February 13th
 

1866 ~ Jesse James robbed his first bank.

1883 ~ Death of Richard Wagner, Composer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight.

1935 ~ A jury in Flemington, New Jersey found Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

1945 ~ The RAF & USAAF created a firestorm in Dresden, Germany which killed tens of thousands of civilians.

1960 ~ France tested its first nuclear weapon.

1974 ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature, was exiled from the Soviet Union.

1988 ~ Winter Olympic Games opened in Calgary, Alberta.

1990 ~ An agreement was reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.

1997 ~ Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope performed by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

February 14th
 

1766 ~ Birthday of Thomas Malthus, Economist.

1779 ~ James Cook was killed by the natives of the Sandwich Islands.

1803 ~ U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall declared that any act of Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is void.

1895 ~ First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play “The Importance of Being Earnest”.

1943 ~ The Battle of the Kasserine Pass – The Afrika Korps launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia.

1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the US-Saudi diplomatic relationship.

1946 ~ The Bank of England was nationalized.

1966 ~ Australian currency was decimalized.

1989 ~ Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie.

2003 ~ Death of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.


Feastdays & Holidays


Catholicism ~ Feast day of Saint Valentine.

February 15th
 

1564 ~ Birthday of Galileo Galilei, Astronomer & Physicist.

1820 ~ Birthday of Susan B. Anthony, Activist & Suffragist.

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Ernest Shackleton, British polar explorer.

1898 ~ The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260.

1942 ~ Singapore surrendered to Japanese forces. About 130,000 Indian, Australian and British troops became prisoners of war. The fall of Singapore was the largest surrender of British military personnel in history.

1965 ~ Death of Nat “King” Cole, Singer.

1965 ~ A new red and white maple leaf design was adopted as the flag of Canada replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

1971 ~ Decimalization of British coinage completed on Decimal Day.

1988 ~ Death of Richard Feynman, Physicist.

1995 ~ Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the more "secure" U.S. computer systems.


Feastdays & Holidays


Canada ~ Flag Day

February 16th
 

1923 ~ Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1935 ~ Birthday of Sonny Bono, Singer & Congressman.

1937 ~ Wallace Carothers received a patent for nylon.

1942 ~ Birthday of Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

1978 ~ The first computer bulletin board system, CBBS, was created in Chicago, Illinois.

1986 ~ The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

1989 ~ Investigators announced that the cause of the crash of Pan Am flight 103 was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player.

1999 ~ Kurdish rebels took over embassies and held hostages after Turkey arrested one of their leaders, Abdullah Öcalan.

2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol came into effect.

February 17th
 

1653 ~ Birthday of Arcangelo Corelli, Composer.

1801 ~ An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.

1867 ~ The first ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1895 ~ Swan Lake, one of the most famous ballets, with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, was first completely performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1909 ~ Death of Geronimo, Apache leader.

1933 ~ The magazine Newsweek began publication.

1947 ~ The Voice of America began to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union.

1962 ~ Death of Bruno Walter, Conductor.

1992 ~ A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sentenced serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to life in prison.

1996 ~ Garry Kasparov beat the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match. :)

February 18th
 

1546 ~ Death of Martin Luther, religious reformer.

1745 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Volta, Physicist, eponym for the unit of the electric potential.

1838 ~ Birthday of Ernst Mach, Austrian Physicist & Philosopher.

1861 ~ In Montgomery, Alabama Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first and only President of the Confederate States of America.

1885 ~ Mark Twain's “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published.

1930 ~ While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

1933 ~ Birthday of Yoko Ono, Singer, Artist, wife of John Lennon.

1969 ~ Lulu and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees marry.

1967 ~ Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

2005 ~ The UK law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

February 19th
 

1473 ~ Birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer.

1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer.

1861 ~ Serfdom was abolished in Russia.

1915 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli began.

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

1945 ~ About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.

1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence”, the song which would take him and Art Garfunkel to stardom.

1980 ~ Bon Scott, the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, died after a night of heavy drinking.

1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, the last of China's major Communist revolutionaries.

February 20th
 

1626 ~ Death of John Dowland, Composer.

1742 ~ The premiere of “Giulio Cesare”, an opera by George Frideric Handel, took place in London.

1835 ~ Concepción, Chile was destroyed by an earthquake.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor.

1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City.

1962 ~ John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7.

1966 ~ Death of Chester Nimitz, American admiral.

2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years.

February 21st
 

1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1903 ~ Birthday of Anaïs Nin, Writer.

1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet.

1916 ~ The Battle of Verdun began. French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities.

1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1965 ~ Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

1972 ~ President Nixon began his visit to China.

1975 ~ Watergate scandal: Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison.

1988 ~ TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily.

February 22nd
 

1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st U.S. President.

1819 ~ Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.

1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.

1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened his first "Five Cent Store" in Utica, NY.

1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the more influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1967 ~ General Suharto assumed control of Indonesia

1980 ~ The U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, NY.

1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested.

1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

February 23rd
 

1633 ~ Birthday of Samuel Pepys, Diarist.

1685 ~ Birthday of Georg Friederich Händel, Composer.

1836 ~ The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

1855 ~ Death of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mathematician & Physicist.

1893 ~ Rudolf Diesel received a patent for the diesel engine.

1915 ~ Birthday of Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay.

1927 ~ President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1945 ~ U.S. flag raised over Iwo Jima: The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marines take Mount Suribachi.

1954 ~ Lasting prevention of Polio reported in vaccine tests.

1965 ~ Death of Stan Laurel, Actor & Comedian.

February 24th
 

303 ~ The Roman Emperor Galerius published his edict that began the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

1786 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, Philologist & Folklorist.

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

1868 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson.

1885 ~ Birthday of Chester Nimitz, U.S. admiral.

1903 ~ The U.S. signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

1946 ~ Juan Perón was elected president of Argentina.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1981 ~ Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

2001 ~ Death of Claude E. Shannon, "father of information theory".

February 25th
 

1723 ~ Death of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1841 ~ Birthday of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter & Sculptor.

1870 ~ Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the United States Senate.

1901 ~ J.P. Morgan incorporated the United States Steel Corporation.

1913 ~ The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, authorizing a graduated income tax, was ratified.

1943 ~ Birthday of George Harrison, member of The Beatles.

1983 ~ Death of Tennessee Williams, playwright.

1986 ~ President Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule. Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency.

1994 ~ Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death by worshippers

2004 ~ Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was released in the U.S., grossing approximately $370 million, and became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made.

February 26th
 

1797 ~ The Bank of England issued the first one pound note.

1802 ~ Birthday of Victor Hugo, Poet.

1848 ~ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in London.

1852 ~ Birthday of John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of dry cereal.

1918 ~ Birthday of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1935 ~ Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of RADAR.

1944 ~ Filming of the Nazi propaganda film, "The Fuhrer Gives a Village to the Jews" began in Theresienstadt.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee introduces WorldWideWeb, the first web browser.

1991 ~ Kuwait City was liberated.

1993 ~ A van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City exploded, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.

February 27th
 

1807 ~ Birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet (The Song of Hiawatha, The Village Blacksmith, Paul Revere's Ride).

1827 ~ The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans.

1873 ~ Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor.

1887 ~ Death of Alexander Borodin, composer.

1900 ~ The British Labour Party was formed.

1902 ~ Birthday of John Steinbeck, Writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1962.

1912 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Durrell, Writer.

1933 ~ Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming the Communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.

1951 ~ In a victory for freedom lovers, the Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.

1991 ~ President George Bush declared "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated", and announced a Gulf War ceasefire.

February 28th
 

1827 ~ The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred von Schlieffen, German field marshal.

1854 ~ The U.S. Republican Party was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery.

1901 ~ Birthday of Linus Pauling, double Nobel Prize winner: Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962.

1935 ~ Wallace Carothers discovered Nylon.

1953 ~ James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement followed on April 25 following publication in Nature.

For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth..._50/default.stm
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html

In Crick’s words: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/Crick3.pdf

1979 ~ Death of "Mr. Ed", the talking horse.

1983 ~ The final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast in the U.S.

1986 ~ Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was assassinated in Stockholm.

1993 ~ Four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents and six Branch Davidians were killed when the agents tried to serve warrants on the Davidians.

March 1st
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Frédéric Chopin, Composer & Pianist.

1872 ~ Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first national park.

1896 ~ Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.

1904 ~ Birthday of Glenn Miller, Bandleader.

1912 ~ Georg Ritter von Trapp, head of the singing family memorialized in the musical The Sound of Music, married his first wife, Agathe.

1927 ~ Birthday of Harry Belafonte, Musician & Actor.

1932 ~ The infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped.

1950 ~ Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

1954 ~ The Castle Bravo 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which produced the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the U.S.

1992 ~ Sen. Brock Adams, D-Wash., abandoned his re-election campaign after eight women accused him in a Seattle Times report of sexual abuse and harassment.

March 2nd
 

1824 ~ Birthday of Bedrich Smetana, Composer.

1836 ~ The Republic of Texas declared its independence from Mexico.

1904 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seuss, Author.

1919 ~ The first Communist International met in Moscow.

1930 ~ Death of D. H. Lawrence, Writer.

1931 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union.

1939 ~ Death of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1956 ~ Morocco declared its independence from France.

1963 ~ Release of Please Please Me in the U.K., the first LP from The Beatles.

2004 ~ Al Qaeda carried out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

March 3rd
 

1706 ~ Death of Johann Pachelbel, Composer.

1831 ~ Birthday of George Pullman, Inventor & Industrialist.

1845 ~ Birthday of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

1847 ~ Birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor.

1923 ~ TIME magazine first published.

1931 ~ The U.S. officially adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem.

1939 ~ In Bombay, Mahatma Gandhi began a fast in protest of the British rule in India.

1974 ~ Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials reached an agreement for eventual reconciliation into one communion, marking the first agreement between the two churches since the Reformation.

1983 ~ Death of Hergé, Belgian comics creator.

1991 ~ An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

March 4th
 

1678 ~ Birthday of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1681 ~ Charles II of England granted a land charter to William Penn for what will later become Pennsylvania.

1804 ~ The Battle of Vinegar Hill, colony of New South Wales.

1861 ~ The Stars and Bars was adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

1877 ~ Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake first performed.

1917 ~ Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first female member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1936 ~ First flight of airship Hindenburg(LZ-129), in Germany.

1994 ~ Four terrorists were convicted for their roles in the World Trade Center bombing which killed six and injured more than a thousand.

1997 ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton prohibited federal funding for any research on human cloning.

1998 ~ The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.

March 5th
 

1512 ~ Birthday of Gerardus Mercator, Flemish Geographer & Cartographer.

1658 ~ Birthday of Antoine Cadillac, founder of Detroit.

1887 ~ Birthday of Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian musician & Composer.

1908 ~ Birthday of Rex Harrison, English actor.

1946 ~ Winston Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent…”.

1953 ~ Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died at age 73, after 29 years in power.

1982 ~ Comedian John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose in Hollywood at age 33.

1993 ~ Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was banned from athletics for life after failing a drug test for a second time.

1997 ~ North and South Korean representatives met for the first time in 25 years for peace talks.

2004 ~ Martha Stewart was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to the government about why she dumped her Imclone Systems Inc. stock just before the price dropped.

March 6th
 

1475 ~ Birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian painter.

1806 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet.

1853 ~ Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata premiered in Venice, Italy.

1857 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.

1869 ~ Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

1888 ~ Death of Louisa May Alcott, Novelist.

1926 ~ Birthday of Alan Greenspan, American economist.

1957 ~ The former UK colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

1982 ~ Death of Ayn Rand, Author.

1987 ~ 197 people died when a car ferry capsized outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

March 7th
 

1274 ~ Death of Thomas Aquinas, Philosopher.

1850 ~ U.S. Senator Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1875 ~ Birthday of Maurice Ravel, Composer.

1867 ~ Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone (patent # 174,464).

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

1965 ~ In Selma, Alabama, State troopers and local law enforcement forcefully broke up a group of 600 civil rights marchers.

1967 ~ Death of Alice B. Toklas, inspiration for a million brownies.

1969 ~ Golda Meir elected Prime Minister of Israel.

1999 ~ Death of Stanley Kubrick, Film Director.

2004 ~ An investiture ceremony was held for V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop.

March 8th
 

1714 ~ Birthday of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Composer. Not to be confused with his father Johann Sebastian Bach.

1862 ~ The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

1869 ~ Birthday of Hector Berlioz, Composer.

1917 ~ The first stage of the Russian Revolution, the February Revolution started in St. Petersburg.

1942 ~ Death of José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player.

1948 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.

1950 ~ The Soviet Union claimed to have an atomic bomb.

1959 ~ George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia.

1983 ~ President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire.

1999 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing.

March 9th
 

1454 ~ Birthday of Amerigo Vespucci, Explorer & Cartographer.

1862 ~ In a five-hour battle near Hampton Roads, Virginia the USS Monitor fought the CSS Virginia to a draw during the first battle between two ironclad warships.

1917 ~ [] Pancho Villa lead 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.[/I]

1934 ~ Birthday of Yuri Gagarin, Cosmonaut, first human in space.

1943 ~ Birthday of Bobby Fischer, chess player.

1959 ~ The Barbie doll debuts.

1900 ~ Stalin's daughter defected to the West.

1990 ~ Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Clyde Wells confirmed he will rescind Newfoundland's approval of the Meech Lake Accord, effectively killing the Accord.

1996 ~ Death of George Burns, Actor.

2005 ~ The final broadcast by Dan Rather on CBS Evening News.

March 10th
 

1831 ~ The French Foreign Legion was established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.

1844 ~ Birthday of Pablo de Sarasate, Violinist.

1893 ~ Côte d'Ivoire became a French colony.

1957 ~ Birthday of Osama bin Laden, Terrorist.

1965 ~ Neil Simon's play ''The Odd Couple'' opened on Broadway.

1969 ~ James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1977 ~ Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus.

1982 ~ The U.S. placed an embargo on Libyan oil because of Libya’s support of terrorist groups.

1985 ~ Death of Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet leader.

1993 ~ Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic.

March 11th
 

1847 ~ Death of Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), Pioneer & Agronomist.

1941 ~ World War II: President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill.

1952 ~ Birthday of Douglas Adams, Science Fiction/Comedy novelist.

1955 ~ Death of Alexander Fleming, Biologist.

1968 ~ Death of John Wyndham, Author.

1985 ~ Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader.

1993 ~ Janet Reno is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, becoming the first female U.S. Attorney General.

1996 ~ John Howard became the twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia.

1997 ~ Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

2004 ~ Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain, killed 191 people and wounded at least 1,800 in an attack linked to al-Qaida.

March 12th
 

1685 ~ Birthday of George (Bishop) Berkeley, Philosopher.

1895 ~ Coca-Cola sold in bottles for the first time.

1912 ~ The Girl Scouts (née Girl Guides) were started in the U.S.

1913 ~ Canberra officially named.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jack Kerouac, Writer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Harry Harrison, Science Fiction author.

1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops occupied Austria; annexation declared the following day.

1950 ~ Dennis the Menace made its syndicated debut.

1987 ~ Les Misérables opened on Broadway.

1999 ~ Death of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

March 13th
 

1764 ~ Birthday of Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the U.K., obtainer of a popular bergamot tea recipe.

1781 ~ William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

1855 ~ Birthday of Percival Lowell, Astronomer.

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

1906 ~ Death of Susan B. Anthony, civil rights and women's suffrage activist.

1925 ~ A law in Tennessee, the Butler Act, was passed, prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

1938 ~ Death of Clarence Darrow, Attorney.

1964 ~ Kitty Genovese was murdered in an incident which shocked the world and prompted investigation into the Bystander effect.

1979 ~ The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

1996 ~ In Dunblane, Scotland, 16 children and 1 adult teacher were shot dead by a man who then committed suicide.

March 14th
 

1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss Sr.

1835 ~ Birthday of Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian Astronomer.

1879 ~ Birthday of Albert Einstein, physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1921.

1883 ~ Death of Karl Marx, political theorist.

1900 ~ The Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.

1964 ~ A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

1984 ~ Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

1991 ~ After 16 years in prison for allegedly bombing a pub in an Irish Republican Army attack, the "Birmingham Six" were freed when a court determined that the police fabricated evidence.

1997 ~ Surgeons at Bethesda Naval Medical Center repaired a torn knee tendon in President Bill Clinton's right leg; caused by a stumble at the Florida home of golfer Greg Norman.

March 15th
 

44 B.C. ~ Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators.

1877 ~ The first Test cricket match, between England and Australia.

1898 ~ Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist.

1906 ~ Rolls-Royce Ltd. wass registered.

1916 ~ President Woodrow Wilson sent 12,000 U.S. troops over the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1937 ~ Death of H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer.

1956 ~ ”My Fair Lady” opened in New York City. Rex Harrison played Henry Higgins, and Julie Andrews was Eliza Doolittle.

1975 ~ Death of Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate.

1990 ~ British journalist Farzad Bazoft executed for spying.

1991 ~ Germany formally regained complete independence after World War II.

March 16th
 

1521 ~ Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines, where he was killed by natives the following month.

1736 ~ Death of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer.

1789 ~ Birthday of Georg Ohm, German physicist and developer of Ohm's law.

1850 ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter was first published.

1898 ~ Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British Artist.

1926 ~ Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

1968 ~ The My Lai Massacre was carried out by U.S. troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley.

1978 ~ Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas in Italy and was later killed by his captors.

1984 ~ William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists; he died in captivity.

1988 ~ The Kurdish town of Halabjah attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5000.

March 17th
 

180 ~ Death of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.

461 ~ Death of Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.

1673 ~ Jacques Marquette & Louis Jolliet began their exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river.

1782 ~ Death of Daniel Bernoulli, Mathematician.

1834 ~ Birthday of Gottlieb Daimler, Engineer & Inventor.

1845 ~ The rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry.

1861 ~ The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed.

1919 ~ Birthday of Nat King Cole, Singer. Oh! what a singer!

1959 ~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled Tibet and travels to India.

1992 ~ A suicide car-bomb killed 29 and injured 242 at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.


Feastdays & Holidays


Catholicism ~ Feast day of St Patrick: a public holiday in Ireland and Montserrat, widely celebrated in North America.

March 18th
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Composer.

1850 ~ American Express was founded by Henry Wells & William Fargo.

1909 ~ Einar Dessau used a short-wave radio transmitter becoming the first to broadcast as a ham radio operator.

1940 ~ Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.

1962 ~ France and Algeria signed an agreement ending the Algerian War.

1965 ~ Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, left his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, and became the first man to walk in space.

1968 ~ The U.S. Congress repealed the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.

1978 ~ Death of Leigh Brackett, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ 12 paintings, collectively worth $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. This was the largest art theft in U.S. history.

1992 ~ Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1.

March 19th
 

1687 ~ Explorer Robert de La Salle was murdered while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River.

1813 ~ Birthday of David Livingstone, Missionary & Explorer.

1848 ~ Birthday of Wyatt Earp, Policeman & Gunfighter.

1906 ~ Birthday of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi official.

1915 ~ The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time.

1932 ~ Sydney Harbor Bridge opened.

1950 ~ Death of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Author.

1953 ~ The Academy Awards were first televised.

1982 ~ Argentines landed on South Georgia Island, precipitating the Falklands War.

1987 ~ Death of Louis-Victor de Broglie, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1929.


Feastdays & Holidays


The swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

March 20th
 

1727 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist.

1815 ~ Napoleon returned to Paris after escaping from Elba, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.

1828 ~ Birthday of Henrik Ibsen, Playwright.

1852 ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published.

1916 ~ Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity.

1928 ~ Birthday of Fred Rogers, children's television host.

1969 ~ John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1995 ~ A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 12 and wounded 1,300 people.

2000 ~ Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H. Rap Brown, was captured following a shootout in Atlanta.

2003 ~ U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait.

March 21st
 

1685 ~ Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1839 ~ Birthday of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1867 ~ Birthday of Florenz Ziegfeld, Broadway Impresario.

1945 ~ World War II: British troops liberated Mandalay, Burma.

1960 ~ Police fired on demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing 69 and wounding 180.

1963 ~ Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, was closed.

1965 ~ Rev. King led 3,200 people on the start of the third civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1980 ~ President Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1999 ~ Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

2002 ~ Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects were charged with murder in the kidnapping and killing of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

March 22nd
 

1599 ~ Birthday of Anthony van Dyck, Painter.

1683 ~ Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

1687 ~ Death of Jean Baptiste Lully, French Composer.

1832 ~ Death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Writer & Poet.

1882 ~ U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy.

1923 ~ Birthday of Marcel Marceau, Mime.

1963 ~ The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denied improper involvement with the model Christine Keeler.

1972 ~ The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. constitution was sent to the states for ratification.

1993 ~ The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips.

2004 ~ Death (by Israeli Hellfire missile) of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

March 23rd
 

1749 ~ Birthday of Pierre Simon de Laplace, Mathematician & Astronomer.

1775 ~ Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech - "give me liberty or give me death" in Williamsburg, Virginia.

1857 ~ Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway, New York City.

1882 ~ Birthday of Emmy Noether, Mathematician. Now there's a lady who had a tough row to hoe!

1912 ~ Birthday of Wernher von Braun, Engineer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Roger Bannister, athlete, first "Miracle Mile"

1983 ~ President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept missiles.

1989 ~ Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced cold fusion at the University of Utah.

1989 ~ A 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid (4581 Asclepius) missed the Earth by 400,000 miles.

2001 ~ The Russian Mir space station was de-orbited, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

March 24th
 

1874 ~ Birthday of Harry Houdini, Magician.

1882 ~ Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.

1882 ~ Death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet.

1893 ~ Birthday of Walter Baade, Astronomer.

1905 ~ Death of Jules Verne, Author.

1965 ~ Ranger 9 broadcast live TV as it crashed-landed onto the Moon.

1972 ~ The UK imposed direct rule over Northern Ireland.

1980 ~ Archbishop Óscar Romero was killed by gunmen while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.

1989 ~ The Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels of oil after running aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

1999 ~ NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. This marked the first time NATO attacked a sovereign nation.