March 16 is celebrated as Freedom of Information Day and Black Press Day. On this day, in different eras, significant events related to wars, political decisions, scientific discoveries, cultural premieres and dramatic pages of the history of different nations took place.
Freedom of Information Day
This day is celebrated on the birthday of James Madison, one of the authors of the US Constitution and a supporter of open government. The date is used as a reminder of the importance of citizens’ access to government documents and government decisions. The idea is related to the principle that information created with public funds should be available to the public, except in cases related to security or privacy protection.
In different countries, the right to access information is enshrined in laws on the openness of government. Such norms allow citizens, journalists and researchers to request documents, statistics, official materials and decisions of government bodies. Open information is considered one of the tools for monitoring the activities of state institutions, fighting corruption, and increasing trust in government.
Interesting facts
Sweden became the first country in the world to adopt a law on freedom of the press in 1766, which included a provision on the openness of state documents. This law allowed citizens to familiarize themselves with the materials of government institutions almost two centuries before similar principles spread to most countries.
In the United States, the Freedom of Information Act was adopted in 1966. It allows any person, even a foreigner, to submit a request to receive government documents. Over the decades, millions of pages of materials have been made public through this mechanism, including archives of special services and documents from the Cold War.
In Ukraine, the right to access public information is enshrined in a separate law adopted in 2011. It sets a clear deadline for responding to a request of five working days, which is considered one of the shortest in European access to information practice.
Ukrainian journalists have repeatedly used information requests to obtain copies of government contracts, ministry expenditures, and data on the use of budget funds. Some of the high-profile anti-corruption investigations began with such official requests.
In 2015, Ukraine launched a state open data portal, which publishes thousands of sets of information on transport, the budget, public procurement, and the work of government agencies. Some of the data sets are used to create services that show budget expenditures or public transport traffic.
In the United Kingdom, after the adoption of the Freedom of Information Act, journalists gained access to the expenses of members of parliament. An investigation based on these documents in 2009 caused a major political scandal and forced many parliamentarians to return money to the state.
In the United States, archival documents about government experiments on humans in the mid-20th century, including medical research conducted without the informed consent of participants, were made public through access to information requests.
In Ukraine, activists used information requests to obtain the disclosure of income declarations of officials even before the creation of a modern electronic declaration system. The documents obtained showed significant discrepancies between the official income and property of individual officials, which attracted the attention of anti-corruption agencies.
Black Press Day
This day is celebrated to commemorate the appearance of the first newspaper created by African Americans in the United States. The date is associated with the publication of the Freedom’s Journal newspaper in 1827 in New York. It was founded by Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm to give black Americans the opportunity to express their own position in a society where most newspapers did not reflect their lives or presented information in a biased manner.
Newspapers, founded and run by black journalists, played a vital role in disseminating news about African-American life, education, political rights, and social issues. They reported on events that were rarely covered by mainstream media, and they were an important source of information during the struggle against slavery, racial discrimination, and segregation.
Interesting Facts
The Freedom’s Journal was the first newspaper in U.S. history to be founded and published by African-Americans. It was published weekly and featured news, literary texts, letters from readers, and articles about the lives of the black community, which at that time had little voice in the media.
In the 19th century, black newspapers sometimes carried advertisements for missing relatives. People who had been separated during slavery tried to find their family members through the newspapers, leaving descriptions, names, and places where they had last been seen.
In the early 20th century, the popular African-American newspaper Chicago Defender spread information about job and living opportunities in northern cities in the United States. Its articles and advertisements influenced the decision of hundreds of thousands of people to move from the South during the Great Migration.
During the period of racial segregation, black newspaper vendors were sometimes harassed or banned from selling their publications in some southern cities. Newspapers were secretly transported by train or passed from hand to hand to reach readers.
In the 1940s, African-American newspapers launched the “Double V” campaign. Its idea was to strive for a double victory: over Nazism in Europe during World War II and over racial discrimination in the United States.
In the 1950s, black journalists actively wrote about the case of a teenager, Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered because of racial hatred. The photographs and materials published in such newspapers drew national attention to the problem of racial violence.
Many African-American newspapers were not only a source of news, but also a platform for writers and public figures. It was in such publications that some texts by authors of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of African Americans in the 20th century, were first published.
In the middle of the 20th century, the circulation of some black newspapers reached hundreds of thousands of copies. They were distributed not only in cities, but also in rural areas, where people often read one newspaper in whole communities.
Historical events on this day
587 BC – Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem after a long siege. The city was destroyed, the First Temple was destroyed, and a significant part of the population was taken to Babylon. This event marked the beginning of the so-called Babylonian captivity of the Jews and significantly influenced the further history of the Jewish people and the formation of their religious tradition.
870 – an independent Orthodox church was founded in Bulgaria, which was an important stage in the formation of the religious and cultural identity of the Bulgarian state. The creation of a separate church structure contributed to the spread of worship in the Slavic language and the development of the book tradition in the Balkans.
1521 – during the first circumnavigation of the world, the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the islands that are now part of the Philippines. Contact with local rulers and an attempt to intervene in inter-tribal conflicts led to a clash in which Magellan died a little later, but the expedition itself completed the first circumnavigation in history.
1669 — The Articles of Glukhiv were concluded between the Hetman of Left-Bank Ukraine, Demyan Mnohohrishny, and the Moscow government. The agreement defined the terms of the Hetmanate’s autonomy within the Moscow Kingdom, limiting the Hetman’s foreign policy and establishing the presence of Moscow troops in key cities.
1815 — Prince William of Orange proclaimed himself the first king of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The new state united the territories of the modern Netherlands and Belgium after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the redistribution of the political map of Europe.
1827 — The newspaper “Freedom’s Journal” began to be published in New York, the first publication in US history founded by African Americans. The newspaper published materials on education, the rights of the black population, social events and the life of a community that had almost no representation in the media of that time.
1851 — Spain concluded a concordat with the Vatican, which secured the special status of the Catholic Church in the state. Catholicism was recognized as the only official religion, and the education system was to be built in accordance with church doctrine.
1870 — The premiere of the overture “Romeo and Juliet” by composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky took place in Moscow. The musical work, created based on the tragedy of William Shakespeare, later became one of the composer’s most famous symphonic works.
1880 — Ukrainian writer and poet Ivan Franko was arrested on suspicion of revolutionary agitation. The arrest was part of the persecution of Ukrainian national and social movement figures in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1900 — English archaeologist Arthur Evans announced the discovery of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. During excavations in Knossos, the remains of a large palace complex and numerous Bronze Age artifacts were found.
1917 — A mass demonstration, known as the Day of the Revolution, took place in Kyiv. Thousands of city residents took to the streets after the fall of the Russian monarchy, and during the demonstration, a monument to Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin was destroyed.
1919 — The United States first tested a wireless telephone for communication with an airplane in flight. The experiment showed the possibility of transmitting voice messages between the ground and an aircraft, which was one of the steps in the development of aviation radio communication.
1921 — The Moscow Treaty was concluded with the government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Under its terms, the territories of the Kara region and the Surmal district, which previously belonged to the Russian Empire and were considered historical lands of the Armenians, were ceded to Turkey.
1923 — In Rome, the police forbade spectators from whistling or otherwise demonstrating discontent during theatrical performances. The authorities considered such displays of disrespect for the actors to be a violation of public order.
1928 — Astronomers discovered an asteroid, which was named 1303 Luther. The object belongs to the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
1941 — British troops launched a counteroffensive against Italian forces in East Africa. The goal of the operation was to regain control of British Somaliland, which had previously been captured by Italian troops.
1960 – An experimental solar-powered car was unveiled in New York. Although the car was a small model, the demonstration was one of the earliest examples of the use of solar energy in transportation.
1962 – The Soviet Union launched the Kosmos-1 satellite into space, which was the first in a large series of spacecraft under the common name “Kosmos”.
1966 – The Gemini 8 spacecraft was launched in the United States. During this mission, astronauts first docked two spacecraft in orbit, which was an important step towards future flights to the moon.
1978 – In Rome, militants of the left-wing radical organization “Red Brigades” kidnapped former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The politician was held captive for 54 days, after which he was killed, which became one of the most high-profile political tragedies in the history of Italy.
1979 – Chinese troops left the territory of Vietnam, ending the short but intense Sino-Vietnamese war, which lasted about a month.
1979 – The Baghdad Pact was dissolved – a military-political alliance of the countries of the Middle East and the West, created during the Cold War.
1988 – the Iraqi army carried out a chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja. Thousands of civilians died as a result of the use of poisonous gases, and this tragedy became one of the most famous cases of the use of chemical weapons against the civilian population.
1990 – the first session of the revived Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society began in Lviv. The organization, which played a significant role in the development of Ukrainian science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, resumed its activities after decades of ban.
1995 — The state of Mississippi officially ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery. Although the amendment was adopted in 1865, this state became the last to legally confirm its adoption.
1998 — Pope John Paul II publicly acknowledged the guilt of many Catholics who did not oppose the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. This statement was an important step in rethinking the role of the church in the events of World War II.
2001 — Chechen militants seized a Russian passenger plane Tu-154, which was operating a charter flight between Moscow and Istanbul. After landing in Medina, Saudi Arabia, special forces stormed the plane, killing three people.
2006 — The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to establish the UN Human Rights Council, replacing the previous Commission on Human Rights.
2022 — A powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima. The tremors caused significant damage to infrastructure, killed people, and damaged hundreds of buildings.
2022 — Russian aircraft struck a drama theater in Mariupol, where civilians were hiding from shelling. The building was destroyed, and the tragedy became one of the symbols of the large-scale destruction and civilian casualties during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Founding of the Military Academy at West Point – one of the most prestigious military institutions in the world
On March 16, 1802, an event took place that wrote a new page in the history of the military tradition of the United States: the Military Academy at West Point was founded – the oldest federal military educational institution of the United States Army.
The academy is located on the banks of the Hudson River in New York State, it became the first higher military educational institution in the country and over time gained a reputation as one of the most prestigious military academies in the world. The territory of the educational complex covers about 65 km², which makes it one of the largest educational centers of this type in the world.
Initially, the place where the academy is now located was used as a military fortification during the American Revolutionary War. The choice of location was strategic: it controlled an important bend in the Hudson River and allowed to defend this waterway from British troops. The fortifications were built by order of George Washington according to the design of the Polish engineer and officer Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who is also considered a national hero of Belarus.
After the war, there was a need to train professional officers, which led to the creation of a military academy. The first graduation of cadets took place in 1808. The man who is often called the “father” of the academy was Colonel Sylvanus Thayer. It was he who introduced the main principle of education: a minimum of lectures and a significant amount of independent work by the cadets. Particular attention was paid to engineering sciences, leadership training and physical development. One of the key principles was the rule that each cadet must be physically fit and athletic. This educational system is largely preserved today.
Interesting Facts
The decree establishing the academy was signed by US President Thomas Jefferson. He supported the idea of creating a professional system of military education, believing that the army needed well-trained officers with technical and engineering knowledge.
West Point is known for its strict Code of Honor. Its main rule is as follows: a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or put up with those who do so. Violation of the code can lead to immediate expulsion from the academy. The most difficult is the principle of responsibility for silence: if a cadet knows about a comrade’s violation and does not report it, he himself is considered a violator.
In the first decades of the academy’s existence, the main emphasis was on engineering training. West Point graduates played an important role in the construction of America’s infrastructure of the 19th century, in particular, they designed roads, bridges, canals, and the first railway lines.
Кандидат на вступ до академії повинен мати вік від 17 до 22 років, бути неодруженим і не мати зобов’язань щодо виплати аліментів. Окрім подання документів, майбутній кадет має отримати рекомендацію, найчастіше від члена Конгресу США. Кожен конгресмен і віцепрезидент можуть рекомендувати кандидатів на обмежену кількість місць. Додаткові місця надаються дітям військових, чинним солдатам, курсантам резервної офіцерської підготовки та дітям військовослужбовців, які загинули або отримали тяжкі поранення. Щороку також приймають приблизно двадцять іноземних кадетів.
Студенти академії мають статус офіцерів, що навчаються, і до них звертаються «кадет». Курсанти офіційно поділяються на кадетів четвертого, третього, другого та першого класів. Водночас існує неформальний студентський сленг: першокурсників називають «плебеями», другий курс — «річниками», третій курс — «коровами», а випускників — «перваками». Кожен курс обирає власний девіз, який стає символом єдності кадетів.
Навчання в академії повністю оплачується армією США, натомість випускники зобов’язані після закінчення служити в армії. Кадети отримують щомісячну стипендію приблизно 1017 доларів на книги, форму та інші необхідні речі. Частина коштів автоматично витрачається на оплату навчальних матеріалів, харчування та обмундирування.
Навчання в академії триває чотири роки, після випуску кадети отримують ступінь бакалавра і звання молодшого лейтенанта сухопутних військ США. Вони зобов’язані служити щонайменше п’ять років. Щороку академія випускає близько 900 офіцерів, і кожен випускник отримує індивідуальне пам’ятне кільце.
Жінкам дозволили навчатися у Вест-Пойнті лише з 1976 року. Відтоді їхня частка серед курсантів поступово зростала, і сьогодні жінки становлять значну частину випускників академії.
Серед відомих випускників академії — президенти США Улісс Грант і Дуайт Ейзенхауер, президент Конфедерації Джефферсон Девіс, генерали Роберт Лі, Джордж Паттон, Дуглас Макартур, Омар Бредлі, Джон Першинг, Норман Шварцкопф-молодший, а також астронавти Базз Олдрін і Майкл Коллінз.
Після отримання звання офіцери проходять спеціалізовану підготовку у військових навчальних центрах. Наприклад, піхотні та танкові офіцери навчаються у Форт-Беннінгу в штаті Джорджія, льотчики армійської авіації — у Форт-Ракері в Алабамі, артилеристи — у Форт-Сіллі в Оклахомі, а медики — у Форт-Сем-Г’юстоні в Техасі.
На території Вест-Пойнта розташоване одне з найбільших сховищ золота у США — монетний двір, який за обсягами поступається лише Форт-Ноксу. У музеї академії зберігаються історичні експонати, зокрема акт капітуляції Японії у Другій світовій війні та особиста зброя лідерів Третього рейху.
Девіз академії «Обов’язок, Честь, Батьківщина» пов’язаний з промовою генерала Дугласа Макартура, виголошеною 12 травня 1962 року перед кадетами. Генералу тоді було 82 роки, і він виступав без записів. У своїй промові Макартур назвав ці три слова основою життя військового і символом служіння державі. Його виступ став частиною традицій академії, а аудіозапис і текст використовують для виховання духу вірності принципам Вест-Пойнта.
Загальнокримський референдум щодо майбутнього статусу та державної належності півострова
16 березня 2014 року відбулася подія, яка суттєво змінила політичну ситуацію навколо Криму – загальнокримський референдум щодо майбутнього статусу та державної належності півострова. Рішення про його проведення ухвалила Верховна Рада Криму 27 лютого 2014 року. На той момент будівлю кримського парламенту вже контролювали озброєні військові без розпізнавальних знаків.
Голосування відбулося всупереч українському законодавству, яке не передбачає проведення регіональних референдумів щодо зміни території держави. Питання територіальної цілісності України можуть вирішуватися лише на всеукраїнському референдумі.
Референдум проходив за присутності російських військових формувань і стала політичним кроком, що передував офіційному оголошенню Росією про включення Криму до свого складу 18 березня 2014 року. Більшість держав світу та міжнародні організації не визнали результатів голосування і розглядають його як частину процесу анексії півострова.
Зруйнування будівлі Донецького академічного обласного драматичного театру в Маріуполі
16 березня 2022 року під час російського вторгнення в Україну авіаударом було зруйновано будівлю Донецького академічного обласного драматичного театру в Маріуполі.
У приміщенні театру на той час перебували сотні мирних жителів, які використовували його як укриття від обстрілів. Точна кількість загиблих досі залишається невідомою, за різними оцінками вона може становити від приблизно 300 до 600 осіб.
Маріуполь у той період перебував у повній блокаді, місто зазнавало постійних бомбардувань, а гуманітарна ситуація стрімко погіршувалася. Українські військові заявляли, що продовжують оборону міста і прагнуть врятувати цивільне населення, наголошуючи на необхідності допомоги для розблокування Маріуполя.
16 березня 2023 року в річницю трагедії маріупольського драматичного театру президент України Володимир Зеленський заявив про намір звільнити Маріуполь від російської окупації. У своєму зверненні він наголосив на необхідності пам’ятати про жертви атаки та підкреслив, що місто залишається однією з ключових цілей майбутнього відновлення територіальної цілісності України.
