liquid-fueled rocket, in Auburn, Mass.

* 1935, Adolf Hitler, ym"sh, decided to break the military terms set by the Treaty of Versailles

* 1945, during World War II, Iwo Jima was declared secured by the Allies

* 1978, Italian politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing terrorists, who later murdered him.

* 1984, the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, was kidnapped by practitioners of that "religion of peace"; he died in captivity

* 1985, the chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, Terry Anderson, was abducted in Beirut by practitioners of that "religion of peace"; he was released in December 1991

* 2002, terrorists killed Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino, a prominent critic of Colombia's leftist guerrillas, in Cali

* 2006, Iraq's new parliament met briefly for the first time