On This Day

February 21, 2013

1804 - The first self-propelled locomotive on rails was demonstrated in Wales.

1842 - John J. Greenough patented the sewing machine.

1848 - The Communist Manifesto was published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

1858 - The first electric burglar alarm was installed in Boston, MA.

1866 - Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school. The school was the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.

1874 - The Oakland Daily Tribune began publication.

1878 - The first telephone directories issued in the U.S. were distributed to residents in New Haven, CT. It was a single page of only fifty names.

1904 - The National Ski Association was formed in Ishpeming, MI.

1916 - During World War I, the Battle of Verdun began in France. The battle ended on December 18, 1916 with a French victory over Germany.

1925 - The first issue of "The New Yorker" was published.

1932 - William N. Goodwin patented the camera exposure meter.

1943 - "Free World Theatre" debuted on the Blue network (now ABC radio).

1945 - "The Lion and the Mouse" was first broadcast on "Brownstone Theatre."

1947 - Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year.

1950 - The first International Pancake Race was held in Liberal, Kansas.

1965 - Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City at the age of 39 by assassins identified as Black Muslims.

1968 - An agreement between baseball players and club owners increased the minimum salary for major league players to $10,000 a year.

1973 - Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert. More than 100 people were killed.

1975 - Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.

1988 - In Baton Rouge, LA, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin. He announced that he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Swaggart had been linked to an admitted prostitute.

1989 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush called Ayatollah Khomeini's death warrant against "Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie "deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior."

1995 - Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon. He landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.

1999 - India's Prime Minister Atal Bihair Vajpayee concluded two days of meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister Mohammad Nowaz Sharif.

2000 - David Letterman returned to his Late Night show about five weeks after having an emergency quintuple heart bypass operation.

2003 - David Hasselhoff and his wife Pamela were injured in a motorcycle accident. The accident was caused by a strong gust of wind. Hasselhoff fractured his lower back and broke several ribs. His wife fractured her left ankle and right wrist.

February 22, 2013

1630 - Quadequine introduced popcorn to English colonists at their first Thanksgiving dinner.

1784 - "Empress of China", a U.S. merchant ship, left New York City for the Far East.

1819 - Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

1855 - The U.S. Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 for continuance of the work on the Washington Monument. The next morning the resolution was tabled and it would be 21 years before the Congress would vote on funds again. Work was continued by the Know-Nothing Party in charge of the project.

1859 - U.S. President Buchanan approved the Act of February 22, 1859, which incorporated the Washington National Monument Society "for the purpose of completing the erection now in progress of a great National Monument to the memory of Washington at the seat of the Federal Government."

1860 - Organized baseball’s first game was played in San Francisco, CA.

1865 - In the U.S., Tennessee adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery.

1879 - In Utica, NY, Frank W. Woolworth opened his first 5 and 10-cent store.

1885 - The Washington Monument was officially dedicated in Washington, DC. It opened to the public in 1889.

1892 - "Lady Windermere's Fan", by Oscar Wilde, was first performed.

1920 - The first dog race track to use an imitation rabbit opened in Emeryville, CA.

1923 - The first successful chinchilla farm opened in Los Angeles, CA. It was the first farm of its kind in the U.S.

1924 - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White House.

1954 - ABC radio’s popular "Breakfast Club" program was simulcast on TV for the first time.

1969 - Barbara Jo Rubin became the first woman to win a U.S. thoroughbred horse race.

1973 - The U.S. and Communist China agreed to establish liaison offices.

1984 - The U.S. Census Bureau statistics showed that the state of Alaska was the fastest growing state of the decade with an increase in population of 19.2 percent.

1994 - The U.S. Justice Department charged Aldrich Ames and his wife with selling national secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames was later convicted to life in prison. Ames' wife received a 5-year prison term.

1997 - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut and colleagues announced that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned. Dolly was actually born on July 5, 1996. Dolly was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell.

2002 - In the Philippines, An MH-47E Chinook helicopter crashed into the ocean. All 10 men aboard were killed.

February 23, 2013

1574 - France began the 5th holy war against the Huguenots.

1660 - Charles XI became the king of Sweden.

1792 - The Humane Society of Massachusetts was incorporated.

1813 - The first U.S. raw cotton-to-cloth mill was founded in Waltham, MA.

1820 - The Cato Street conspiracy was uncovered.

1821 - The Philadelphia College of Apothecaries established the first pharmacy college.

1822 - Boston was incorporated as a city.

1836 - In San Antonio, TX, the siege of the Alamo began.

1839 - In Boston, MA, William F. Harnden organized the first express service between Boston and New York City. It was the first express service in the U.S.

1847 - Santa Anna was defeated at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico by U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary.

1861 - U.S. President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take his office after an assassination attempt in Baltimore.

1861 - Texas became the 7th state to secede from the Union.

1870 - The state of Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

1874 - Walter Winfield patented a game called "sphairistike." More widely known as lawn tennis.

1875 - J. Palisa discovered asteroid #143 (aka Adria).

1883 - Alabama became the first U.S. state to enact an antitrust law.

1886 - Charles M. Hall completed his invention of aluminum.

1887 - The French/Italian Riviera was hit by an earthquake that killed about 2,000.

1896 - The Tootsie Roll was introduced by Leo Hirshfield.

1898 - In France, Emile Zola was imprisoned for his letter, "J'accuse," which accused the government of anti-Semitism and wrongly jailing Alfred Dreyfus.

1900 - The Battle of Hart's Hill took place in South Africa between the Boers and the British army.

1904 - The U.S. acquired control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10 million.

1905 - The Rotary Club was founded in Chicago, IL, by Attorney Paul Harris and three others.

1910 - In Philadelphia, PA, the first radio contest was held.

1915 - Nevada began enforcing convenient divorce law.

1916 - The U.S. Congress authorizes the McKinley Memorial $1 gold coin.

1919 - The Fascist Party was formed in Italy by Benito Mussolini.

1927 - The Federal Radio Commission began assigning frequencies, hours of operation and power allocations for radio broadcasters. On July 1, 1934 the name was changed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

1932 - Robert Short became the first American to die in an arial battle with the Japanese. (more info)

1940 - Russian troops conquered Lasi Island.

1940 - Walt Disney's animated movie "Pinocchio" was released.

1945 - The 28th Regiment of the Fifth Marine Division of the U.S. Marines reached the top of Mount Surabachi. A photograph of these Marines raising the American flag was taken.

1954 - The first mass vaccination of children against polio began in Pittsburgh, PA.

1955 - The French government was formed by Edgar Faure.

1957 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NFL operations did fall within coverage of antitrust laws.

1958 - Juan Fangio, 5-time world diving champion, was kidnapped by Cuban rebels.

1963 - The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It prohibited poll taxes in federal elections.

1966 - The Bitar government in Syria was ended with a military coup.

1967 - Jim Ryun set a record in the half-mile run when ran it in 1:48.3.

1968 - Wilt Chamberlain (Philadelphia 76ers) became the first player to score 25,000 career points in the NBA.

1970 - Guyana became a republic.

1974 - The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $4 million more for the release of Patty Hearst. Hearst had been kidnapped on February 4th.

1980 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that Iran's new parliament would have to decide the fate of the hostages taken on November 4, 1979, at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

1985 - The TV show "Gimme a Break" was broadcast live before a studio audience. It was the first TV sitcom to be seen live since the 1950s.

1991 - During the Persian Gulf War, ground forces crossed the border of Saudi Arabia into the country of Iraq. Less than four days later the war was over due to the surrender or withdraw of Iraqi forces.

1993 - Gary Coleman won a $1,280,000 lawsuit against his parents.

1995 - The Dow Jones Industrial closed about 4,000 for the first time at 4,003.33.

1997 - NBC-TV aired "Schindler's List." It was completely uncensored.

1997 - Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a Palestinian teacher, opened fire on the 86th-floor observation deck of New York City's Empire State Building. He killed one person and wounded six more before killing himself.

1998 - In central Florida, tornadoes killed 42 people and damaged and/or destroyed about 2,600 homes and businesses.

1999 - In Ankara, Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan was charged with treason. The prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for the Kurdish rebel leader.

1999 - White supremacist John William King was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering James Byrd Jr. Byrd was dragged behind a truck for two miles on a country road in Texas.

2000 - Robby Knievel made a successful motorcycle jump of 200 feet over an oncoming train.

2005 - The New York, NY, city medical examiner's office annouced that it had exhausted all efforts to identify the remains of the people killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, due to the limits of DNA technology. About 1,600 people had been identified leaving more than 1,100 unidentified.

February 24, 2013

1803 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled itself to be the final interpreter of all constitutional issues.

1835 - "Siwinowe Kesibwi" (The Shawnee Sun) was issued as the first Indian language monthly publication in the U.S.

1839 - Mr. William S. Otis received a patent for the steam shovel.

1857 - The Los Angeles Vinyard Society was organized.

1857 - The first shipment of perforated postage stamps was received by the U.S. Government.

1863 - Arizona was organized as a territory.

1866 - In Washington, DC, an American flag made entirely of American bunting was displayed for the first time.

1868 - The first parade to use floats occurred in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.

1868 - The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson due to his attempt to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The U.S. Senate later acquitted Johnson.

1886 - Thomas Edison and Mina Miller were married.

1900 - New York City Mayor Van Wyck signed the contract to begin work on New York's first rapid transit tunnel. The tunnel would link Manhattan and Brooklyn. The ground breaking ceremony was on March 24, 1900.

1903 - In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an area was leased to the U.S. for a naval base.

1925 - A thermit was used for the first time. It was used to break up a 250,000-ton ice jam that had clogged the St. Lawrence River near Waddington, NY.

1938 - The first nylon bristle toothbrush was made. It was the first time that nylon yarn had been used commercially.

1942 - The U.S. Government stopped shipments of all 12-gauge shotguns for sporting use for the wartime effort.

1942 - The Voice of America (VOA) aired for the first time.

1945 - During World War II, the Philippine capital of Manilla, was liberated by U.S. soldiers.

1946 - Juan Peron was elected president of Argentina.

1956 - The city of Cleveland invoked a 1931 law that barred people under the age of 18 from dancing in public without an adult guardian.

1980 - NBC premiered the TV movie "Harper Valley P.T.A."

1981 - Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Britain's Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer.

1983 - The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 1100 mark for the first time.

1983 - A U.S.congressional commission released a report that condemned the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

1987 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, of the Los Angeles Lakers, got his first three-point shot in the NBA.

1987 - An exploding supernova was discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.

1988 - The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a $200,000 award to Rev. Jerry Falwell that had been won against "Hustler" magazine. The ruling expanded legal protections for parody and satire.

1989 - Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced Salman Rushdie to death for his novel "The Satanic Verses". A bounty of one to three-million-dollars was also put on Rushidie's head.

1989 - A United Airlines 747 jet rips open in flight killing 9 people. The flight was from Honolulu to New Zealand.

1992 - "Wayne's World" opened in U.S. theaters.

1992 - Tracy Gold began working on the set of "Growing Pains" again. She had left the show due to anorexia.

1994 - In Los Angeles, Garrett Morris was shot during a robbery attempt. He eventually recovered from his injury.

1997 - The U.S. The Food and Drug Administration named six brands of birth control as safe and effective "morning-after" pills for preventing pregnancy.

1997 - Dick Enberg received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - In southeast China, a domestic airliner crashed killing all 64 passengers.

2007 - The Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.

2008 - Cuba's parliament named Raul Castro president. His brother Fidel had ruled for nearly 50 years.

February 25, 2013

1570 - England's Queen Elizabeth I was excommunicated by Pope Pius V.

1751 - Edward Willet displayed the first trained monkey act in the U.S.

1793 - The department heads of the U.S. government met with U.S. President Washington for the first Cabinet meeting on U.S. record.

1836 - Samuel Colt received a patent for a "revolving gun".

1901 - The United States Steel Corp. was incorporated by J.P. Morgan.

1913 - The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It authorized a graduated income tax.

1919 - The state of NE became the first state to place a tax on gasoline. The tax was 1 cent per gallon.

1928 - The Federal Radio Commission issued the first U.S. television license to Charles Jenkins Laboratories in Washington, DC.

1930 - The bank check photographing device was patented.

1933 - The first aircraft carrier, Ranger, was launched.

1940 - The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played in the first hockey game to be televised in the U.S. The game was aired on W2WBS in New York with one camera in a fixed position. The Rangers beat the Canadiens 6-2.

1948 - Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia.

1950 - "Your Show of Shows" debuted on NBC.

1956 - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev criticized the late Josef Stalin in a speech before a Communist Party congress in Moscow.

1972 - Germany gave a $5 million ransom to Arab terrorist who had hijacked a jumbo jet.

1986 - Filippino President Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule after a tainted election.

1999 - William King was sentenced to death for the racial murder of James Byrd Jr in Jasper, TX. Two other men charged were later convicted for their involvement.

1999 - In Moscow, China's Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and Russia's President Boris Yeltsin discussed trade and other issues.

2000 - In Albany, NY, a jury acquitted four New York City police officers of second-degree murder and lesser charges in the February 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo.

2005 - Dennis Rader was arrested for the BTK serial killings in Wichita, KS. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 life prison terms.

February 26, 2013

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the Island of Elba. He then began his second conquest of France.

1848 - The second French Republic was proclaimed.

1863 - U.S. President Lincoln signed the National Currency Act.

1870 - In New York City, the first pneumatic-powered subway line was opened to the public.

1881 - S.S. Ceylon began his world-wide cruise, beginning in Liverpool, England.

1907 - The U.S. Congress raised their own pay to $7500.

1916 - Mutual signed Charlie Chaplin to a film contract.

1919 - In Arizona, the Grand Canyon was established as a National Park with an act of the U.S. Congress.

1929 - U.S. President Coolidge signed a bill creating the Grand Teton National Park.

1930 - New York City installed traffic lights.

1933 - A ground-breaking ceremony was held at Crissy Field for the Golden Gate Bridge.

1945 - In the U.S., a nationwide midnight curfew went into effect.

1952 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed an atomic bomb.

1957 - The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was established by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

1979 - "Flatbush" debuted on CBS-TV.

1986 - Corazon Aquino was inaugurated president of the Philippines. Long time President Ferdinand Marcos went into exile.

1987 - The Tower Commission rebuked U.S. President Reagan for failing to control his national security staff in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair.

1987 - The U.S.S.R. conducted its first nuclear weapons test after a 19-month moratorium period.

1991 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad Radio that Iraqi troops were being withdrawn from Kuwait.

1993 - Six people were killed and more than a thousand injured when a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York City. The bomb had been built by Islamic extremists.

1995 - Barings PLC collapsed after a securities dealer lost more than $1.4 billion by gambling on Tokyo stock prices. The company was Britain's oldest investment banking firm.

1998 - A Texas jury rejected an $11 million lawsuit by Texas cattlemen who blamed Oprah Winfrey for price drop after on-air comment about mad-cow disease.

1998 - In Oregon, a health panel rules that taxpayers must help to pay for doctor-assisted suicides.

2001 - A U.N. tribunal convicted Bosnian Croat political leader Dario Kordic and military commander Mario Cerkez of war crimes. They had ordered the systematic murder and persecution of Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war.

2002 - In Rome, Italy, a bomb exploded near the Interior Ministry. No injuries were reported.

2009 - Former Serbian president Milan Milutinovic was acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia regarding war crimes during the Kosovo War.

2009 - The Pentagon reveresed its 18-year policy of not allowing media to cover returning war dead. The reversal allowsd some media coverage with family approval.

February 27, 2013

1700 - The Pacific Island of New Britain was discovered.

1801 - The city of Washington, DC, was placed under congressional jurisdiction.

1827 - New Orleans held its first Mardi Gras celebration.

1861 - In Warsaw, Russian troops fired on a crowd protesting Russian rule over Poland. Five protesting marchers were killed in the incident.

1867 - Dr. William G. Bonwill invented the dental mallet.

1883 - Oscar Hammerstein patented the first cigar-rolling machine.

1896 - The "Charlotte Observer" published a picture of an X-ray photograph made by Dr. H.L. Smith. The photograph showed a perfect picture of all the bones of a hand and a bullet that Smith had placed between the third and fourth fingers in the palm.

1900 - In South Africa, the British received an unconditional surrender from Boer Gen. Piet Cronje at Paardeberg.

1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 19th Amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote.

1933 - The Reichstag, Germany's parliament building in Berlin, was set afire. The Nazis accused Communist for the fire.

1939 - The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed sit-down strikes.

1949 - Chaim Weizmann became the first Israeli president.

1951 - The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, limiting U.S. Presidents to two terms.

1972 - The Shanghai Communique was issued by U.S. President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai.

1973 - The American Indian Movement occupied Wouned Knee in South Dakota.

1974 - "People" magazine was first issued by Time-Life (later known as Time-Warner).

1981 - Chrysler Corporation was granted an additional $400 million in federal loan guarantees. Chrysler had posted a loss of $1.7 billion in 1980.

1982 - Wayne B. Williams was convicted of murdering two of the 28 black children and young adults whose bodies were found in Atlanta, GA, over a two-year period.

1986 - The U.S. Senate approved the telecast of its debates on a trial basis.

1990 - The Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping were indicted on five criminal counts in reference to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

1991 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced live on television that "Kuwait is liberated."

1997 - In Ireland, divorce became legal.

1997 - Don Cornelius received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Britain's House of Lords agreed to give a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first-born son. This was the end to 1,000 years of male preference.

1999 - Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new hot air balloon endurance record when they had been aloft for 233 hours and 55 minutes. The two were in the process of trying to circumnavigate the Earth.

1999 - Nigeria returned to civilian rule when Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo became the country's first elected president since August of 1983.

2002 - In Boston, twenty people working at Logan International Airport were charged with lying to get their jobs or security badges

February 28, 2013

1827 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first railroad incorporated for commercial transportation of people and freight.

1844 - Several people were killed aboard the USS Princeton when a 12-inch gun exploded.

1849 - Regular steamboat service to California via Cape Horn arrived in San Francisco for the first time. The SS California had left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848. The trip took 4 months and 21 days.

1854 - The Republican Party was organized in Ripon, WI. About 50 slavery opponents began the new political group.

1861 - The U.S. territory of Colorado was organized.

1881 - Thomas Edison hired Samuel Insull as his private secretary.

1883 - The first vaudeville theater opened.

1885 - AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph) was incorporated. The company was capitalized on only $100,000 and provided long distance service for American Bell.

1893 - Edward G. Acheson showed his patent for Carborundum.

1900 - In South Africa, British troops relieved Ladysmith, which had been under siege since November 2, 1899.

1911 - Thomas A. Edison, Inc. was organized.

1940 - The first televised basketball game was shown. The game featured Fordham University and the University of Pittsburgh from Madison Square Gardens in New York.

1948 - Bud Gartiser set a world record when he cleared the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.

1951 - A Senate committee issued a report that stated that there were at least two major crime syndicates in the U.S.

1953 - In a Cambridge University laboratory, scientists James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA.

1954 - In San Francisco "Birth of a Planet" was aired. It was the first American phase-contrast cinemicrography film to be presented on television.

1956 - A patent was issued to Forrester for a computer memory core.

1962 - The John Glenn for President club was formed by a group of Las Vegas republicans.

1974 - The U.S. and Egypt re-established diplomatic relations after a break of seven years.

1979 - Mr. Ed, the talking horse from the TV show "Mr. Ed", died.

1983 - "M*A*S*H" became the most watched television program in history when the final episode aired.

1986 - Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated in Stockholm.

1993 - U.S. Federal agents raided the compound of an armed religious cult in Waco, TX. The ATF had planned to arrest the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, on federal firearms charges. Four agents and six Davidians were killed and a 51-day standoff followed.

1994 - NATO made its first military strike when U.S. F-16 fighters shot down four Bosnian Serb warplanes in violation of a no-fly zone over central Bosnia.

1995 - The Denver International Airport opened after a 16-month delay.

1998 - Serbian police began a campaign to wipe out "terrorist gangs" in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo.

2001 - The Northwest region of the U.S., including the state of Washington, was hit by an earthquake that measured 6.9 on the Richter Scale. There were no deaths reported.

2002 - In Ahmadabad, India, Hindus set fire to homes in a Muslim neighborhood. At least 55 people were killed in the attack.

2002 - Sotheby's auction house announced that it had identified Peter Paul Reubens as the creator of the painting "The Massacre of the Innocents." The painting was previously thought to be by Jan van den Hoecke.

2002 - It was announced that John Madden would be replacing Dennis Miller on "Monday Night Football." Madden signed a four-year $20 million deal with ABC Sports.

March 1, 2013

1498 - Vasco de Gama landed at what is now Mozambique on his way to India.

1562 - In Vassy, France, Catholics massacred over 1,000 Huguenots. The event started the First War of Religion.

1692 - In Salem Village, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Salem witch trials began. Four women were the first to be charged.

1781 - In America, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation.

1784 - In Great Britain, E. Kidner opened the first cooking school.

1790 - The U.S. Congress authorized the first U.S. census.

1803 - Ohio became the 17th U.S. state.

1810 - Sweden became the first country to appoint an Ombudsman, Lars August Mannerheim.

1811 - Egyptian ruler Mohammed Ali massacred the leaders of the Mameluke dynasty.

1815 - Napoleon returned to France from the island of Elba. He had been forced to abdicate in April of 1814.

1845 - U.S. President Tyler signed the congressional resolution to annex the Republic of Texas.

1862 - Prussia formally recognized the Kingdom of Italy.

1864 - Louis Ducos de Hauron patented a machine for taking and projecting motion pictures. The machine was never built.

1867 - Nebraska became the 37th U.S. state.

1869 - Postage stamps with scenes were issued for the first time.

1872 - The U.S. Congress authorized the creation of Yellowstone National Park. It was the world's first national park.

1873 - E. Remington and Sons of Ilion, NY, began the manufacturing the first practical typewriter.

1879 - The library of Hawaii was established.

1890 - "Literary Digest" was available for the first time.

1896 - The Battle of Adowa began in Ethiopia between the forces of Emperor Menelik II and Italian troops. The Italians were defeated.

1900 - In South Africa, Ladysmith was relieved by British troops after being under siege by the Boers for more than four months.

1907 - In Odessa, Russia, there were only about 15,000 Jews left due to evacuations.

1907 - In Spain, a royal decree abolished civil marriages.

1907 - In New York, the Salvation Army opened an anti-suicide bureau.

1911 - Industrialist Henry Frick acquired Velasquez's "Portrait of King Philip IV."

1911 - Jose Ordonez was elected President of Uraguay.

1912 - Captain Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from a moving airplane.

1927 - The Bank of Italy became a National Bank.

1932 - The 22-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped. The child was found dead in May.

1937 - U.S. Steel raised workers’ wages to $5 a day.

1937 - In Connecticut, the first permanent automobile license plates were issued.

1941 - FM Radio began in Nashville, TN, when station W47NV began operations.

1941 - Bulgaria joined the Axis powers by signing the Tripartite Pact.

1941 - "Duffy’s Tavern" debuted on CBS Radio.

1947 - The International Monetary Fund began operations.

1947 - Chinese Premier T.V. Soong resigned.

1949 - Joe Louis announced that he was retiring from boxing as world heavyweight boxing champion.

1950 - Klaus Fuchs was convicted of giving U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

1954 - The United States announced that it had conducted a hydrogen bomb test on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1954 - Five U.S. congressmen were wounded when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1959 - Archbishop Makarios returned to Cyprus from exile.

1961 - The Peace Corps was established by U.S. President Kennedy.

1962 - Pakistan announced that it had a new constitution that set up a presidential system of government.

1966 - The Soviet probe, Venera 3 crashed on the planet Venus. It was the first unmanned spacecraft to land on the surface of another planet.

1966 - Ghana ordered all Soviet, East German and Chinese technicians to leave the country.

1969 - Mickey Mantle announced his retirement from major league baseball.

1971 - A bomb exploded in a restroom in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol. There were no injuries. A U.S. group protesting the Vietnam War claimed responsibility.

1974 - Seven people were indicted in connection with the Watergate break-in. The charge was conspiring to obstruct justice.

1983 - The New Jersey Transit strike began. It ended on April 2.

1984 - The U.S.S.R. performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk, U.S.S.R.

1987 - The Boston Celtics defeated Detroit 112-102 to post their 2,235th NBA win.

1987 - S&H Green Stamps became S&H Green Seals. The stamps were introduced 90 years earlier.

1988 - Soviet troops were sent into Azerbaijan after ethnic riots between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

1989 - In Washington, DC, Mayor Barry and the City council imposed a curfew on minors.

1990 - In Cairo, 16 people were killed in a fire at the Sheraton Hotel.

1992 - Bosnian Serb snipers fired upon civilians after a majority of the Moslem and Croatian communities voted in favor of Bosnia's independence.

1992 - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia announced major political reforms that ceded some powers after 10 years of disciplined rule.

1992 - Bosnian Muslims and Croats voted to secede from Yugoslavia.

1993 - The U.S. government announced that the number of food stamp recipients had reached a record number of 26.6 million.

1994 - Israel released about 500 Arab prisoners in an effort to placate Palestinians over the Hebron massacre.

1995 - The European Parliament rejected legislation that would have allowed biotechnology companies to patent new life forms.

1995 - Yahoo! was incorporated.

1999 - The Angolan Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia, exploded. Four other bombs went off in the capital.

1999 - In Uganda, eight tourists were brutally murdered by Hutu rebels.

2002 - Operation Anaconda began in eastern Afghanistan. Allied forces were fighting against Taliban and Al Quaida fighters.

2003 - In New York, a $250,000 Salvador Dali sketch was stolen from a display case in the lobby at Rikers Island jail. On June 17, 2003, it was announced that four corrections officers had surrendered and pled innocent in connection to the theft. The mixed-media composition was a sketch of the crucifixion.

2003 - In the U.S., approximately 180,000 personnel from 22 different organizations around the government became part of the Department of Homeland Security. This completed the largest government reorganization since the beginning of the Cold War.

2003 - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured by CIA and Pakistani agents near Islamabad. He was the suspected mastermind behind the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

March 3, 2013

1791 - The U.S. Congress passed a resolution that created the U.S. Mint.

1803 - The first impeachment trial of a U.S. Judge, John Pickering, began.

1812 - The U.S. Congress passed the first foreign aid bill.

1817 - The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans was opened.

1845 - Florida became the 27th U.S. state.

1845 - The U.S. Congress passed legislation overriding a U.S. President’s veto. It was the first time the Congress had achieved this.

1849 - The U.S. Department of the Interior was established.

1849 - The Gold Coinage Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. It allowed the minting of gold coins.

1849 - The U.S. Congress created the territory of Minnesota.

1851 - The U.S. Congress authorized the 3-cent piece. It was the smallest U.S. silver coin.

1857 - Britain and France declared war on China.

1863 - Free city delivery of mail was authorized by the U.S. Postal Service.

1875 - The U.S. Congress authorized the 20-cent piece. It was only used for 3 years.

1878 - Russia and the Ottomans signed the treaty of San Stenafano. The treaty granted independence to Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and the autonomy of Bulgaria.

1885 - The American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) was incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company.

1885 - The U.S. Post Office began offering special delivery for first-class mail.

1894 - The "Atlantis" was first published. It was the first Greek newspaper in America.

1900 - Striking miners in Germany returned to work.

1903 - In St. Louis, MO, Barney Gilmore was arrested for spitting.

1903 - The U.S. imposed a $2 head tax on immigrants.

1904 - Wilhelm II of Germany made the first recording of a political document with Thomas Edison's cylinder.

1905 - The Russian Czar agreed to create an elected assembly.

1906 - A Frenchman tried the first flight in an airplane with tires.

1908 - The U.S. government declared open war on on U.S. anarchists.

1909 - Aviators Herring, Curtiss and Bishop announced that airplanes would be made commercially in the U.S.

1910 - J.D. Rockefeller Jr. announced his withdrawal from business to administer his father's fortune for an "uplift in humanity". He also appealed to the U.S. Congress for the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation.

1910 - In New York, Robert Forest founded the National Housing Association to fight deteriorating urban living conditions.

1910 - Nicaraguan rebels admitted defeat in open war and resorted to guerrilla tactics in the hope of U.S. intervention.

1915 - The motion picture "Birth of a Nation" debuted in New York City.

1918 - The Treaty of Brest Litovsky was signed by Germany, Austria and Russia. The treaty ended Russia's participation in World War I.

1923 - The first issue of Time magazine was published.

1930 - "Flying High" opened at the Apollo Theatre in New York City.

1931 - The "Star Spangled Banner," written by Francis Scott Key, was adopted as the American national anthem. The song was originally a poem known as "Defense of Fort McHenry."

1938 - A world record for the indoor mile run was set by Glenn Cunningham. He ran the distance in 4 minutes, 4.4 seconds.

1939 - In Bombay, Ghandi began a fast to protest the state's autocratic rule.

1941 - Moscow denounced the Axis rule in Bulgaria.

1945 - Superman encountered Batman and Robin for the first time on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

1945 - During World War II, Finland declared war on the Axis.

1952 - "Whispering Streets" debuted on ABC Radio.

1952 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld New York's Feinberg Law that banned Communist teachers in the U.S.

1956 - Morocco gained its independence.

1959 - The San Francisco Giants had their new stadium officially named Candlestick Park.

1969 - Apollo 9 was launched by NASA to test a lunar module.

1969 - Sirhan Sirhan testified in a Los Angeles court that he killed Robert Kennedy.

1973 - Japan disclosed its first defense plan since World War II.

1974 - About 350 people died when a Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashed just after takeoff from Orly Airport in Paris.

1978 - The remains of Charles Chaplin were stolen from his grave in Cosier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. The body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva.

1980 - The submarine Nautilus was decommissioned. The vessels final voyage had ended on May 26, 1979.

1985 - Women Against Pornography awarded its ‘Pig Award’ to Huggies Diapers. The activists claimed that the TV ads for diapers had "crossed the line between eye-catching and porn."

1985 - The TV show "Moonlighting" premiered.

1987 - The U.S. House of Representatives rejected a package of $30 million in non-lethal aid for the Nicaraguan Contras.

1991 - 25 people were killed when a United Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashed while on approach to the Colorado Springs airport.

1991 - Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers. The scene was captured on amateur video. (California)

1994 - The Mexican government reached a peace agreement with the Chiapas rebels.

1995 - A U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia ended. Several gunmen were killed by U.S. Marines in Mogadishu while overseeing the pull out of peacekeepers.

1999 - In Egypt, 19 people were killed when a bus plunged into a Nile canal.

1999 - Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones began their attempt to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon non-stop. They succeeded on March 20, 1999.

March 4, 2013

1634 - Samuel Cole opened the first tavern in Boston, MA.

1681 - England's King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn for an area that later became the state of Pennsylvania.

1766 - The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, which had caused bitter and violent opposition in the U.S. colonies.

1778 - The Continental Congress voted to ratify the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. The two treaties were the first entered into by the U.S. government.

1789 - The first Congress of the United States met in New York and declared that the U.S. Constitution was in effect.

1791 - Vermont was admitted as the 14th U.S. state. It was the first addition to the original 13 American colonies.

1794 - The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress. The Amendment limited the jurisdiction of the federal courts to automatically hear cases brought against a state by the citizens of another state. Later interpretations expanded this to include citizens of the state being sued, as well.

1813 - The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin. The French garrison evacuated the city without a fight.

1826 - The first railroad in the U.S. was chartered. It was the Granite Railway in Quincy, MA.

1837 - The state of Illinois granted a city charter to Chicago.

1861 - The Confederate States of America adopted the "Stars and Bars" flag.

1877 - Emile Berliner invented the microphone.

1880 - Halftone engraving was used for the first time when the "Daily Graphic" was published in New York City.

1881 - Eliza Ballou Garfield became the first mother of a U.S. President to live in the executive mansion.

1902 - The American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago.

1904 - In Korea, Russian troops retreated toward the Manchurian border as 100,000 Japanese troops advanced.

1908 - The New York board of education banned the act of whipping students in school.

1908 - France notified signatories of Algeciras that it would send troops to Chaouia, Morocco.

1914 - Doctor Fillatre successfully separated Siamese twins.

1917 - Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.

1925 - Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office in Washington, DC. The presidential inauguration was broadcast on radio for the first time.

1930 - Emma Fahning became the first woman bowler to bowl a perfect game in competition run by the Women’s International Bowling Congress in Buffalo, NY.

1933 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt gave his inauguration speech in which he said "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

1933 - Labor Secretary Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a Presidential administrative cabinet.

1942 - "Junior Miss" starring Shirley Temple aired on CBS radio for the first time.

1942 - The Stage Door Canteen opened on West 44th Street in New York City.

1947 - France and Britain signed an alliance treaty.

1950 - Walt Disney’s "Cinderella" was released.

1952 - U.S. President Harry Truman dedicated the "Courier," the first seagoing radio broadcasting station.

1952 - Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were married.

1954 - In Boston, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital reported the first successful kidney transplant.{C}

1974 - "People" magazine was available for the first time.

1975 - Queen Elizabeth knighted Charlie Chaplin.

1986 - "Today" debuted in London as England’s newest, national, daily newspaper.

1989 - Time, Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. announced a plan to merge.

1991 - Sheik Saad al-Jaber al-Sabah, the prime minister of Kuwait, returned to his country for the first time since Iraq's invasion.

1994 - Bosnia's Croats and Moslems signed an agreement to form a federation in a loose economic union with Croatia.

1997 - U.S. President Clinton barred federal spending on human cloning.

1998 - Microsoft repaired software that apparently allowed hackers to shut down computers in government and university offices nationwide.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court said that federal law banned on-the-job sexual harassment even when both parties are the same sex.

1999 - Monica Lewinsky's book about her affair with U.S. President Clinton went on sale in the U.S.

2002 - Canada banned human embryo cloning but permitted government-funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions.

March 5, 2013

1623 - The first alcohol temperance law in the colonies was enacted in Virginia.

1624 - In the American colony of Virginia, the upper class was exempted from whipping by legislation.

1750 - "King Richard III" was performed in New York City. It was the first Shakespearean play to be presented in America.

1766 - The first Spanish governor of Louisiana, Antonio de Ulloa, arrived in New Orleans.

1770 - "The Boston Massacre" took place when British troops fired on a crowd in Boston killing five people. Two British troops were later convicted of manslaughter.

1793 - Austrian troops defeated the French and recaptured Liege.

1836 - Samuel Colt manufactured the first pistol (.34-caliber).

1842 - A Mexican force of over 500 men under Rafael Vasquez invaded Texas for the first time since the revolution. They briefly occupied San Antonio, but soon headed back to the Rio Grande.

1845 - The U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to ship camels to the western U.S.

1864 - For the first time, Oxford met Cambridge in track and field competition in England.

1867 - An abortive Fenian uprising against English rule took place in Ireland.

1868 - The U.S. Senate was organized into a court of impeachment to decide charges against President Andrew Johnson.

1872 - George Westinghouse patented the air brake.

1900 - The American Hall of Fame was founded.

1900 - Two U.S. battleships left for Nicaragua to halt revolutionary disturbances.

1901 - Germany and Britain began negotiations with hopes of creating an alliance.

1902 - In France, the National Congress of Miners decided to call for a general strike for an 8-hour day.

1907 - In St. Petersburg, Russia, the new Duma opened. 40,000 demonstrators were dispersed by troops.

1910 - In Philadelphia, PA, 60,000 people left their jobs to show support for striking transit workers.

1910 - The Moroccan envoy signed the 1909 agreement with France.

1912 - The Italians became the first to use dirigibles for military purposes. They used them for reconnaissance flights behind Turkish lines west of Tripoli.

1918 - The Soviets moved the capital of Russia from Petrograd to Moscow.

1922 - Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee broke all existing records for women's trap shooting. She hit 98 out of 100 targets.

1923 - Old-age pension laws were enacted in the states of Montana and Nevada.

1924 - Frank Caruana of Buffalo, NY, became the first bowler to roll two perfect games in a row.

1933 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a four-day bank holiday in order to stop large amounts of money from being withdrawn from banks.

1933 - The Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote in German parliamentary elections.{C}

1934 - In Amarillo, TX, the first Mother's-In-Law Day was celebrated.

1943 - Germany called fifteen and sixteen year olds for military service due to war losses.

1946 - Winston Churchill delivered his "Iron Curtain Speech".

1946 - The U.S. sent protests to the U.S.S.R. on incursions into Manchuria and Iran.

1953 - Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died. He had been in power for 29 years.

1956 - The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the ban on segregation in public schools.

1969 - Gustav Heinemann was elected West German President.

1970 - A nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.

1976 - The British pound fell below the equivalent of $2 for the first time in history.

1977 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter appeared on CBS News with Walter Cronkite for the first "Dial-a-President" radio talk show.

1982 - John Belushi died in Los Angeles of a drug overdose at the age of 33.

1984 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities had the right to display the Nativity scene as part of their Christmas display.

1984 - The U.S. accused Iraq of using poison gas.

1985 - Mike Bossy, of the New York Islanders, became the first National Hockey League player to score 50 goals in eight consecutive seasons.

1993 - Cuban President Fidel Castro said that Hillary Clinton is "a beautiful woman."

1993 - Sprinter Ben Johnson was banned from racing for life by the Amateur Athletic Association after testing positive for banned performance-enhancing substances for a second time.

1997 - North Korea and South Korea met for first time in 25 years for peace talks.

1997 - Chuck Niles received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - NASA announced that an orbiting craft had found enough water on the moon to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.

1998 - It was announced that Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins would lead crew of Columbia on a mission to launch a large X-ray telescope. She was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.

2004 - Martha Stewart was found guilty of lying about the reason for selling 3,298 shares of ImClone Systems stock, conspiracy, making false statement and obstruction of justice.

March 6, 2013

1521 - Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam.

1808 - At Harvard University, the first college orchestra was founded.

1820 - The Missouri Compromise was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by U.S. President James Monroe. The act admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibited slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.

1834 - The city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

1836 - The thirteen-day siege of the Alamo by Santa Anna and his army ended. The Mexican army of three thousand men defeated the 189 Texas volunteers.

1854 - At the Washington Monument, several men stole the Pope's Stone from the lapidarium.

1857 - The U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ruled that blacks could not sue in federal court to be citizens.

1886 - "The Nightingale" was first published. It was the first magazine for nurses.

1899 - Aspirin was patented by German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser.

1900 - In West Virginia, an explosion trapped 50 coal miners underground.

1901 - An assassin tried to kill Wilhelm II of Germany in Bremen.

1907 - British creditors of the Dominican Republic claimed that the U.S. had failed to collect debts.

1928 - A Communist attack on Peking, China resulted in 3,000 dead and 50,000 fled to Swatow.

1939 - In Spain, Jose Miaja took over the Madrid government after a military coup and vowed to seek "peace with honor."

1941 - Les Hite and his orchestra recorded "The World is Waiting for the Sunrise".

1944 - During World War II, U.S. heavy bombers began the first American raid on Berlin. Allied planes dropped 2000 tons of bombs.

1946 - Ho Chi Minh, the President of Vietnam, struck an agreement with France that recognized his country as an autonomous state within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

1947 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the contempt conviction of John L. Lewis.

1947 - Winston Churchill announced that he opposed British troop withdrawals from India.

1947 - The first air-conditioned naval ship, "The Newport News," was launched from Newport News, VA.

1957 - The British African colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

1960 - Switzerland granted women the right to vote in municipal elections.

1960 - The United States announced that it would send 3,500 troops to Vietnam.

1964 - Tom O’Hara set a new world indoor record when he ran the mile in 3 minutes, 56.4 seconds.

1967 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his plan to establish a draft lottery.

1970 - Charles Manson released his album "Lies" to finance his defense against murder charges.

1973 - U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed price controls on oil and gas.

1975 - Iran and Iraq announced that they had settled their border dispute.

1980 - Islamic militants in Tehran said that they would turn over American hostages to the Revolutionary Council.

1981 - Walter Cronkite appeared on his last episode of "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite." He had been on the job 19 years.

1981 - U.S. President Reagan announced a plan to cut 37,000 federal jobs.

1982 - National Basketball Association history was made when San Antonio beat Milwaukee 171-166 in three overtime periods to set the record for most points by two teams in a game. The record was beaten on December 13, 1983 by the Pistons and the Nuggets when they played to a final score of 186-184

1983 - The United States Football League began its first season of pro football competition.

1985 - Yul Brynner played his his 4,500th performance in the musical "The King and I."

1987 - The British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the Channel off the coast of Belgium. 189 people died.

1990 - In Afghanistan, an attempted coup to remove President Najibullah from office failed.

1990 - The Russian Parliament passed a law that sanctioned the ownership of private property.

1991 - In Paris, five men were jailed for plotting to smuggle Libyan arms to the Irish Republican Army.

1992 - The last episode of "The Cosby Show" aired. The show had been on since September of 1984.

1992 - The computer virus "Michelangelo" went into effect.

1997 - A gunman stole "Tete de Femme," a million-dollar Picasso portrait, from a London gallery. The painting was recovered a week later.

1997 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II launched the first official royal Web site.

1998 - A Connecticut state lottery accountant gunned down three supervisors and the lottery chief before killing himself.

March 7, 2013

0322 BC - Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, died.

1774 - The British closed the port of Boston to all commerce.

1799 - In Palestine, Napoleon captured Jaffa and his men massacred more than 2,000 Albanian prisoners.

1848 - In Hawaii, the Great Mahele was signed.

1849 - The Austrian Reichstag was dissolved.

1850 - U.S. Senator Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a method of preserving the Union.

1854 - Charles Miller received a patent for the sewing machine.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell received a patent (U.S. Patent No. 174,465) for his telephone.

1901 - It was announced that blacks had been found enslaved in parts of South Carolina.

1904 - The Japanese bombed the Russian town of Vladivostok.

1904 - In Springfield, OH, a mob broke into a jail and shot a black man accused of murder.

1906 - Finland granted women the right to vote.

1908 - Cincinnati's mayor, Mark Breith announced before the city council that, "Women are not physically fit to operate automobiles."

1911 - Willis Farnworth patented the coin-operated locker.

1911 - In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. sent 20,000 troops to the border of Mexico.

1918 - Finland signed an alliance treaty with Germany.

1925 - The Soviet Red Army occupied Outer Mongolia.

1927 - A Texas law that banned Negroes from voting was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1933 - CBS radio debuted "Marie The Little French Princess." It was the first daytime radio serial.

1933 - The board game Monopoly was invented.

1935 - Malcolm Campbell set an auto speed record of 276.8 mph in Florida.

1936 - Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland in violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles.

1942 - Japanese troops landed on New Guinea.

1945 - During World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany.

1947 - John L. Lewis declared that only a totalitarian regime could prevent strikes.

1951 - U.N. forces in Korea under General Matthew Ridgeway launched Operation Ripper against the Chinese.

1954 - Russia appeared for the first time in ice-hockey competition. Russia defeated Canada 7-2 to win the world ice-hockey title in Stockholm, Sweden.

1955 - "Peter Pan" was presented as a television special for the first time.

1955 - Baseball commissioner Ford Frick said that he was in favor of legalizing the spitball.

1955 - Phyllis Diller made her debut at the Purple Onion in San Francisco, CA.

1959 - Melvin C. Garlow became the first pilot to fly over a million miles in jet airplanes.

1965 - State troopers and a sheriff's posse broke up a march by civil rights demonstrators in Selma, AL.

1968 - The Battle of Saigon came to an end.

1971 - A thousand U.S. planes bombed Cambodia and Laos.

1975 - The U.S. Senate revised the filibuster rule. The new rule allowed 60 senators to limit debate instead of the previous two-thirds.

1981 - Anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed the kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Allen Bitterman. The guerrillas accused Bitterman of being a CIA agent.

1983 - TNN (The Nashville Network) began broadcasting.

1985 - "Commonwealth" magazine ceased publication after five decades.

1985 - The first AIDS antibody test, an ELISA-type test, was released.

1987 - Mike Tyson became the youngest heavyweight titleholder when he beat James Smith in a decision during a 12-round fight in Las Vegas, NV.

1989 - Poland accused the Soviet Union of a World War II massacre in Katyn.

1994 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parodies that poke fun at an original work can be considered "fair use" that does not require permission from the copyright holder.

1994 - In Moldova, a referendum was rejected by 90% of voters to form a union with Rumania.

1999 - In El Salvador, Francisco Flores Pérez of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) was elected president.

2002 - A federal judge awarded Anna Nicole Smith more than $88 million in damages. The ruling was the latest in a legal battle over the estate of Smith's late husband, J. Howard Marshall II.

2003 - Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center announced that they had transferred 6.7 gigabytes of uncompressed data from Sunnvale, CA, to Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 58 seconds. The data was sent via fiber-optic cables and traveled 6,800 miles.

2009 - NASA's Kepler Mission, a space photometer for searching for extrasolar planets in the Milky Way galaxy, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

2012 - The successor to Apple's iPad2 was unveiled.

March 8, 2013

1618 - Johann Kepler discovered the third Law of Planetary Motion.

1702 - England's Queen Anne took the throne upon the death of King William III.

1782 - The Gnadenhutten massacre took place. About 90 Indians were killed by militiamen in Ohio in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.

1853 - The first bronze statue of Andrew Jackson is unveiled in Washington, DC.

1855 - A train passed over the first railway suspension bridge at Niagara Falls, NY.

1862 - The Confederate ironclad "Merrimack" was launched.

1880 - U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes declared that the United States would have jurisdiction over any canal built across the isthmus of Panama.

1887 - The telescopic fishing rod was patented by Everett Horton.

1894 - A dog license law was enacted in the state of New York. It was the first animal control law in the U.S.

1904 - The Bundestag in Germany lifted the ban on the Jesuit order of priests.

1905 - In Russia, it was reported that the peasant revolt was spreading to Georgia.

1907 - The British House of Commons turned down a women's suffrage bill.

1909 - Pope Pius X lifted the church ban on interfaith marriages in Hungary.

1910 - In France, Baroness de Laroche became the first woman to obtain a pilot's license.

1910 - The King of Spain authorized women to attend universities.

1911 - In Europe, International Women's Day was celebrated for the first time.

1911 - British Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Gray declared that Britain would not support France in the event of a military conflict.

1917 - Russia's "February Revolution" began with rioting and strikes in St. Petersburg. The revolution was called the "February Revolution" due to Russia's use of the Old Style calendar.

1917 - The U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.

1921 - Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato was assassinated while leaving the Parliament in Madrid.

1921 - French troops occupied Dusseldorf.

1933 - Self-liquidating scrip money was issued for the first time at Franklin, IN.

1941 - Martial law was proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish any anti-Nazi protests.

1942 - During World War II, Japanese forces captured Rangoon, Burma.

1943 - Japanese forces attacked American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville. The battle lasted five days.

1945 - Phyllis Mae Daley received a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She later became the first African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.

1946 - In New York City, the "Journal American" became the first commercial business to receive a helicopter license.

1946 - The French naval fleet arrived at Haiphong, Vietnam.

1948 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious instruction in public schools was unconstitutional.

1953 - A census bureau report indicated that 239,000 farmers had quit farming over the last 2 years.

1954 - France and Vietnam opened talks in Paris on a treaty to form the state of Indochina.

1954 - Herb McKenley set a world record for the quarter mile when he ran the distance in 46.8 seconds.

1957 - The International Boxing Club was ruled a monopoly putting it in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.

1959 - Groucho, Chico and Harpo made their final TV appearance together.

1961 - Max Conrad circled the globe in a record time of eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes in the Piper Aztec.

1965 - The U.S. landed about 3,500 Marines in South Vietnam. They were the first U.S. combat troops to land in Vietnam.

1966 - Australia announced that it would triple the number of troops in Vietnam.

1973 - Two bombs exploded near Trafalgar Square in Great Britain. 234 people were injured.

1982 - The U.S. accused the Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas.

1985 - The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reported that 407,700 Americans were millionaires. That was more than double the total from just five years before.

1986 - Four French television crewmembers were abducted in west Beirut. All four were eventually released.

1988 - In Fort Campbell, KY, 17 U.S. soldiers were killed when two Army helicopters collided in midair.

1989 - In Lhasa, Tibet, martial law was declared after three days of protest against Chinese rule.

1999 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Timothy McVeigh for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

1999 - The White House, under President Bill Clinton, directed the firing of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The firing was a result of alleged security violations.

2001 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted for an across-the-board tax cut of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

2005 - In norther Chechnya, Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was killed during a raid by Russian forces.

March 9, 2013

1454 - Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy. Matthias Ringmann, a German mapmaker, named the American continent in his honor.

1617 - The Treaty of Stolbovo ended the occupation of Northern Russia by Swedish troops.

1734 - The Russians took Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland.

1745 - The first carillon was shipped from England to Boston, MA.

1788 - Connecticut became the 5th state to join the United States.

1793 - Jean Pierre Blanchard made the first balloon flight in North America. The event was witnessed by U.S. President George Washington.

1796 - Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais were married. They were divorced in 1809.

1799 - The U.S. Congress contracted with Simeon North, of Berlin, CT, for 500 horse pistols at the price of $6.50 each.

1812 - Swedish Pomerania was seized by Napoleon.

1820 - The U.S. Congress passed the Land Act that paved the way for westward expansion of North America.

1822 - Charles M. Graham received the first patent for artificial teeth.

1832 - Abraham Lincoln announced that he would run for a political office for the first time. He was unsuccessful in his run for a seat in the Illinois state legislature.

1839 - The French Academy of Science announced the Daguerreotype photo process.

1858 - Albert Potts was awarded a patent for the letter box.

1859 - The National Association of Baseball Players adopted the rule that limited the size of bats to no more than 2-1/2 inches in diameter.

1860 - The first Japanese ambassador to the U.S. was appointed.

1862 - During the U.S. Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia fought to a draw in a five-hour battle at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

1863 - General Ulysses Grant was appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces.

1900 - In Germany, women petition Reichstag for the right to take university entrance exams.

1905 - In Egypt, U.S. archeologist Davies discovered the royal tombs of Tua and Yua.

1905 - In Manchuria, Japanese troops surrounded 200,000 Russian troops that were retreating from Mudken.

1905 - In Congo, Belgian Vice Gov. Costermans committed suicide following an investigation of colonial policy.

1906 - In the Philippines, fifteen Americans and 600 Moros were killed in the last two days of fighting.

1909 - The French National Assembly passed an income tax bill.

1910 - Union men urged for a national sympathy strike for miners in Pennsylvania.

1911 - The funding for five new battleships was added to the British military defense budget.

1916 - Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico. 17 people were killed by the 1,500 horsemen.

1929 - Eric Krenz became the first athlete to toss the discus over 160 feet.

1932 - Eamon De Valera was elected president of the Irish Free State and pledged to abolish all loyalty to the British Crown.

1933 - The U.S. Congress began its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation.

1936 - The German press warned that all Jews who vote in the upcoming elections would be arrested.

1945 - "Those Websters" debuted on CBS radio.

1945 - During World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers launched incendiary bomb attacks against Japan.

1946 - The A.F.L. accused Juan Peron of using the army to establish a dictatorship over Argentine labor.

1949 - The first all-electric dining car was placed in service on the Illinois Central Railroad.

1954 - WNBT-TV (now WNBC-TV), in New York, broadcast the first local color television commercials. The ad was Castro Decorators of New York City. (New York)

1956 - British authorities arrested and deported Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus. He was accused of supporting terrorists.

1957 - Egyptian leader Nasser barred U.N. plans to share the tolls for the use of the Suez Canal.

1964 - The first Ford Mustang rolled off of the Ford assembly line.

1965 - The first U.S. combat troops arrived in South Vietnam.

1967 - Svetlana Alliluyeva, Josef Stalin's daughter defected to the United States.

1969 - "The Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour" was canceled by CBS-TV.

1975 - Work began on the Alaskan oil pipeline.{C}

1975 - Iraq launched an offensive against the rebel Kurds.

1977 - About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invaded three buildings in Washington, DC. They killed one person and took more than 130 hostages. The siege ended two days later. {C}

1983 - The official Soviet news agency TASS says that U.S. President Reagan is full of "bellicose lunatic anti-communism."

1985 - "Gone With The Wind" went on sale in video stores across the U.S. for the first time.

1986 - U.S. Navy divers found the crew compartment of the space shuttle Challenger along with the remains of the astronauts. {C}

1987 - Chrysler Corporation offered to buy American Motors Corporation.

1989 - The U.S. Senate rejected John Tower as a choice for a cabinet member. It was the first rejection in 30 years.

1989 - In Maylasia, 30 Asian nations conferred on the issue of "boat people".

1989 - In the U.S., a strike forced Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy.

1989 - In the U.S., President George H.W. Bush urged for a mandatory death penalty in drug-related killings.

1990 - Dr. Antonia Novello was sworn in as the first female and Hispanic surgeon general.{C}

1993 - Rodney King testified at the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of violating his civil rights. (California)

1995 - The Canadian Navy arrested a Spanish trawler for illegally fishing off of Newfoundland.

2000 - In Norway, the coalition government of Kjell Magne Bondevik resigned as a result of an environmental dispute.

March 10, 2013

0241 BC - The Roman fleet sank 50 Carthaginian ships in the Battle of Aegusa.

0049 BC - Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy.

1496 - Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere when he left Hispaniola for Spain.

1629 - England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament and did not call it back for 11 years.

1656 - In the American colony of Virginia, suffrage was extended to all free men regardless of their religion.

1776 - "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine was published.

1785 - Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France. He succeeded Benjamin Franklin.

1792 - John Stone patented the pile driver.

1804 - The formal ceremonies transferring the Louisiana Purchase from France to the U.S. took place in St. Louis.

1806 - The Dutch in Cape Town, South Africa surrendered to the British.

1814 - In France, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by a combined Allied Army at the battle of Laon.

1848 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico.

1849 - Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent for a device to lift vessels over shoals by means of inflated cylinders.

1864 - Ulysses S. Grant became commander of the Union armies in the U.S. Civil War.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful call with the telephone. He spoke the words "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

1880 - The Salvation Army arrived in the U.S. from England.

1893 - New Mexico State University canceled its first graduation ceremony because the only graduate was robbed and killed the night before.

1894 - New York Gov. Roswell P. Flower signed the nation's first dog-licensing law.

1902 - The Boers of South Africa scored their last victory over the British, when they captured British General Methuen and 200 men.

1902 - Tochangri, Turkey, was entirely wiped out by an earthquake.

1902 - U.S. Attorney General Philander Knox announced that a suit was being brought against Morgan and Harriman's Northern Securities Company. The suit was enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Northern Securities loss in court was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 14, 1904.

1903 - Harry C. Gammeter patented the multigraph duplicating machine.

1903 - In New York's harbor, the disease-stricken ship Karmania was quarantined with six dead from cholera.

1906 - In France, 1,200 miners were buried in an explosion at Courrieres.

1909 - Britain extracted territorial concessions from Siam and Malaya.

1910 - Slavery was abolished in China.

1912 - China became a republic after the overthrow of the Manchu Ch'ing Dynasty.

1913 - William Knox rolled the first perfect 300 game in tournament competition.

1924 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York state law forbidding late-night work for women.

1927 - Prussia lifted its Nazi ban allowing Adolf Hitler to speak in public.

1933 - Nevada became the first U.S. state to regulate drugs.

1940 - W2XBS-TV in New York City aired the first televised opera as it presented scenes from "I Pagliacci".

1941 - The Brooklyn Dodgers announced that their players would begin wearing batting helmets during the 1941 season.

1941 - Vichy France threatened to use its navy unless Britain allowed food to reach France.

1944 - The Irish refused to oust all Axis envoys and denied the accusation of spying on Allied troops.

1945 - American B-29 bombers attacked Tokyo, Japan, 100,000 were killed.

1947 - The Big Four met in Moscow to discuss the future of Germany.

1947 - Poland and Czechoslovakia signed a 20-year mutual aid pact.

1949 - Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as "Axis Sally," was convicted in Washington, DC. Gillars was convicted of treason and served 12 years in prison.

1953 - North Korean gunners at Wonsan fired upon the USS Missouri. The ship responded by firing 998 rounds at the enemy position.

1955 - The last broadcast of "The Silver Eagle" was heard on radio.

1956 - Julie Andrews at the age of 23 made her TV debut in "High Tor" with Bing Crosby and Nancy Olson.

1959 - "Sweet Bird of Youth", a play by Tennessee Williams, opened in New York City.

1965 - Walter Matthau and Art Carney opened in "The Odd Couple". It later became a hit on television.

1966 - The North Vietnamese captured a Green Beret camp at Ashau Valley.

1966 - France withdrew from NATO's military command to protest U.S. dominance of the alliance and asked NATO to move its headquarters from Paris.

1969 - James Earl Ray pled guilty in Memphis, TN, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Ray later repudiated the guilty plea and maintained his innocence until his death in April of 1998.

1971 - The U.S. Senate approved an amendment to lower the voting age to 18.

1975 - The North Vietnamese Army attacked the South Vietnamese town of Ban Me Thout.

1980 - Iran's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, lent his support to the militants holding American hostages in Tehran.

1981 - The U.S. Postal Service announced an increase in first class postage from 15 to 18 cents.

1982 - The U.S. banned Libyan oil imports due to their continued support of terrorism.

1986 - The Wrigley Company, of Chicago, raised the price of its seven-stick pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum from a quarter to 30 cents.

1987 - The Vatican condemned surrogate parenting as well as test-tube and artificial insemination.

1990 - Haitian President Prosper Avril was ousted 18 months after seizing power in a coup.

1991 - "Phase Echo" began. It was the operation to withdraw 540,000 U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region.

1994 - White House officials began testifying before a federal grand jury about the Whitewater controversy.

1995 - U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told Yasser Arafat that he must do more to curb Palestinian terrorists.

1998 - U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf began receiving the first vaccinations against anthrax.

2002 - The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon informed the U.S. Congress in January that it was making contingency plans for the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that threaten the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq and North Korea.

2003 - North Korea test-fired a short-range missile. The event was one of several in a patter of unusual military maneuvers.

March 11, 2013

537 - The Goths began their siege on Rome.

1302 - The characters Romeo and Juliet were married this day according to William Shakespeare.

1649 - The peace of Rueil was signed between the Frondeurs (rebels) and the French government.

1665 - A new legal code was approved for the Dutch and English towns, guaranteeing religious observances unhindered.

1702 - The Daily Courant, the first regular English newspaper was published.

1791 - Samuel Mulliken became the first person to receive more than one patent from the U.S. Patent Office.

1810 - The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.

1824 - The U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Seneca Indian Ely Parker became the first Indian to lead the Bureau.

1845 - Seven hundred Maoris led by their chief, Hone-Heke, burned the small town of Kororareka. The act was in protest to the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans, which was a breach of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

1861 - A Confederate Convention was held in Montgomery, Alabama, where a new constitution was adopted.

1865 - Union General William Sherman and his forces occupied Fayetteville, NC.

1867 - In Hawaii, the volcano Great Mauna Loa erupted.

1882 - The Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association was formed in Princeton, NJ.

1888 - The "Blizzard of '88" began along the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard shutting down communication and transportation lines. More than 400 people died.(March 11-14)

1900 - British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejected the peace overtures offered from the Boer leader Paul Kruger.

1901 - Britain rejected an amended treaty to the canal agreement with Nicaragua.

1901 - U.S. Steel was formed when industrialist J.P. Morgan purchased Carnegie Steep Corp. The event made Andrew Carnegie the world's richest man.

1905 - The Parisian subway was officially inaugurated.

1907 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt induced California to revoke its anti-Japanese legislation.

1907 - In Bulgaria, Premier Nicolas Petkov was killed by an anarchist.

1909 - The first gold medal to a perfect-score bowler was awarded to A.C. Jellison by the American Bowling Congress.

1927 - Samuel Roxy Rothafel opened the famous Roxy Theatre in New York City.

1930 - Babe Ruth signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees for the sum of $80,000.

1930 - U.S. President Howard Taft became the first U.S. president to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

1935 - The German Air Force became an official department of the Reich.

1941 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the act of providing war supplies to the Allies.

1946 - Communists and Nationalists began fighting as the Soviets pulled out of Mukden, Manchuria.

1946 - Pravda denounced Winston Churchill as anti-Soviet and a warmonger.

1947 - The DuMont network aired "Movies For Small Fry." It was network television's first successful children's program.

1948 - Reginald Weir became the first black tennis player to participate in a U.S. Indoor Lawn Tennis Association tournament.

1959 - The Lorraine Hansberry drama A Raisin in the Sun opened at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater.

1964 - U.S. Senator Carl Hayden broke the record for continuous service in the U.S. Senate. He had worked 37 years and seven days.

1965 - The American navy began inspecting Vietnamese junks in an effort to end arms smuggling to the South.

1969 - Levi-Strauss started selling bell-bottomed jeans.

1978 - Bobby Hull (Winnipeg Jets) joined Gordie Howe by getting his 1,000th career goal.

1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev was named the new chairman of the Soviet Communist Party.

1986 - Popsicle announced its plan to end the traditional twin-stick frozen treat for a one-stick model.

1988 - A cease-fire was declared in the war between Iran and Iraq.

1990 - Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. It was the first Soviet republic to break away from Communist control.

1990 - In Chile, Patricio Aylwin was sworn in as the first democratically elected president since 1973.

1992 - Former U.S. President Nixon said that the Bush administration was not giving enough economic aid to Russia.

1993 - Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first female attorney general.

1993 - North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty refusing to open sites for inspection.

1994 - In Chile, Eduardo Frei was sworn in as President. It was the first peaceful transfer of power in Chile since 1970.

1997 - An explosion at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant caused 35 workers to be exposed to low levels of radioactivity. The incident was the worst in Japan's history.

1998 - The International Astronomical Union issued an alert that said that a mile-wide asteroid could come very close to, and possibly hit, Earth on Oct. 26, 2028. The next day NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that there was no chance the asteroid would hit Earth.

2002 - Two columns of light were pointed skyward from ground zero in New York as a temporary memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

March 12, 2013

1496 - Jews were expelled from Syria.

1609 - The Bermuda Islands became an English colony.

1664 - New Jersey became a British colony. King Charles II granted land in the New World to his brother James (The Duke of York).

1755 - In North Arlington, NJ, the steam engine was used for the first time.

1789 - The U.S. Post Office was established.

1809 - Britain signed a treaty with Persia forcing the French to leave the country.

1857 - "Simon Boccanegra" by Verdi debuted in Venice.

1884 - The State of Mississippi authorized the first state-supported college for women. It was called the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College.

1863 - President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address.

1879 - The British Zulu War began.

1889 - Almon B. Stowger applied for a patent for his automatic telephone system.

1894 - Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time.

1903 - The Czar of Russia issued a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout his territory.

1904 - After 30 years of drilling, the tunnel under the Hudson River was completed. The link was between Jersey City, NJ, and New York, NY.

1905 - In Rome, Premier Giovanni Giolliwas forced out of office by continued civil strife.

1906 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations must yield incriminating evidence in anti-trust suits.

1909 - The British Parliament increased naval appropriations for Britain.

1909 - Three U.S. warships were ordered to Nicaragua to stem the conflict with El Salvador.

1911 - Dr. Fletcher of Rockefeller Institute discovered the cause of infantile paralysis.

1912 - The Girl Scout organization was founded. The original name was Girl Guides.

1923 - Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated phonofilm. It was his technique for putting sound on motion picture film.

1930 - Ghandi began his 200-mile march to the sea that symbolized his defiance of British rule over India.

1933 - President Paul von Hindenburg dropped the flag of the German Republic and ordered that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.

1933 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt presented his first presidential address to the nation. It was the first of the "Fireside Chats."

1935 - Parimutuel betting became legal in the State of Nebraska.

1938 - The "Anschluss" took place as German troops entered Austria.

1940 - Finland surrendered to Russia ending the Russo-Finnish War.

1944 - Britain barred all travel to Ireland.

1947 - U.S. President Truman established the "Truman Doctrine" to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.

1959 - The U.S. House joined the U.S. Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii.

1966 - Bobby Hull, of the Chicago Blackhawks, became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to score 51 points in a single season.

1974 - "Wonder Woman" debuted on ABC-TV. The show later went to CBS-TV.

1984 - Lebanese President Gemayel opened the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war.

1985 - The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. began arms control talks in Geneva.

1985 - Larry Bird (Boston Celtics) scored a club-record 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks.

1985 - Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced that he planned to drop Secret Service protection and hire his own bodyguards in an effort to lower the deficit by $3 million.

1987 - "Les Miserables" opened on Broadway.

1989 - Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi of Sudan formed a new cabinet to end civil war.

1989 - About 2,500 veterans and supporters marched at the Art Institute of Chicago to demand that officials remove an American flag placed on the floor as part of an exhibit.

1992 - Mauritius became a republic but remained a member of the British Commonwealth.

1993 - In the U.S., the Pentagon called for the closure of 31 major military bases.

1993 - Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female U.S. attorney general.

1994 - A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell of the Loch Ness monster was confirmed to be a hoax. The photo was taken of a toy submarine with a head and neck attached.

1994 - The Church of England ordained its first women priests.

1998 - Astronomers cancelled a warning that a mile-wide asteroid might collide with Earth saying that calculations had been off by 600,000 miles.

1999 - Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic became members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). All three countries were members of the former Warsaw Pact.

2002 - U.S. homeland security chief Tom Ridge unveiled a color-coded system for terror warnings.

2002 - Conoco and Phillips Petroleum stockholders approved a proposed merger worth $15.6 billion.

2003 - In Utah, Elizabeth Smart was reunited with her family nine months after she was abducted from her home. She had been taken on June 5, 2002, by a drifter that had previously worked at the Smart home.

2003 - The U.S. Air Force announced that it would resume reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea. The flights had stopped on March 2 after an encounter with four armed North Korean jets.

2009 - It was announced that the Sear Tower in Chicago, IL, would be renamed Willis Tower.

March 13, 2013

0483 - St. Felix III began his reign as Pope.

0607 - The 12th recorded passage of Halley's Comet occurred.

1519 - Cortez landed in Mexico.

1639 - Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.

1660 - A statute was passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.

1777 - The U.S. Congress ordered its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army.

1781 - Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

1852 - The New York "Lantern" newspaper published the first "Uncle Sam cartoon". It was drawn by Frank Henry Bellew.

1861 - Jefferson Davis signed a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the Confederacy.

1868 - The U.S. Senate began the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.

1877 - Chester Greenwood patented the earmuff.

1878 - The first collegiate golf match was played between Oxford and Cambridge.

1884 - Standard time was adopted throughout the U.S.

1900 - In South Africa, British Gen. Roberts took Bloemfontein.

1901 - Andrew Carnegie announced that he was retiring from business and that he would spend the rest of his days giving away his fortune. His net worth was estimated at $300 million.

1902 - In Poland, schools were shut down across the country when students refused to sing the Russian hymn "God Protect the Czar."

1902 - Andrew Carnegie approved 40 applications from libraries for donations.

1908 - The people of Jerusalem saw an automobile for the first time. The owner was Charles Glidden of Boston.

1911 - The U.S. Supreme Court approved corporate tax law.

1915 - The Germans repelled a British expeditionary force attack in France.

1918 - Women were scheduled to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men due to wartime.

1925 - A law in Tennessee prohibited the teaching of evolution.

1930 - It was announced that the planet Pluto had been discovered by scientist Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory.

1933 - U.S. banks began to re-open after a "holiday" that had been declared by President Roosevelt.

1935 - Three-thousand-year-old archives were found in Jerusalem confirming some biblical history.

1940 - The war between Russia and Finland ended with the signing of a treaty in Moscow.

1941 - Adolf Hitler issued an edict calling for an invasion of the U.S.S.R.

1942 - Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps became the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.

1943 - Japanese forces ended their attack on the American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville.

1946 - Reports from Iran indicated that Soviet tanks units were stationed 20 miles from Tehran.

1946 - Premier Tito seized wartime collaborator General Draja Mikhailovich in a cave in Yugoslavia.

1951 - Israel demanded $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees.

1951 - The comic strip "Dennis the Menace" appeared for the first time in newspapers across the country.

1957 - Jimmy Hoffa was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges.

1963 - China invited Soviet President Khrushchev to visit Peking.

1969 - The Apollo 9 astronauts returned to Earth after the conclusion of a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.

1970 - Cambodia ordered Hanoi and Viet Cong troops to leave.

1970 - Digital Equipment Corp. introduced the PDP-11 minicomputer.

1972 - "The Merv Griffin Show" debuted in syndication for Metromedia Television.

1974 - The U.S. Senate voted 54-33 to restore the death penalty.

1974 - An embargo imposed by Arab oil-producing countries was lifted.

1980 - A jury in Winamac, IN, found Ford Motor Company innocent of reckless homicide in the deaths of three young women that had been riding in a Ford Pinto.

1988 - The board of trustees off Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, chose I. King Jordan to be its first deaf president. The college is a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired.

1990 - The U.S. lifted economic sanctions against Nicaragua.

1991 - Exxon paid $1 billion in fines and for the clean-up of the Alaskan oil spill.

1995 - The first United Nations World Summit on Social Development concluded in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1997 - Sister Nirmala was chosen by India's Missionaries of Charity to succeed Mother Teresa as leader of the Catholic order.

2002 - Fox aired "Celebrity Boxing." Tonya Harding beat Paula Jones, Danny Banaduce beat Barry Williams and Todd Bridges defeated Vanilla Ice.

2003 - Japan sent a destroyer to the Sea of Japan amid reports that North Korea was planning to test an intermediate-range ballistic missile.

2003 - A report in the journal "Nature" reported that scientists had found 350,000-year-old human footprints in Italy. The 56 prints were made by three early, upright-walking humans that were descending the side of a volcano.

March 14, 2013

1489 - Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, sold her kingdom to Venice. She was the last of the Lusignan dynasty.

1629 - A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1647 - During the Thirty Years War, France, Sweden, Bavaria and Cologne signed a Treaty of Neutrality.

1743 - First American town meeting was held at Boston's Faneuil Hall.

1757 - British Admiral John Byng was executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.

1794 - Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin.

1864 - Samuel Baker discovered another source of the Nile in East Africa. He named it Lake Albert Nyanza.

1891 - The submarine Monarch laid telephone cable along the bottom of the English Channel to prepare for the first telephone links across the Channel.

1900 - U.S. currency went on the gold standard with the ratification of the Gold Standard Act.

1900 - In Holland, Botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovered Mendel's laws of heredity.

1901 - Utah Governor Heber M. Wells vetoed a bill that would have relaxed restrictions on polygamy.

1903 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty that guaranteed the U.S. the right to build a canal at Panama. The Columbian Senate rejected the treaty.

1904 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the governments claim that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal merger between the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies.

1905 - French bankers refused to lend money to Russia until after their war.

1905 - The British House of Commons cited a need to compete with Germany in naval strength.

1906 - The island of Ustica was devastated by an earthquake.

1912 - An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempted to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome.

1914 - Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes.

1915 - The British Navy sank the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.

1918 - An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified a peace treaty with the Central Powers.

1923 - President Harding became the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.

1932 - George Eastman, the founder of the Kodak company, committed suicide.

1936 - Adolf Hitler told a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself.

1939 - Hungary occupied the Carpatho-Ukraine. Slovakia declared its independence.

1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane while in office.

1945 - In Germany, a 22,000 pound "Grand Slam" bomb was dropped by the Royal Air Force Dumbuster Squad on the Beilefeld railway viaduct. It was the heaviest bomb used during World War II.

1947 - The U.S. signed a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.

1947 - Moscow announced that 890,532 German POWs were held in the U.S.S.R.

1951 - U.N. forces recaptured Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.

1954 - The Viet Minh launched an assault on Dien Bien Phu in Saigon.

1958 - The U.S. government suspended arms shipments to the Batista government of Cuba.

1964 - A Dallas jury found jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

1967 - John F. Kennedy's body was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one.

1976 - Egypt formally abrogated the 1971 Treaty Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union.

1978 - An Israeli force of 22,000 invaded south Lebanon. The PLO bases were hit.

1979 - The Census Bureau reported that 95% of all Americans were married or would get married.

1979 - Near Peking, China, at least 200 people died when a Trident aircraft crashed into a factory.

1980 - A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw. 87 people were killed. A 14-man U.S. boxing team was aboard the plane.

1981 - Three Pakistani airline hijackers surrendered in Syria after they had exchanged 100 passengers and crewmen for 54 Pakistani prisoners.

1983 - OPEC agreed to cut its oil prices by 15% for the first time in its 23-year history.

1989 - Imported assault guns were banned in the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush.

1991 - The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, were set free after a court agreed that the police fabricated evidence.

1991 - Bolivian interior minister Guillermo Capobianco resigned after U.S. officials accused him of receiving money from drug traffickers.

1995 - American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket.

1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton committed $100 million for an anti-terrorism pact with Israel to track down and root out Islamic militants.

1998 - An earthquake left 10,000 homeless in southeastern Iran.

2002 - A Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A five-judge court ruled unanimously that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was guilty of bringing down the plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.

2003 - Robert Blake was released from jail on $1.5 million bail. Blake had been jailed for the murder of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley.

March 15, 2013

44 BC - Roman Emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated by high ranking Roman Senators. The day is known as the "Ides of March."

1341 - During the Hundred Years War, an alliance was signed between Roman Emperor Louis IV and France's Philip VI.

1493 - Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first New World voyage.

1778 - In command of two frigates, the Frenchman la Perouse sailed east from Botany Bay for the last lap of his voyage around the world.

1781 - During the American Revolution, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse took place in North Carolina. British General Cornwallis' 1,900 soldiers defeated an American force of 4,400.

1820 - Maine was admitted as the 23rd state of the Union.

1862 - General John Hunt Morgan began four days of raids near the city of Gallatin, TN.

1864 - Red River Campaign began as the Union forces reach Alexandria, LA.

1875 - The Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, John McCloskey, was named the first American cardinal.

1877 - The first cricket test between Australia and England was played in Melbourne. Australia won by 45 runs.

1892 - New York State unveiled the new automatic ballot voting machine.

1892 - Jesse W. Reno patented the Reno Inclined Elevator. It was the first escalator.

1900 - In Paris, Sarah Bernhardt starred in the premiere of Edmond Rostand's "L'Aiglon."

1901 - German Chancellor von Bulow declared that an agreement between Russia and China over Manchuria would violate the Anglo-German accord of October 1900.

1902 - In Boston, MA, 10,000 freight handlers went back to work after a weeklong strike.

1903 - The British conquest of Nigeria was completed. 500,000 square miles were now controlled by the U.K.

1904 - Three hundred Russians were killed as the Japanese shelled Port Arthur in Korea.

1907 - In Finland, woman won their first seats in the Finnish Parliament. They took their seats on May 23.

1909 - Italy proposed a European conference on the Balkans.

1910 - Otto Kahn offered $500,000 for a family portrait by Dutch artist Frans Hals. Kahn had outbid J.P. Morgan for the work.

1913 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson held the first open presidential news conference.

1916 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent 12,000 troops, under General Pershing, over the border of Mexico to pursue bandit Pancho Villa. The mission failed.

1917 - Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicated himself and his son. His brother Grand Duke succeeded as czar.

1919 - The American Legion was founded in Paris.

1922 - Fuad I assumed the title of king of Egypt after the country gained nominal independence from Britain.

1934 - Henry Ford restored the $5 a day wage.

1935 - Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda banned four Berlin newspapers.

1937 - In Chicago, IL, the first blood bank to preserve blood for transfusion by refrigeration was established at the Cook County Hospital.

1938 - Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia.

1939 - German forces occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and part of Czechoslovakia.

1944 - Cassino, Italy, was destroyed by Allied bombing.

1946 - British Premier Attlee offered India full independence after agreement on a constitution.

1948 - Sir Laurence Olivier was on the cover of "LIFE" magazine for his starring role in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet."

1949 - Clothes rationing in Great Britain ended nearly four years after the end of World War II.

1951 - General de Lattre demanded that Paris send him more troops for the fight in Vietnam.

1951 - The Persian parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry.

1954 - CBS television debuted its "Morning Show."

1955 - The U.S. Air Force unveiled a self-guided missile.

1956 - The musical "My Fair Lady" opened on Broadway.

1960 - Ten nations met in Geneva to discuss disarmament.

1960 - The first underwater park was established as Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve.

1964 - In Montreal, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were married.

1968 - The U.S. mint halted the practice of buying and selling gold.

1970 - The musical "Purlie" opened on Broadway in New York City.

1971 - CBS television announced it was going to drop "The Ed Sullivan Show."

1977 - The first episode of "Eight is Enough" was aired on ABC-TV.

1977 - The U.S. House of Representatives began a 90-day test to determine the feasibility of showing its sessions on television.

1979 - Pope John Paul II published his first encyclical "Redemptor Hominis." In the work he warned of the growing gap between the rich and poor.

1982 - Nicaragua's ruling junta proclaimed a month-long state of siege and suspended the nation's constitution for one day. This came a day after anti-government rebels destroyed two bridges near the Honduran border.

1985 - In Brazil, two decades of military rule came to an end with the installation of a civilian government.

1989 - The U.S. Food and Drug administration decided to impound all fruit imported from Chili after two cyanide-tainted grapes were found in Philadelphia, PA.

1989 - The U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs became the 14th Department in the President's Cabinet.

1990 - In Iraq, British journalist Farzad Bazoft was hanged for spying.

1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev was elected the first executive president of the Soviet Union.

1990 - The Ford Explorer was introduced to the public.

1990 - The Soviet parliament ruled that Lithuania's declaration of independence was invalid and that Soviet law was still in force in the Baltic republic.

1991 - Four Los Angeles police officers were indicted in the beating of Rodney King on March 3, 1991. (California)

1991 - Yugoslav President Borisav Jovic resigned after about a week of anit-communist protests.

1994 - U.S. President Clinton extended the moratorium on nuclear testing until September of 1995.

1996 - The aviation firm Fokker NV collapsed.

1998 - More than 15,000 ethnic Albanians marched in Yugoslavia to demand independence for Kosovo.

1998 - CBS' "60 Minutes" aired an interview with former White House employee Kathleen Willey. Wiley said U.S. President Clinton made unwelcome sexual advances toward her in the Oval Office in 1993.

2002 - Libyan Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi began his life sentence in a Scottish jail for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988.

2002 - In the U.S., Burger King began selling a veggie burger. The event was billed as the first veggie burger to be sold nationally by a fast food chain.

2002 - In Texas, Andrea Yates received a life sentence for drowning her five children on June 20, 2001.

2002 - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Associated Press that the U.S. would stand by a 24-year pledge not to use nuclear arms against states that don't have them.

2004 - Clive Woodall's novel "One for Sorrow: Two for Joy" was published. Two days later Woodall sold the film rights to Walt Disney Co. for $1 million.

March 17, 2013

0461 - Bishop Patrick, St. Patrick, died in Saul. Ireland celebrates this day in his honor. (More about St. Patrick's Day)

1756 - St. Patrick's Day was celebrated in New York City for the first time. The event took place at the Crown and Thistle Tavern.

1766 - Britain repealed the Stamp Act that had caused resentment in the North American colonies.

1776 - British forces evacuated Boston to Nova Scotia during the Revolutionary War.

1868 - Postage stamp canceling machine patent was issued.

1870 - Wellesley College was incorporated by the Massachusetts legislature under its first name, Wellesley Female Seminary.

1884 - In Otay, California, John Joseph Montgomery made the first manned, controlled, heavier-than-air glider flight in the United States.

1886 - 20 Blacks were killed in the Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi.

1891 - The British steamer Utopia sank off the coast of Gibraltar.

1901 - In Paris, Vincent Van Gogh's paintings were shown at the Bernheim Gallery.

1909 - In France, the communications industry was paralyzed by strikes.

1910 - The Camp Fire Girls organization was founded by Luther and Charlotte Gulick. It was formally presented to the public exactly 2 years later.

1914 - Russia increased the number of active duty military from 460,000 to 1,700,000.

1917 - America’s first bowling tournament for ladies began in St. Louis, MO. Almost 100 women participated in the event.

1930 - Al Capone was released from jail.

1941 - The National Gallery of Art was officially opened by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, DC.

1942 - Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in the Southwestern Pacific.

1944 - During World War II, the U.S. bombed Vienna.

1950 - Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced that they had created a new radioactive element. They named it "californium". It is also known as element 98.

1958 - The Vanguard 1 satellite was launched by the U.S.

1959 - The Dalai Lama (Lhama Dhondrub, Tenzin Gyatso) fled Tibet and went to India.

1961 - The U.S. increased military aid and technicians to Laos.

1962 - Moscow asked the U.S. to pull out of South Vietnam.

1966 - A U.S. submarine found a missing H-bomb in the Mediterranean off of Spain.

1967 - Snoopy and Charlie Brown of "Peanuts" were on the cover of "LIFE" magazine.

1969 - Golda Meir was sworn in as the fourth premier of Israel.

1970 - The U.S. Army charged 14 officers with suppression of facts in the My Lai massacre case.

1972 - U.S. President Nixon asked Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.

1973 - Twenty were killed in Cambodia when a bomb went off that was meant for the Cambodian President Lon Nol.

1973 - The first American prisoners of war (POWs) were released from the "Hanoi Hilton" in Hanoi, North Vietnam.

1982 - In El Salvador, four Dutch television crewmembers were killed by government troops.

1985 - U.S. President Reagan agreed to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.

1989 - A series of solar flares caused a violent magnetic storm that brought power outages over large regions of Canada.

1992 - In Buenos Aires, 10 people were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack against the Israeli embassy.

1992 - White South Africans approved constitutional reforms to give legal equality to blacks.

1995 - Gerry Adams became the first leader of Sinn Fein to be received at the White House.

1998 - Washington Mutual announced it had agreed to buy H.F. Ahmanson and Co. for $9.9 billion dollars. The deal created the nation's seventh-largest banking company.

1999 - A panel of medical experts concluded that marijuana had medical benefits for people suffering from cancer and AIDS.

1999 - The International Olympic Committee expelled six of its members in the wake of a bribery scandal.

2000 - In Norway, Jens Stotenberg and the Labour Party took office as Prime Minister. The coalition government of Kjell Magne Bondevik resigned on March 9 as a result of an environmental dispute.

2000 - In Kanungu, Uganda, a fire at a church linked to the cult known as the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments killed more than 530. On March 31, officials set the number of deaths linked to the cult at more than 900 after authorities subsequently found mass graves at various sites linked to the cult.

2007 - Mike Modano (Dallas Stars) scored his 502nd and 503rd career goals making him the all-time U.S. leader in goal-scoring.

2009 - The iTunes music Store reached 800 million applications downloaded.

March 18, 2013

0037 - The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius’ will and proclaims Caligula emperor.

1123 - The first Latern Council (9th ecumenical council) opened in Rome.

1190 - Crusaders killed 57 Jews in Bury St. Edmonds England.

1532 - The English parliament banned payments by English church to Rome.

1541 - Hernando de Soto observed the first recorded flood of the Mississippi River.

1583 - Dutch States General & Anjou signed a treaty.

1673 - Lord Berkley sold his half of New Jersey to the Quakers.

1692 - William Penn was deprived of his governing powers.

1766 - Britain repealed the Stamp Act.

1813 - David Melville patented the gas streetlight.

1818 - The U.S. Congress approved the first pensions for government service.

1834 - The first railroad tunnel in the U.S. was completed. The work was in Pennsylvania.

1835 - Charles Darwin left Santiago Chile on his way to Portillo Pass.

1850 - Henry Wells & William Fargo founded American Express.

1865 - The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourned for the last time.

1874 - Hawaii signed a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the U.S.

1881 - Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opened in Madison Square Gardens.

1891 - Britain became linked to the continent of Europe by telephone.

1899 - Phoebe, a moon of the planet Saturn, was discovered.

1900 - Ajax (Amsterdam Football Club) was formed.

1902 - In Turkey, the Sultan granted a German syndicate the first concession to access Baghdad by rail.

1903 - France dissolved the Catholic religious orders.

1905 - Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were married.

1906 - In Morocco, it was reported that France and Germany were in a deadlock at the Algeciras Conference.

1909 - Einar Dessau of Denmark used a short wave transmitter to become the first person to broadcast as a "ham" operator.

1910 - The first opera by a U.S. composer performed at the Met in New York City.

1911 - Theodore Roosevelt opened the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. It was the largest dam in the U.S. at the time.

1911 - North Dakota enacted a hail insurance law.

1913 - Greek King George I was killed by an assassin. Constantine I succeeded him.

1916 - Russia countered the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lost 100,000 men and the Germans lost 20,000.

1917 - The Germans sank the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any warning.

1919 - The Order of DeMolay was established in Kansas City.

1920 - Greece adopted the Gregorian calendar.

1921 - Poland was enlarged with the second Peace of Riga.

1921 - The steamer "Hong Koh" ran aground off of Swatow China. Over 1,000 people were killed.

1922 - Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India. He served only 2 years of the sentence.

1922 - Princeton and Yale played the first intercollegiate indoor polo championship.

1931 - Schick Inc. displayed the first electric shaver.

1937 - More than 400 people, mostly children, were killed in a gas explosion at a school in New London, TX.

1938 - Mexico took control of all foreign-owned oil properties on its soil.

1938 - New York first required serological blood tests of pregnant women.

1940 - The soap opera "Light of the World" was first heard on NBC radio.

1940 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass. The Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain during the meeting.

1942 - The third military draft began in the U.S. because of World War II.

1943 - The Reich called off its offensive in Caucasus.

1943 - American forces took Gafsa in Tunisia.

1944 - The Russians reached the Rumanian border in the Balkans during World War II.

1945 - 1,250 U.S. bombers attacked Berlin.

1945 - Maurice "Rocket" Richard became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to score 50 goals.

1948 - France, Great Britain, and Benelux signed the Treaty of Brussels.

1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was ratified.

1950 - Nationalist troops landed on the mainland of China and capture Communist held Sungmen.

1952 - In Philadelphia, PA, the first plastic lenses were fitted for a cataract patient.

1953 - An earthquake hit West Turkey killing 250 people.

1954 - RKO Pictures was sold for $23,489,478. It became the first motion picture studio to be owned by an individual. The person was Howard Hughes.

1959 - U.S. President Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill.

1962 - French and Algerian rebels agreed to a truce.

1963 - "Tovarich" opened at the Broadway Theater in New York City for 264 performances.

1963 - France performed an underground nuclear test at Ecker Algeria.

1963 - The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Miranda decision concerning legal council for defendants.

1965 - Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to spacewalk when he left the Voskhod II space capsule while in orbit around the Earth. He was outside the spacecraft for about 20 minutes.

1966 - The government of Indonesia was formed by General Suharto.

1966 - Scott Paper began selling paper dresses for $1.

1968 - The U.S. Congress repealed the requirement for a gold reserve.

1969 - U.S. President Nixon authorizes Operation Menue. It was the ‘secret’ bombing of Cambodia.

1970 - The U.S. Postal Service experienced the first postal strike.

1970 - The NFL selected Wilson to be the official football and scoreboard as official time.

1971 - U.S. helicopters airlifted 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.

1971 - A landslide in Lake Yanahuani, Chungar Peru, killed 200.

1974 - Most of the Arab oil-producing nations ended their five-month embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.

1975 - Saigon abandoned most of the Central Highlands of Vietnam to Hanoi.

1975 - The Kurds ended their fight against Iraq.

1977 - Vietnam turned over an MIA to a U.S. delegation.

1979 - Iranian authorities detained American feminist Kate Millett. The next day she was deported.

1980 - The Vostok rocket exploded on the launch pad killing 50.

1981 - The U.S. disclosed that there were biological weapons tested in Texas in 1966.

1986 - Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.

1986 - The U.S. Treasury Department announced that a clear, polyester thread was to be woven into bills in an effort to thwart counterfeiters.

1987 - The U.S. performed nuclear tests at a Nevada test site.

1990 - Thirteen paintings were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The value was $100 million making it the largest art robbery in history.

1989 - A 4,400-year-old mummy was discovered at the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.

1990 - The first free elections took place in East Germany.

1990 - The 32-day lockout of baseball players ended.

1990 - In Tampa, FL, a little league player was killed after being hit with a pitch.

1992 - Leona Hemsly was sentenced to 4 years in prison for tax evasion.

1992 - White South Africans voted for constitutional reforms that would give legal equality to blacks.

1994 - Zsa Zsa Gabor filed for bankruptcy.

1997 - A Russian AN-24 crashed killing 50 people.

2003 - China's new president, Hu Jintao, announced that his country must deepen reforms and raise living standards of workers and farmers.

March 19, 2013

1571 - Spanish troops occupied Manila.

1628 - The Massachusetts colony was founded by Englishmen.

1644 - 200 members of the Peking imperial family/court committed suicide.

1687 - French explorer La Salle was murdered by his own men while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, in the Gulf of Mexico.

1702 - Upon the death of William III of Orange, Anne Stuart, the sister of Mary, succeeds to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1748 - The English Naturalization Act passed granting Jews right to colonize in the U.S.

1775 - Poland & Prussia signed a trade agreement.

1822 - The city of Boston, MA, was incorporated.

1831 - The first bank robbery in America was reported. The City Bank of New York City lost $245,000 in the robbery.

1865 - The Battle of Bentonville took place. The Confederates retreated from Greenville, NC.

1866 - The immigrant ship Monarch of the Seas sank in Liverpool killing 738.

1879 - Jim Currie opened fire on the actors Maurice Barrymore and Ben Porter near Marshall, TX. The shots wounded Barrymore and killed Porter.

1895 - The Los Angeles Railway was established to provide streetcar service.

1900 - U.S. President McKinley asserted that there was a need for free trade with Puerto Rico.

1900 - Archeologist Arthur John Evans began the excavation of Knossos Palace in Greece.

1903 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Cuban treaty, gaining naval bases in Guantanamo and Bahia Honda.

1905 - French explorer S. de Segonzac was taken prisoner by Moroccans.

1906 - Reports from Berlin estimated the cost of the German war in S.W. Africa at $150 million.

1908 - The state of Maryland barred Christian Scientists from practicing without medical diplomas.

1915 - Pluto was photographed for the first time. However, it was not known at the time.

1917 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Adamson Act that made the eight-hour workday for railroads constitutional.

1918 - The U.S. Congress approved Daylight-Saving Time.

1918 - A German seaplane was shot down for the first time by an American pilot.

1920 - The U.S. Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty for the second time maintaining an isolation policy.

1924 - U.S. troops were rushed to Tegucigalpa as rebel forces took the Honduran capital.

1931 - The state of Nevada legalized gambling.

1940 - The French government of Daladier fell.

1942 - The Thoroughbred Racing Association was formed in Chicago.

1944 - Tippett's oratorium "Child of Our Time," premiered in London.

1945 - About 800 people were killed as Japanese kamikaze planes attacked the U.S. carrier Franklin off Japan.

1945 - Adolf Hitler issued his "Nero Decree" which ordered the destruction of German facilities that could fall into Allied hands as German forces were retreating.

1947 - Chiang Kai-Shek's government forces took control of Yenan, the former headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party.

1948 - Lee Savold knocked out Gino Buonvino in 54 seconds of the first round of their prize fight at Madison Square Gardens.

1949 - The Soviet People's Council signed the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and declared that the North Atlantic Treaty was merely a war weapon.

1953 - The Academy Awards aired on television for the first time.

1953 - Tennessee Williams' "Camino Real" premiered in New York City.

1954 - Viewers saw the first televised prize fight shown in color when Joey Giardello knocked out Willie Tory in round seven at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1954 - The first rocket-driven sled that ran on rails was tested in Alamogordo, NM.

1963 - In Costa Rica, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and six Latin American presidents pledged to fight Communism.

1964 - Sean Connery began shooting his role in "Goldfinger."

1965 - Indonesia nationalized all foreign oil companies.

1965 - Rembrandt's "Titus" sold for $7,770,000.

1968 - Students at Howard University students seized an administration building.

1969 - British invaded Anguilla.

1972 - India and Bangladesh signed a friendship treaty.

1976 - Buckingham Palace announced the separation of Princess Margaret and her husband, the Earl of Snowdon, after 16 years of marriage.

1977 - Congo President Marien Ngouabi was killed by a suicide commando.

1977 - France performed a nuclear test at Muruora Island.

1977 - The last episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" aired.

1979 - The U.S. House of Representatives began broadcasting its daily business on TV.

1981 - During a test of the space shuttle Columbia two workers were injured and one was killed.

1981 - The Buffalo Sabres set an NHL record when they scored 9 goals in one period against Toronto.

1984 - The TV show "Kate and Allie" premiered.

1984 - A Mobile oil tanker spilled 200,000 gallons into the Columbia River.

1985 - IBM announced that it was planning to stop making the PCjr consumer-oriented computer.

1985 - The U.S. Senate voted to authorize production of the MX missile.

1987 - Televangelist Jim Bakker resigned from the PTL due to a scandal involving Jessica Hahn.

1988 - Two British soldiers were killed by mourners at a funeral in Belfast, North Ireland. The soldiers were shot to death after being dragged from a car and beaten.

1990 - Latvia's political opposition claimed victory in the republic's first free elections in 50 years.

1990 - The first world ice hockey tournament for women was held in Ottawa.

1991 - Brett Hull, of the St. Louis Blues, became the third National Hockey League (NHL) player to score 80 goals in a season.

1994 - The largest omelet in history was made with 160,000 eggs in Yokohama, Japan.

1998 - The World Health Organization warned of tuberculosis epidemic that could kill 70 million people in next two decades.

1999 - 53 people were killed and dozens were injured when a bomb exploded in a market place in southern Russia.

2000 - Vector Data Systems conducted a simulation of the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco, TX. The simulation showed that the government had not fired first.

2001 - California officials declared a power alert and ordered the first of two days of rolling blackouts.

2002 - Operation Anaconda, the largest U.S.-led ground offensive since the Gulf War, ended in eastern Afghanistan. During the operation, which began on March 2, it was reported that at least 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters were killed. Eleven allied troops were killed during the same operation.

2002 - Actor Ben Kingsley was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

2003 - U.S. President George W. Bush announced that U.S. forces had launched a strike against "targets of military opportunity" in Iraq. The attack, using cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, were aimed at Iraqi leaders thought to be near Baghdad.

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