March 31
1657 English Parliament makes the Humble Petition to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell offering him the crown: he declines
1889 300m high Eiffel Tower officially opens in Paris – built for the Exposition Universelle. Tallest man-made structure for 41 years
1918 1st daylight savings time in US goes into effect
1939 “The Hound of Baskervilles”, starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson for the first time, is released
1963 LA ends streetcar service after 90 years
1965 US ordered the 1st combat troops to Vietnam
1967 1st time Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar
1972 Final day of the rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy
1994 Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
2007 In Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million people take part in the first Earth Hour.
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March 30
240 BC 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.
1778 Playwright Voltaire crowned with laurel wreath
1796 Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, discovers the construction of the heptadecagon
1856 Russia signs Peace of Paris, ending the Crimean War
1909 Queensboro Bridge opens, linking Manhattan & Queens
1959 Dalai Lama fled China & was granted political asylum in India
1987 Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” sells for record 22.5M pounds ($39.7 million)
1990 Jack Nicklaus made his debut in the “Seniors” golf tournament
2006 Marcos Pontes is the first Brazilian astronaut in space.
2012 American Mega Millions lottery hits a world record lottery amount of 640 million dollars
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March 29
1461 Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton – Duke Edward of York defeats the Lancastrian army, deposes King Henry VI and Queen Margaret of Anjou and proclaims himself as King Edward IV
1795 Beethoven (24) debuts as pianist in Vienna
1827 20,000 attend Ludwig von Beethovens burial in Vienna
1848 Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam
1871 Royal Albert Hall opened by Queen Victoria in London
1912 Capt Robert Scott, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole, makes last entry in his diary “the end cannot be far”
1945 Movie star Jimmy Stewart is promoted to full colonel, one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years
1961 After a 4½ year trial Nelson Mandela is acquitted on treason charge
1993 Actress Elizabeth Taylor presented the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for work for AIDs causes at 65th Academy Awards
2004 The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants.
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March 28
1556 Origin of Fasli Era (India)
1794 Louvre opens to the public (although officially opened since August)
1802 Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man.
1860 First Taranaki War: The Battle of Waireka begins (New Zealand).
1881 “Greatest Show On Earth” was formed by PT Barnum & James A Bailey
1930 Constantinople & Angora changes names to Istanbul & Ankara
1944 Astrid Lindgren sprains ankle & begins writing Pippi Longstocking
1964 9.2 earthquake shakes Prince William Sound, Alaska
1985 International Cometary Explorer measures solar wind ahead of Halley
2005 The 2005 Sumatran earthquake rocks Indonesia, and at magnitude 8.7 is the second strongest earthquake since 1960.
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March 27
1513 Spaniard Juan Ponce de León and his expedition first sight Florida
1709 Dike at Hardinxveld breaks (Alblasserwaard flooded)
1790 The modern shoelace (string and shoe holes) invented in England
1855 Abraham Gesner patents kerosene
1866 Andrew Rankin patents the urinal
1914 1st successful blood transfusion (in Brussels)
1931 Charlie Chaplin receives France’s distinguished Legion of Honor
1964 Great Train Robbers sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars
1980 Mount St Helens becomes active after 123 years
1993 Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People’s Republic of China.
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March 26
1484 William Caxton printed his translation of Aesop’s Fables.
1845 Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, precusor of bandaid
1934 Driving tests introduced in Britain
1936 1st parliamentary debate on NZ radio
1953 Dr Jonas Salk announces vaccine to prevent polio
1955 “Ballad of Davy Crockett” becomes the #1 record in US
1971 Bangladesh (East Pakistan) declares its independence
2006 In Scotland the prohibition of smoking in all substantially enclosed public places comes into force.
2012 Canadian filmmaker James Cameron becomes the first person to visit Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth in over 50 years
2015 Richard III of England (1452-1485) is reburied at Leicester Cathedral in England, after being discovered under a carpark in Leicester in 2012
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March 25
1 Origin of Dionysian Incarnation of the Word
31 1st Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus
421 Friday at 12 PM – city of Venice founded
1199 Richard I, Lion Heart, King of England, is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France which leads to his death on April 6.
1814 Netherlands Bank established
1857 Frederick Laggenheim takes 1st photo of a solar eclipse
1937 Washington Daily News is 1st US newspaper with perfumed advertising page
1961 Elvis Presley performs live on the USS Arizona
1996 Comet C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) approaches within 0.1018 AUs of Earth
2013 Golfer Tiger Woods returns to his world number one ranking
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March 24
1603 Scottish King James VI son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I of England in succession to Elizabeth I, thus joining the English and Scottish crowns.
1721 Johann Sebastian Bach dedicates his Brandenburg Concertos (to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt)
1801 Aleksandr Pavlovich Romanov becomes Tsar Alexander I of Russia
1930 Planet Pluto named
1941 Glenn Miller begins work on his 1st movie for 20th Century Fox
1958 Elvis Presley joins the army (serial number 53310761)
1989 Worst US oil spill, Exxon’s Valdez spills 11.3 mil gallons off Alaska
1991 Banks reopen in liberated Kuwait
1997 Australian parliament overturns world’s 1st & only euthanasia law
2015 The Opportunity rover becomes the first to complete a Martian marathon
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March 23
1490 1st dated edition of Maimonides “Mishneh Torah” published
1743 George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” premieres in London
1808 Napoleon’s brother Joseph takes the throne of Spain
1839 1st recorded use of “OK” [oll korrect] (Boston’s Morning Post)
1848 The ship John Wickliffe arrives at Port Chalmers carrying the first Scottish settlers for Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago province is founded.
1903 Wright brothers obtain airplane patent
1929 1st telephone installed in White House
1936 Physician Joseph Hamilton injects a leukemia patient with a sodium radioisotope, the first intravenous injection of a human with a radioisotope
1950 UN World Meteorological Org established
1972 Evel Knievel breaks 93 bones after successfully clearing 35 cars
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March 22
1594 French King Henri IV festival in Paris
1784 The Emerald Buddha is moved with great ceremony to its current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand.
1888 English Football League established
1941 Grand Coulee Dam in Washington goes into operation
1941 Jimmy Stewart is inducted into the Army, becoming the first major American movie star to wear a military uniform in World War II
1977 Indira Gandhi resigns as PM of India
1990 Anchorage jury finds Capt Hazelwood innocent of Valdez oil spill
1993 Intel introduces Pentium-processor (80586) 64 bits-60 MHz-100+ MIPS
1994 Dutch Ambassador to US christens a new tulip (the Hillary Clinton)
2009 Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska began erupting after a prolonged period of unrest.
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March 21
1413 Henry V becomes King of England.
1859 Scottish National Gallery opens in Edinburgh
1871 Otto Von Bismarck elevated to rank of Fürst (Prince)
1925 Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium officially opens
1935 Persia officially renamed Iran
1961 Beatles’ 1st appearance at the Cavern Club
1963 Alcatraz federal penitentiary in SF Bay closed
1980 On TV show Dallas, J.R. is shot
1985 Arthur Ashe is named to International Tennis Hall of Fame
2013 The European Space Agency reveals new data that indicates that the universe is 13.82 billion years old
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March 20
1616 Walter Raleigh released from Tower of London to seek gold in Guyana
1800 Alessandro Volta reports his discovery of the electric battery in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London
1920 1st flight from London to South Africa lands (took 1½ months)
1933 Dachau, 1st Nazi concentration camp, completed
1944 Mount Vesuvius, Italy, explodes
1964 ESRO established, European Space Research Organization
1972 19 mountain climbers killed on Japan’s Mount Fuji during an avalanche
1991 Michael Jackson signs $65M 6 album deal with Sony records
1996 UK admits humans can catch CJD (Mad Cow Disease)
2006 Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country’s banana crop.
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March 19
1279 A Mongolian victory at the naval Battle of Yamen ends the Song Dynasty in China.
1861 The First Taranaki War ends in New Zealand
1882 1st stone laid for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona
1915 Pluto photographed for 1st time (although unknown at the time)
1925 Angelo G Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) becomes a bishop
1932 The Sydney Harbour Bridge is opened.
1965 The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000 and said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, was discovered by then teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence exactly 102 years after its destruction.
1982 Falklands War: Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, precipitating war with the U.K..
1992 Britain’s Prince Andrew & Sarah, Duchess of York, announce separation
2013 NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity discovers further evidence of water-bearing minerals
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March 18
1314 Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.
1541 Hernando de Soto observes 1st recorded flood in America (Mississippi River)
1899 Phoebe, a moon of Saturn is discovered by William Pickering
1922 British magistrates in India sentence Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years imprisonment for disobedience
1949 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Org) ratified
1952 1st plastic lens for cataract patients fitted (Phila)
1965 Rolling Stones fined £5 each for public urination
1967 Oil tanker Torrey Canyon hits a rock off Cornwall & spills oil
1989 In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found in the Pyramid of Cheops.
2003 British Sign Language is recognised as an official British language.
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March 17
432 St Patrick aged 16 is carried off to Ireland as a slave (traditional date)
1337 Edward, the Black Prince, is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy made in England.
1753 1st official St Patrick’s Day
1845 Bristol man, Henry Jones, patents self-raising flour
1845 Rubber band patented by Stephen Perry of London
1901 A showing of seventy-one Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.
1957 Dutch ban on Sunday driving lifted
1973 Queen Elizabeth II opens new London Bridge
2012 Bolton Wanderer footballer Fabrice Muamba collapses and is rushed to hospital during a live football match against Tottenham Hotspur
2013 Pope Francis delivers his first Angelus prayer and blessing
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March 16
1322 The Battle of Boroughbridge takes place in the First War of Scottish Independence.
1792 King Gustav III of Sweden is shot by Count Anckarström at a masked ball at the Opera; he dies on March 29.
1802 Law signed to establish US Military Academy (West Point, NY)
1881 Barnum & Bailey Circus debuts
1959 Iraq & USSR sign economic/technical treaty
1968 Robert F. Kennedy announces presidential campaign
1968 General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, the Oldsmobile Toronado.
1970 New English Bible published
1974 1st performance at new Grand Ole Opry House at Opryland in Nashville
2003 The largest coordinated worldwide vigil takes place, as part of the global protests against Iraq war.
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March 15
44 BC Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
1493 Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his 1st New World voyage
1580 Spanish king Philip II puts 25,000 gold coins on head of prince Willem of Orange
1877 Commencement of 1st Test Cricket, Australia v England at MCG
1892 1st escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno
1906 Britons Rolls, Royce & Johnson form Rolls Royce Ltd
1968 LIFE mag calls Jimi Hendrix “most spectacular guitarist in the world”
1971 Chatrooms make their debut on the Internet
1985 The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).
2006 18th Commonwealth Games open in Melbourne, Australia
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March 14
1647 Thirty Years’ War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm.
1689 Scotland dismisses William III & Mary Stuart as king & queen
1847 Premiere of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence
1889 German Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his “Navigable Balloon”
1913 John D. Rockefeller gives $100 million to Rockefeller Foundation
1918 1st concrete ship to cross the Atlantic (Faith) is launched, SF
1955 Prince Mahemdra becomes king of Nepal
1967 JFK’s body moved from temporary grave to a permanent memorial
1986 European Space Agency’s Giotto flies by Halley’s Comet (605 km)
2013 Xi Jinping is named as the new President of the People’s Republic of China
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March 13
1639 Cambridge College renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
1781 William Herschel sees what he thinks is a “comet” but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus
1900 In France the length of the workday for women and children is limited to 11 hours by law.
1935 Driving tests introduced in Great Britain
1986 Microsoft has its Initial public offering.
1991 Exxon pays $1-billion dollars in fines & cleanup of Valdez oil spill
1996 At Dunblane Primary School, Scotland, 16 children and 1 teacher are shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who then commits suicide. As a result handguns were banned in the UK.
2003 Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.
2012 Encyclopaedia Britannica announces that it will no longer publish printed versions of its encyclopaedia
2013 Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected the new pope, taking the papal name Pope Francis
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March 12
1365 University of Vienna founded
1455 First record of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the bible printed a year before
1642 Abel Tasman is 1st European in New Zealand
1737 Galileo’s body moved to Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy
1794 Theatre Royal in London’s Dury Lane opens after being rebuilt
1912 Girl Guides (Girl Scouts) forms in Savannah, by Juliette Gordon Low
1913 Foundation stone of the Australian capital in Canberra laid
1984 British ice dancing team, Torvill & Dean, become 1st skaters to receive 9 perfect 6.0s in world championships
2011 A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan’s earthquake.
2013 The 2013 Papal conclave begins with no new Pope elected on the first day
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March 11
1789 Benjamin Banneker and Pierre Charles L’Enfant begin to lay out Washington, D.C.
1845 The Flagstaff War: In New Zealand, Chiefs Hone Heke and Kawiti lead 700 Māoris to chop down the British flagpole and drive settlers out of the British colonial settlement of Kororareka because of breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.
1851 Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” premieres in Venice
1872 Construction of the Seven Sisters Colliery, South Wales, begins; located on one of the richest coal sources in Britain.
1927 1st golden gloves tournament
1935 Hermann Goering officially creates German Air Force, the Luftwaffe
1974 Mount Etna in Sicily erupted (305 years to the day after earlier eruption)
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader
1986 1 million days since traditional foundation of Rome, 4/21/753 BC
1996 John Winston Howard becomes the 25th Prime Minister of Australia. His term in office is the second longest in Australian history, ending on December 3, 2007.
1997 Beatle McCartney knighted Sir Paul by Queen Elizabeth II
2011 An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
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March 10
1849 Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent (only US president to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions
1862 US issues 1st paper money ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 & $1000)
1876 1st telephone call made (Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Watson)
1896 Charilaos Vasilakos of Greece wins 1st modern marathon in 3:18 [OS]
1910 China ends slavery
1945 Tokyo in fire after night time B-29 bombings, more than 100,000 people die, mostly civilians.
1977 Rings of Uranus discovered during occulation of SAO
1988 Avalanche at Swiss Ski resort Klosters nearly kills Prince Charles
1994 1 million Greeks attend Melina Mercouri’s funeral
2006 The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
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March 09
141 BC Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han Dynasty of China. Rules for 54 years
1497 Nicolaus Copernicus’ 1st recorded astronomical observation
1834 French Foreign Legion is founded.
1935 Adolf Hitler announces the creation of a new air force.
1953 Josef Stalin buried in Moscow
1959 1st known radar contact is made with Venus
1959 Barbie, the popular girls’ doll, debuted, over 800 million sold
1961 1st animal returned from space, dog named Blackie aboard Sputnik 9
1964 1st Ford Mustang produced
2006 Liquid water is discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.
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March 08
1702 England: Queen Anne ascends throne upon death of King William III
1817 The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
1855 1st train crosses 1st US railway suspension bridge, Niagara Falls
1910 Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris is 1st licensed female pilot
1918 The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic.
1927 Pan American Airlines incorporates
1934 Edwin Hubble photo shows as many galaxies as Milky Way has stars
1945 International Women’s Day is 1st observed
1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France
2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people loses contact and disappears, prompting the most expensive search effort in history
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March 07
1530 King Henry VIII’s divorce request is denied by the Pope. Henry then declares that he, not the Pope, is supreme head of England’s church
1778 Capt James Cook 1st sights Oregon coast, at Yaquina Bay
1798 The French army enters Rome: the birth of the Roman Republic.
1799 The Royal Institution of Great Britain founded; dedicated to scientific research and education.
1814 Napoleon I of France wins the Battle of Craonne.
1827 Shrigley Abduction: Ellen Turner, a wealthy heiress in Cheshire, England is abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a future politician in colonial New Zealand.
1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents telephone
1908 Cincinnati Mayor Mark Breith stood before city council & announces that, “women are not physically fit to operate automobiles”
1912 Roald Amundsen announces discovery of the South Pole
1933 Game of “Monopoly” invented
March 06
1788 The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.
1836 Battle of the Alamo: after 13 days of fighting 1,500-3,000 Mexicans overwhelm the Texans at the Alamo, killing 182-257 Texans including William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett
1853 Giuseppe Verdi’s Opera “La Traviata” premieres in Venice
1869 Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
1899 “Aspirin” (acetylsalicylic acid) patented by Felix Hoffmann at German company Bayer
1950 Silly Putty invented
1961 1st London minicabs introduced
1964 Cassius Clay joins the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad renames him Muhammad Ali
1985 Yul Brynner appears in his 4,500th performance of “The King & I”
1997 Picasso’s painting Tête de Femme is stolen from a London gallery, and is recovered a week later.
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March 05
1046 Persian scholar Naser Khosrow begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama.
1496 English King Henry VII hands John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) a commission to explore for new lands
1558 Smoking tobacco introduced in Europe by Francisco Fernandes
1856 Covent Garden Opera House, London, destroyed in a fire
1904 Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of the ball lightning formation.
1908 1st ascent of Mt Erebus, Antarctica
1983 Bob Hawke (Labour) defeats PM Malcolm Fraser (Liberal) to win Australian general election
1994 Largest milkshake (1,955 gallons of chocolate-Nelspruit South Africa)
1995 Graves of Tsar Nicholas II and family found in St Petersburg
2013 Willcom announces the world’s smallest mobile phone, weighing 32 grams
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March 04
1675 John Flamsteed appointed 1st Astronomer Royal of England
1774 First sighting of Orion nebula (William Herschel)
1792 Oranges introduced to Hawaii
1801 1st US President inaugurated in Washington, D.C. (Thomas Jefferson)
1890 The longest bridge in the Great Britain, the Forth Bridge (railway) (1,710 ft) in Scotland is opened by the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII.
1922 1st vampire film Nosferatu released in Germany, an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
1936 1st flight of airship Hindenburg, Germany
1945 In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, joins the British Auxiliary Transport Service as a driver.
1965 David Attenbrough became the new controller of BBC2
2013 The Papal Conclave begins to select the successor of Pope Benedict XVI
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March 03
1847 US Post Office Department authorised to issue postage stamps
1863 1st US wartime military conscription bill enacted
1865 Opening of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the founding member of the HSBC Group.
1875 Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen” premieres (Paris)
1887 Anne Sullivan begins teaching 6 year old blind-deaf Helen Keller
1931 “Star Spangled Banner” officially becomes US national anthem by congressional resolution
1933 Mount Rushmore dedicated
1939 In Mumbai (Bombay), Mohandas Gandhi begins to fast in protest against autocratic rule in India.
1971 South African Broadcasting Corp lifts its ban on the Beatles
1997 The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction.
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March 02
1717 The Loves of Mars and Venus becomes the first ballet performed in England.
1855 Aleksandr Romanov becomes tsar of Russia
1865 Second Taranaki War: The Volkner Incident in New Zealand.
1903 Martha Washington Hotel, catering to women only, opens in NYC
1927 Babe Ruth becomes highest paid baseball player ($70,000 per year)
1946 Ho Chi Minh elected president of North Vietnam
1958 1st surface crossing of Antarctic continent is completed in 99 days
1965 One of the most popular musical films of all time, “The Sound of Music”, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, is released (Best Picture 1966)
1969 1st test flight of the supersonic Concorde
2003 America’s Cup: Alinghi defeats Team New Zealand 5-0 to win in Auckland
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March 01
1260 Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, conquerors Damascus
1565 Portuguese soldier Estácio de Sá founds the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1587 Puritan English parliamentary leader Sir Peter Wentworth confined in London Tower
1692 Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, & Tituba arrested for witchcraft in Salem, Massachussets
1864 Rebecca Lee (US) becomes 1st black woman to receive a medical degree
1872 Yellowstone becomes world’s 1st national park
1890 1st US edition of Sherlock Holmes (Study in Scarlet) published
1896 Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity.
1936 The Hoover Dam is completed.
1975 Colour television transmissions begin in Australia.
1978 Charlie Chaplin’s coffin and remains are stolen from a Swiss cemetery
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