--A
Today in history
March 14
1629 A Royal charter is granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1743 First American town meeting is held at Boston's Faneuil Hall.
1757 British Admiral John Byng is executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.
1794 Inventor Eli Whitney receives a patent for his cotton gin.
1900 United States currency goes on the gold standard.
1903 The Senate ratifies the Hay-Herran Treaty, guaranteeing the United states the right to build a canal in Panama.
1912 An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempts to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome.
1915 The British Navy sinks the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.
1918 An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies a peace treaty with the Central Powers.
1923 President Warren G. Harding becomes the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.
1936 Adolf Hitler tells a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself.
1939 The Nazis dissolve the republic of Czechoslovakia.
1943 The Germans reoccupy Kharkov in the Soviet Union.
1947 The United States signs a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.
1951 U.N. forces recapture Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.
1954 The Viet Minh launch an assault against the French Colonial Forces at Dien Bien Phu.
1964 A Dallas jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
1967 John F. Kennedy's body is moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one in Arlington Cemetery.
1978 An Israeli force of 22,000 invades south Lebanon, hitting the PLO bases.
1990 Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Congress.
1991 The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, are set free after a court agrees that the police fabricated evidence.
44 BC Julius Caesar is assassinated by high-ranking Roman Senators.
933 Henry the Fowler routs the raiding Magyars at Merseburg, Germany.
1493 Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first voyage to the New World.
1778 In command of two frigates, the Frenchman la Perouse sails east from Botany Bay for the last lap of his voyage around the world.
1820 Maine is admitted as the 23rd state.
1862 General John Hunt Morgan begins four days of raids near the city of Gallatin, Tenn.
1864 The Red River Campaign begins as the Union forces reach Alexandria, La.
1892 New York State unveils the new automatic ballot voting machine.
1895 Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, appears before a judge for altering cattle brands.
1903 The British complete the conquest of Nigeria.
1904 Three hundred Russians are killed as the Japanese shell Port Arthur in Korea.
1909 Italy proposes a European conference on the Balkans.
1916 General John Pershing and his 15,000 troops chase Pancho Villa into Mexico.
1934 Henry Ford restores the $5-a-day wage.
1935 Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda bans four Berlin newspapers.
1939 Germany occupies Bohemia and Moravia, Czechoslovakia.
1944 Cassino, Italy is destroyed by Allied bombing.
1949 Almost four years after the end of World War II, clothes rationing in Great Britain ends.
1951 French General de Lattre demands that Paris send him more troops for the fight in Indochina.
1955 The U.S. Air Force unveils the first self-guided missile.
1956 The first performance of My Fair Lady, starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, takes place on Broadway.
1960 Ten nations meet in Geneva to discuss disarmament.
1965 Gamal Abdel Nasser is re-elected Egyptian President.
1967 President Lyndon Johnson names Ellsworth Bunker as the new ambassador to Saigon. Bunker replaces Lodge.
1968 The U.S. mint halts the practice of buying and selling gold.
1991 Four Los Angeles police are charged in the beating of Rodney King.
37 On a trip to the Italian mainland from his home on Capreae, the emperor Tiberius dies on the Bay of Naples.
1190 The Crusades begin the massacre of Jews in York, England.
1527 The Emperor Babur defeats the Rajputs at the Battle of Kanvaha, removing the main Hindu rivals in Northern India.
1621 The first Indian appears to colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1833 Susan Hayhurst becomes the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college.
1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is published.
1865 Union troops push past Confederate blockers at the Battle of Averasborough, N.C.
1907 The British cruiser Invincible, the world's largest, is completed at Glasgow shipyards.
1913 The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania is launched at Newport News, Va.
1917 Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne.
1926 Physicist Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket.
1928 The United States plans to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua.
1935 Adolf Hitler orders a German rearmament and violates the Versailles Treaty.
1939 Germany occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia.
1945 Iwo Jima is declared secure by U.S. forces although small pockets of Japanese resistance still exist.
1954 CBS introduces The Morning Show hosted by Walter Cornet to compete with NBC's Today Show.
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson submits a $1 billion war on poverty program to Congress.
1968 U.S. troops in Vietnam destroy a village consisting mostly of women and children, the action is remembered as the My-Lai massacre.
1984 Mozambique and South Africa sign a pact banning support for one another's internal foes.
1985 Associated Press newsman, Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut.
March 17
1766 Britain repeals the Stamp Act.
1776 British forces evacuate from Boston to Nova Scotia.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte and his army reach Mediterranean seaport of St. Jean d'Acra, only to find British warships ready to break his siege of the town.
1868 The first postage stamp canceling machine patent is issued.
1884 John Joseph Montgomery makes the first glider flight in Otay, Calif.
1886 Twenty African Americans are killed in the Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi.
1891 The British steamer Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar.
1905 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, marries Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York.
1910 The Camp Fire Girls are founded in Lake Sebago, Maine.
1914 Russia increases the number of active duty military from 460,000 to 1,700,000.
1924 Four Douglas army aircraft leave Los Angeles for an around the world flight.
1930 Mob boss Al Capone is released from jail.
1942 The Nazis begin deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
1944 The U.S. Eighth Air Force bombs Vienna.
1959 The Dalai Lama flees Tibet and goes to India.
1961 The United States increases military aid and technicians to Laos.
1962 The Soviet Union asks the United States to pull out of South Vietnam.
1966 A U.S. submarine locates a missing H-bomb in the Mediterranean.
1970 The Army charges 14 officers with suppression of facts in the My Lai massacre case.
1972 Nixon asks Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
1973 Twenty are killed in Cambodia when a bomb goes off that was meant for the Cambodian President Lon Nol.
1973 First POWs are released from the "Hanoi Hilton" in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
1985 President Ronald Reagan agrees to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.
1992 White South Africans approve constitutional reforms giving legal equality to blacks.
March 18
37 The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
1692 William Penn is deprived of his governing powers.
1863 Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.
1865 The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.
1874 Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
1881 Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opens in Madison Square Gardens.
1911 Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.
1913 Greek King George I is killed by an assassin. Constantine I is to succeed.
1916 On the Eastern Front, the Russians counter the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lose 100,000 men and the Germans lose 20,000.
1917 The Germans sink the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any type of warning.
1922 Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.
1939 Georgia finally ratifies the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other states to hold out, also ratify the Bill of Rights in this year.
1942 The third military draft begins in the United States.
1943 Adolf Hitler calls off the offensive in the Caucasus.
1943 American forces take Gafsa in Tunisia.
1944 The Russians reach the Rumanian border.
1950 Nationalist troops land on the mainland of China and capture Communist-held Sungmen.
1953 The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
1965 Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.
1969 President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the 'secret' bombing of Cambodia.
1970 The U.S. Postal Service is paralyzed by the first postal strike.
1971 U.S. helicopters airlift 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.
1975 South Vietnam abandons most of the Central Highlands to North Vietnamese forces.
1981 The United States discloses biological weapons tests in Texas in 1966.
1986 Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.
March 19
1687 The French explorer La Salle is murdered in by his own men while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
1702 On the death of William III of Orange, Anne Stuart, sister of Mary, succeeds to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1822 Boston is incorporated as a city.
1831 The first recorded bank robbery in the United States occurs at the City Bank, in New York. Some $245,000 is stolen.
1879 Jim Currie opens fire on the actors Maurice Barrymore and Ben Porter near Marshall, Texas. His shots wound Barrymore and kill Porter.
1903 The U.S. Senate ratifies the Cuban treaty, gaining naval bases in Guantanamo and Bahia Honda.
1916 The First Aero Squadron takes off from Columbus, NM to join Gen. John J. Pershing and his Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico.
1917 The Adamson Act, eight hour day for railroad workers, is ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1918 Congress authorizes Daylight Savings Time.
1920 The U.S. Senate rejects the Versailles Treaty for the second time.
1924 U.S. troops are rushed to Tegucigalpa as rebel forces take the Honduran capital.
1931 The state of Nevada legalizes gambling.
1935 The British fire on 20,000 Muslims in India, killing 23.
1936 The Soviet Union signs a pact of assistance with Mongolia against Japan.
1944 The German 352nd Infantry Division deploys along the coast of France.
1945 Adolf Hitler orders a scorched-earth policy for his retreating German armies in the west and east.
1947 Chiang Kai-Shek's government forces take control of Yenan, the former headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party.
1949 The Soviet People's Council signs the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and declares that the North Atlantic Treaty is merely a war weapon.
1963 In Costa Rica, President John F. Kennedy and six Latin American presidents pledge to fight Communism.
1977 Congo President Marien Ngouabi is killed by a suicide commando.
1981 One technician is killed and two others are injured during a routine test on space shuttle Columbia.
March 20
1413 Henry IV of England is succeed by his son Henry V.
1739 In India, Nadir Shah of Persia occupies Delhi and takes possession of the Peacock throne.
1760 The Great Fire of Boston destroys 349 buildings.
1792 In Paris, the Legislative Assembly approves the use of the guillotine.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte enters Paris and begins his 100-day rule.
1841 Edgar Allen Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, considered the first detective story, is published.
1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published.
1906 Army officers in Russia mutiny at Sevastopol.
1915 The French call off the Champagne offensive on the Western Front.
1918 The Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union ask for American aid to rebuild their army.
1922 President Warren G. Harding orders U.S. troops back from the Rhineland.
1932 The German dirigible, Graf Zepplin, makes the first flight to South America on regular schedule.
1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt names William O. Douglas to the Supreme Court.
1940 The British Royal Air Force conducts an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
1943 The Allies attack Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson orders 4,000 troops to protect the Selma-Montgomery civil rights marchers.
1969 Senator Edward Kennedy calls on the United States to close all bases in Taiwan.
1976 Patty Hearst is convicted of armed robbery.
1982 U.S. scientists return from Antarctica with the first land mammal fossils found there.
1987 The United State approves AZT, a drug that is proven to slow the progress of AIDS.
March 21
630 Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1556 Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1617 Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
1788 Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.
1806 Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
1865 The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.
1851 Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
1858 British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
1906 Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.
1908 Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
1910 The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.
1918 The Germans launch the 'Michael' offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.
1928 President Calvin Coolidge gives the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh for his first trans-Atlantic flight.
1939 Singer Kate Smith records "God Bless America" for Victor Records.
1941 The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.
1951 Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
1963 Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
1965 The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.
1971 Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
1975 As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.
1980 President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1984 A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.
March 22
1622 Indians attack a group of colonists in the James River area of Virginia, killing 350 residents.
1630 The first legislation prohibiting gambling is enacted in Boston.
1664 Charles II gives large tracks of land from west of the Connecticut River to the east of Delaware Bay in North America to his brother James, the Duke of York.
1719 Frederick William abolishes serfdom on crown property in Prussia.
1765 The Stamp Act is passed, the first direct British tax on the American colonists.
1775 British statesman Edmund Burke makes a speech in the House of Commons, urging the government to adopt a policy of reconciliation with America.
1790 Thomas Jefferson becomes the first U.S. Secretary of State.
1794 Congress passes laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries although slavery remains legal in the United States.
1834 Horace Greeley publishes New Yorker, a weekly literary and news magazine and forerunner of Harold Ross' more successful The New Yorker.
1901 Japan proclaims that it is determined to keep Russia from encroaching on Korea.
1904 The first color photograph is published in the London Daily Illustrated Mirror.
1907 Russians troops complete the evacuation of Manchuria in the face of advancing Japanese forces.
1915 A German Zepplin makes a night raid on Paris railway stations.
1919 The first international airline service is inaugurated on a weekly schedule between Paris and Brussels.
1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill legalizing the sale and possession of beer and wine.
1935 Persia is renamed Iran.
1946 First U.S. built rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere reaches a 50-mile height.
1948 The United States announces a land reform plan for Korea.
1954 The London gold market reopens for the first time since 1939.
1968 President Lyndon Johnson names General William Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff.
1972 The U.S. Senate passes the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment fails to achieve ratification.
1974 The Viet Cong propose a new truce with the United States and South Vietnam, which includes general elections.
1990 A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, finds Captain Hazelwood not guilty in the Valdez oil spill.
March 23
1657 France and England form an alliance against Spain.
1743 Handel's Messiah is performed for the first time in London.
1775 American revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, while addressing the House of Burgesses, declares "give me liberty, or give me death!"
1791 Etta Palm, a Dutch champion of woman's rights, sets up a group of women's clubs called the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.
1848 Hungary proclaims its independence of Austria.
1857 Elisha Otis installs the first modern passenger elevator in a public building, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.
1858 Eleazer A. Gardner of Philadelphia patents the cable street car, which runs on overhead cables.
1862 Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson faces his only defeat at the Battle of Kernstown, Va
1880 John Stevens of Neenah, Wis., patents the grain crushing mill. This mill allows flour production to increase by 70 percent.
1901 A group of U.S. Army soldier led by Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston capture Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Insurrection of 1899.
1903 The Wright brothers obtain an airplane patent.
1909 British Lt. Ernest Shackleton finds the magnetic South Pole.
1909 Theodore Roosevelt begins an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
1917 Austrian Emperor Charles I makes a peace proposal to French President Poincare.
1920 Great Britain denounces the United States because of its delay in joining the League of Nations.
1921 Arthur G. Hamilton sets a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.
1927 Captain Hawthorne Gray sets a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.
1933 The Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree.
1942 The Japanese occupy the Anadaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
1951 U.S. paratroopers descend from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.
1956 Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, although it is still within the British Commonwealth.
1967 Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. calls the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.
1970 Mafia boss Carlo Gambino is arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.
1972 The United States calls a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.
1981 U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.
March 24
1208 King John of England opposes Innocent III on his nomination for archbishop of Canterbury.
1603 Queen Elizabeth I dies which will bring into power James VI of Scotland.
1663 Charles II of England awards lands known as Carolina in North America to eight members of the nobility who assisted in his restoration.
1664 In London, Roger Williams is granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island.
1720 The banking houses of Paris close in the wake of financial crisis.
1721 In Germany, the supremely talented Johann Sebastian Bach publishes the Six Brandenburg Concertos.
1765 Britain passes the Quartering Act, requiring the colonies to house 10,000 British troops in public and private buildings.
1862 Abolitionist Wendell Phillips speaks to a crowd about emancipation in Cincinnati, Ohio and is pelted by eggs.
1900 Mayor Van Wyck of New York breaks ground for the New York subway tunnel that will link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
1904 Vice Admiral Togo sinks seven Russian ships as the Japanese strengthen their blockade of Port Arthur.
1927 Chinese Communists seize Nanking and break with Chiang Kai-shek over the Nationalist goals.
1938 The United States asks that all powers help refugees fleeing from the Nazis.
1944 The Gestapo rounds up innocent Italians in Rome and shoot them to death in reprisal for a bomb attack that killed 33 German policemen.
1947 Congress proposes limiting the presidency to two terms.
1951 General Douglas MacArthur threatens the Chinese with an extension of the Korean War if the proposed truce is not accepted.
1954 Great Britain opens trade talks with Hungary.
1955 Tennessee Williams' play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens at the Morosco Theatre in New York City.
1958 Elvis Presley trades in his guitar for a rifle and Army fatigues.
1965 The Freedom Marchers, citizens for civil rights, reach Montgomery, Alabama.
1967 Viet Cong ambush a truck convoy in South Vietnam damaging 82 of the 121 trucks.
1972 Great Britain imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland.
1985 Thousands demonstrate in Madrid against the NATO presence in Spain.
1989 The Exxon Valdez oil tanker spills 240,000 barrels of oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
1999 NATO planes, including stealth aircraft, attack Serbian forces in Kosovo.
March 25
708 Constantine begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1634 Lord Baltimore founds the Catholic colony of Maryland.
1655 Puritans jail Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.
1668 The first horse race in America takes place.
1776 The Continental Congress authorizes a medal for General George Washington.
1807 British Parliament abolishes the slave trade.
1813 The frigate USS Essex flies the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.
1865 Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman, during the siege of Petersburg, Va.
1879 Japan invades the kingdom of Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, formerly a vassal of China.
1905 Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War are returned to the South.
1911 A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a sweatshop in New York City, claims the lives of 146 workers.
1915 The first submarine disaster occurs when a U.S. F-4 sinks off the Hawaiian coast.
1919 The Paris Peace Commission adopts a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign labor.
1931 Fifty people are killed in riots that break out in India. Mahatma Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.
1940 The United States agrees to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
1941 Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers.
1953 The USS Missouri fires on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
1954 RCA manufactures its first color TV set and begins mass production.
1957 The European Common Market Treaty is signed in Rome. The goal is to create a common market for all products--especially coal and steel.
1965 Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery, Ala.
1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono stage a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.
1970 The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.
1975 Hue is lost and Da Nang is endangered by North Vietnamese forces. The United States orders a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.
1981 The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador is damaged when gunmen attack, firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.
1986 President Ronald Reagan orders emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters take Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.
March 26
1517 The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.
1804 Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
1804 The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase.
1827 German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed "I shall hear in heaven."
1832 Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.
1885 Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
1913 The Balkan allies take Adrianople.
1918 On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons.
1938 Herman Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.
1942 The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
1950 Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
1951 The United States Air Force flag design is approved.
1953 Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.
1953 Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio.
1954 The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks.
1961 John F. Kennedy meets with British Premier Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos.
1969 The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched.
1969 Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
1979 The Camp David treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt.
1982 Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989 The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.
1992 An Indianapolis court finds heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson guilty of rape.
March 27
1350 While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile dies of the black death.
1512 Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida.
1802 The Treaty of Amiens is signed, ending the French Revolutionary War.
1814 U.S. troops under Gen. Andrew Jackson inflict a crushing defeat on the Creek Indians at Horshoe Bend in Northern Alabama.
1835 The Mexican army massacres Texan rebels at Gohad.
1866 President Andrew Johnson vetoes the civil rights bill, which later becomes the 14th amendment.
1884 The first long-distance telephone call is made from Boston to New York.
1893 The American Bell Telephone Company makes the first long distance telephone call to its branch office in New York.
1899 The Italian inventor G. Marconi achieves the first international radio transmission between England and France.
1900 The London Parliament passes the War Loan Act, which gives 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause.
1912 The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, are planted in Washington, D.C.
1933 Some 55,000 people stage a protest against Hitler in New York.
1941 Tokeo Yoshikawa arrives in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.
1942 The British raid the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
1944 One thousand Jews leave Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
1944 Thousands of Jews are murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Gestapo shoots forty Jewish policemen in the Riga, Latvia ghetto.
1945 General Dwight Eisenhower declares that the German defenses on the Western Front have been broken.
1952 Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reach the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.
1958 The United States announces a plan to explore space near the moon.
1976 Washington, D.C. opens its subway system.
1977 In aviation's worst disaster yet, 582 die when a KLM Pan Am 747 crashes.
March 28
1774 Britain passes the Coercive Act against rebellious Massachusetts.
1854 Britain and France declare war on Russia.
1864 A group of Copperheads attack Federal soldiers in Charleston, Illinois. Five are killed and twenty wounded.
1885 The Salvation Army is officially organized in the United States.
1908 Automobile owners lobby Congress in support of a bill that calls for vehicle licensing and federal registration.
1910 The first seaplane takes off from water at Martinques, France.
1917 The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is founded, Great Britain's first official service women.
1921 President Warren Harding names William Howard Taft as chief justice of the United States.
1930 Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara respectively.
1933 Nazis order a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools.
1939 The Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco.
1941 The Italian fleet is routed by the British at the Battle of Battle of Cape Matapan
1941 English novelist Virginia Woolf throws herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. Her body is never found.
1942 A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, explodes, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.
1945 Germany launches the last of its V-2 rockets against England.
1946 Juan Peron is elected President of Argentina. He will hold the office for six years.
1962 The U.S. Air Force announces research into the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites.
1969 Dwight D. Eisenhower dies at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C.
1979 A major accident occurs at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant
1986 The U.S. Senate passes $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.
1990 Jesse Owens receives the Congressional Gold Medal from President George Bush.
1999 An American Stealth F117 Nighthawk is shot down over northern Yugoslavia during NATO air strikes.
March 29
1461 The armies of two kings, Henry VI and Edward IV, collide at Towton.
1638 A permanent European colony is established in present-day Delaware.
1827 Composer Ludwig van Beethoven is buried in Vienna amidst a crowd of over 10,000 mourners.
1847 U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott take possession of the Mexican stronghold at Vera Cruz.
1867 The United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.
1879 British troops of the 90th Light Infantry Regiment repulse a major attack by Zulu tribesmen in northwest Zululand.
1886 Coca-Cola goes on sale for the first time at a drugstore in Atlanta. Its inventor, Dr. John Pemberton, claims it can cure anything from hysteria to the common cold.
1903 A regular news service begins between New York and London on Marconi's wireless.
1913 The German government announces a raise in taxes in order to finance the new military budget.
1916 The Italians call off the fifth attack on Isonzo.
1936 Italy firebombs the Ethiopian city of Harar.
1941 The British sink five Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
1951 The Chinese reject Gen. Douglas MacArthur's offer for a truce in Korea.
1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I opens on Broadway starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner.
1952 President Harry Truman removes himself from the presidential race.
1961 The 23rd amendment, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president, is ratified.
1962 Cuba opens the trial of the Bay of Pigs invaders.
1966 Leonid Brezhenev becomes First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. He denounces the American policy in Vietnam and calls it one of aggression.
1967 France launches its first nuclear submarine.
1971 Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is found guilty for his actions in the My Lai massacre.
1973 The last U.S. troops withdraw from South Vietnam.
1975 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat declares that he will reopen the Suez Canal on June 5, 1975.
1976 Eight Ohio National Guardsmen are indicted for shooting four Kent State students during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970.
1986 A court in Rome acquits six men in a plot to kill the Pope.
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Holsety
- The Gap Into Spam
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I've been waiting for this day; it's my birthday, and I've decided to pick out my favorite historical event for a birthday present (???).
Also, I feel like today is a day of infamy in terms of the US doing stuff
Connections to the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam War, Kent State shootings, etc...Oh well.
I'm going with this one. Alaska is a nice, cold place and it's pretty damned unique in terms of climate. So I think it's awesome that we nabbed it.1867 The United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.
Also, I feel like today is a day of infamy in terms of the US doing stuff
Connections to the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam War, Kent State shootings, etc...Oh well.