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 U.S. 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.

They had a 65th Anniversary ceremony this morning, which I missed because of an inservice course.
The bunch who hit Pearl Harbour ducked over to near Singapore, sank the "Prince of Wales" and the Repulse" blunting the bite of the Brits in the region, than hit us to stop us becoming an American support base (for a while) in the response which was sure to come.

We take it seriously here, as we suffered several hundred incursions before the Empire was driven back.

February 20th
 

1626 ~ Death of John Dowland, Composer.

1792 ~ President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

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.

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 confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Reports linked Swaggart to a prostitute.

1995 ~ When he landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Steve Fossett became the first man to make a solo baloon flight across the Pacific Ocean.

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 a five-cent store in Utica, N.Y.

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 - the "Long 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 most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1967 ~ General Suharto assumes control of Indonesia

1980 ~ In the Olympic competition, the U.S. Ice 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 ~ The Stars and Stripes raised over Iwo Jima. The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marine Division took 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.

1803 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

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

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

1942 ~ Birthday of Joseph Lieberman, U.S. Senator.

1949 ~ At White Sands NM, "Project Bumper” a WAC CORPORAL attached to a German built V-2 rocket, reached a height of 250 miles above sea level, the first rocket to reach outer space. The entire trip took 6-1/2 minutes from firing.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1981 ~ Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of 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 U.S. Senate.

1901 ~ Incorporation of 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, Beatle.

1983 ~ Death of Tennessee Williams, playwright.

1986 ~ Corazon Aquino assumed the Philippine presidency after Ferdinand E. Marcos fled.

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., 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 ~ On Baghdad Radio, Saddam Hussein announced that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.

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 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 in the April 25 publication of Nature. For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development. In Crick’s own words.

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

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

1986 ~ Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death in central 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 ~ U.S. Congress authorized creation of Yellowstone 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 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. It 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.

1877 ~ Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.

1904 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seuss, Author.

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

1931 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

1939 ~ Death of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

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

1969 ~ The maiden flight of the Concorde.

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 ~ Florida became the 27th state.

1847 ~ Birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor.

1923 ~ Birthday of James Doohan, Actor.

1931 ~ ”The Star-Spangled Banner” officially became the national anthem of the U.S.

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

1983 ~ Death of Hergé, Belgian comics creator.

1985 ~ England’s coal miners accept defeat and vote to return to work after a year long strike.

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, 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.

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

1975 ~ Charlie Chaplin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

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 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 ~ Death of Josef Stalin, Soviet dictator.

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.

1953 ~ 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 artist.

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 just 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) was 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.

2001 ~ The wreck of Bluebird, Donald Campbell's speedboat, was recovered.

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.

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

1943 ~ Birthday of Bobby Fischer, chess player.

1954 ~ CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow critically reviewed Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign on "See It Now”.

1959 ~ The Barbie doll debuts.

1967 ~ Stalin's daughter defected to the West.

1990 ~ Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Clyde Wells confirmed he would 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
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Pablo de Sarasate, Violinist.

1893 ~ Côte d'Ivoire became a French colony.

1949 ~ Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as “Axis Sally”, was convicted in Washington, D.C., of treason.

1957 ~ Birthday of Osama bin Laden, Terrorist.

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

1969 ~ James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tenn., 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 ~ 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 was 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
 

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.

1947 ~ The “Truman Doctrine” established.

1950 ~ "Dennis the Menace" made its syndicated debut.

1987 ~ ”Les Misérables” opened on Broadway.

1999 ~ Death of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

2001 ~ The Taliban destroyed two giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

March 13th
 

1781 ~ The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel.

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.

1947 ~ The musical “Brigadoon” opened on Broadway.

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 ~ A gunman opened fire on a class of kindergarteners at an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

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.

1994 ~ Linux kernel version 1.0.0 was released.

1995 ~ Astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two cosmonauts blasted off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for the Mir space station..

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. was registered.

1916 ~ Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote.

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 was executed for spying.

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

Ides heard that one about Caesar, jseal.

Popped in for the first time in a while. Thanks, jseal, for keeping this thread alive; I'd never have thought it would last anywhere near as long as it has!!

You are an inspiration sir, and I salute you.

DM

:)

March 16th
 

1521 ~ 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 in Iraq was attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5,000.

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!

1942 ~ Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.

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

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.

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

1965 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov 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.

1992 ~ South Africa voted to end apartheid.

March 19th
 

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

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 General Theory of 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 ~ UK troops liberated Mandalay, Burma.

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

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

1965 ~ Rev. King led 3,200 people on the start of a 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 men to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

2000 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government lacked authority to regulate tobacco as an addictive drug..

March 22nd
 

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.

1963 ~ The Beatles' first album, "Please Please Me", was released in the UK.

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 space station Mir 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.

1944 ~ In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that killed 32 German soldiers.

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

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

1989 ~ The Exxon Valdez spilled 270,000 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.

March 25th
 

1634 ~ The first settlers arrived in Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore).

1807 ~ The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing slavery in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1867 ~ Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Conductor.

1881 ~ Birthday of Béla Bartók, Composer.

1918 ~ Death of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Aretha Franklin, Singer.

1957 ~ The European Economic Community was established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).

1975 ~ King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness.

1992 ~ Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth from the Mir space station after a 10-month stay, during which his native country, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist.

1998 ~ President Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that "we did not act quickly enough" to stop the slaughter of one million Rwandans four years earlier.

I note that the capsule history of Maryland's founding completely skips the nastiness between the Kent Islanders and the colonials led by the Calverts. Some brief mention of that here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...lonial_Maryland