March 18:


37: The Roman Senate annulled the will of Tiberius and names Caligula emperor.

1692: William Penn was deprived of his governing powers in the colony named for him.

1766: After much pressure from the American colonists, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. The Americans hated the idea of "no taxation without representation." Unfortunately, Parliament did not really learn the lesson and immediately passed the Declaratory Act claiming full authority over the colonists. Their mindset was mercantilist while the colonies were operating under a more capitalist economic system.

1782: Birthday of John C. Calhoun, American politician from South Carolina, advocate of southern interests in Congress

1837: Birthday of Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd& 24thpresident of the U.S.

1852: Henry Wells and William G. Fargo started their banking and shipping company.

1858: Birthday of Rudolf Diesel, German engineer who designed the compression-ignition engine

1863: Confederate women rioted in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt.

1865: The final adjournment of the Confederate Congress.

1869: Birthday of Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister most associated with appeasement

1874: Hawaii signed a treaty granting the U.S. exclusive trading rights.

1881: Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opened in Madison Square Garden.

1893: Birthday of Wilfred Owen, British poet who died near the end of WWI

1911: Theodore Roosevelt opened the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Arizona, the largest dam in the country at the time.

1913: King George I of Greece was assassinated.

1922: Mohandas Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.

1936: Birthday of Frederik W. de Klerk, President of South Africa who ended Apartheid

1939: Georgia finally ratified the Bill of Rights. The remaining two states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, would do the same later that year.

1942: For the third time in U.S. history, a military draft begins operation.

1943: Adolf Hitler called off the German offensive in the Caucasus.

1965: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk.

1969: U.S. began bombing Cambodia, targeting the Ho Chi Minh trail used by the Viet Cong to attack South Vietnam through a "neutral" country.

1970: The first postal strike paralyzed the U.S. Postal Service.

1971: American helicopters airlifted 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.

1986: Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.

March 19:


1589: Birthday of William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony for 30 years

1687: French explorerLa Salle was murdered by his own men while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River.

1702: The death of William III, succeeded by Anne Stuart as Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

1813: Birthday of David Livingston, English explorer famously found in Africa by Henry Stanley

1821: Birthday of Sir Richard Burton, English explorer

1848: Birthday of Wyatt Earp, U.S. marshal who famously fought in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona

1849: Birthday of Alfred von Tirpitz, Prussian admiral who commanded the German fleet at the beginning of WWI

1891: Birthday of Earl Warren, governor of California, later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

1904: Birthday of John J. Sirica, U.S. Federal Judge during the Watergate era

1906: Birthday of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi Gestapo officer & leader in the planning and execution of the Holocaust

1916: The First Aero Squadron took off from Columbus, New Mexico to join Gen. John J. Pershing in his Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico.

1917: The Supreme Court ruled the Adamson Act, providing for an 8 hour work day for railroad workers, was constitutional.

1918: Congress authorized Daylight Savings Time.

1920: The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time.

1925: Birthday of Brent Scrowcroft, Air Force Lt. Gen. & National Security Advisor to Pres. George H.W. Bush

1931: The state of Nevada legalized gambling.

1945: Adolf Hitler ordered a scorched-earth policy as the German armies retreated from the advancing Allied armies in both the east and the west.

1949: The government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) approved a new constitution.

1966: Texas Western defeated Kentucky to win the national basketball championship, the first with an all-black starting 5.

2003: War in Iraq began.

March 20:

43: Birthday of Ovid, Roman poet

1413: Henry Vascended to the throne upon the death of his father, Henry IV.

1760: The Great Fire of Boston destroyed 349 buildings.

1778: King Louis XVI of France received U.S. representatives . Soon, negotiations would lead to an alliance crucial to the success of America's War for Independence.

1811: Birthday of Napoleon II, son of Napoleon Bonaparte

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on Elba and returned to Paris to begin his famous Hundred Days.

1828: Birthday of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright

1841: Publication of Edgar Allen Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, considered the first detective story.

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

1854: Founding of the Republican Partyon the conviction that slavery was evil and should not be allowed to expand into the western territories.

1906: Russian army officers mutinied in Sevastopol.

1917: Birthday of Dame Vera Lynn, British singer

1918: The Bolsheviks sought American aid to rebuild their army.

1925: Birthday of John Ehrlichman, White House advisor to Pres. Richard Nixon

1928: Birthday of Fred Rogers, television performer in Mr. Roger Roger's Neighborhood

1940: The British Royal Air Force conducted an all-night air raid on the air base at Sylt, Germany.

1957: Birthday of Shelton "Spike" Lee, film director

1965: Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson called up the National Guard to protect the civil rights protestors in a march from Selma to Montgomery to promote voting rights. An earlier march had ended in bloodshed as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fellow protestors were attacked by state troopers on live TV.

1976: Patty Hearst was convicted of armed robbery.

So you're testing us by counting backwards?

Are you talking about March 15, 44 BC? I've had a few B.C. dates in earlier posts. If we have a specific date for an important event and I know about it, I will include it. However, we also need to remember that the calendar has changed a few times: from the earlier calendars to the Julian (Julius Ceasor) to the Gregorian Calendar in the 15th century--and not all countries adapted to the changes. Russia, for example, did not update theirs until the 20th century.

I think he was referring to the heading of March 18 ... instead of March 20

Thanks for noticing. I did not. I corrected the error with the proper post.

March 21:


1556: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was burned at the stake at Oxford under the rule of Queen Mary (aka "Bloody Mary") even after he had reconciled himself to the Catholic Church

1617: Pocahontas (aka Rebecca Rolfe) died of smallpox or pneumonia while in England with her husband John Rolfe.

1685: Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer

1788: Almost all of New Orleans, Louisiana was destroyed by fire.

1804: Napoleonic Code was approved in France. One of Napoleon's great legacies was a consolidation of the nation's legal system in a process begun by Julius Caesar of Ancient Rome and continued by Justinian of the Byzantine Empire but not completed until 1804. It remains the basis for the legal systems of most of Europe.

1806: Lewis & Clark began their return trip after travelling 8,000 miles in the Mississippi basin and along the Pacific coast.

1858: British forces in India lifted the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.

1869: Birthday of Florenz Ziegfeld, producer, creator of Ziegeld Follies

1871: Journalist Henry Morton Stanley began his famous search through Africa for missing British explorer Dr. David Livingstone.

1918: Germany launched their last major offensive of WWI.

1928: Pres. Calvin Coolidge presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve, for his solo transatlantic flight.

1939: Singer Kate Smith recorded "God Bless America" for Victor Records.

1943: After 2 failed attempts to assassinate Hitler, Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow tried again. This third attempt all failed when Hitler's plans were changed at the last minute with a suicide bomber having 8 minutes with 10 minute fuses on his bombs.

1960: Sharpeville massacre: Afrikaner police opened fire on a group of unarmed black protesters in Sharpeville, killing 60.

1963: Alcatraz closed its doors as a federal prison. Now it is only for tourists.

1965: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and 3200 civil rights demonstrators began their march from Selma to Montgomery demanding equal voting rights.

1980: Pres. Jimmy Carter decided to punish the Soviet Union for their invasion of Afghanistan in December by boycotting the Moscow summer Olympics. American athletes felt they were the ones being punished.

March 22:


1599: Birthday of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish artist

1622: Indian massacre: Fearing the continued spread of white settlers in the region, Native Americans attacked colonists along the James River in the Virginia colony, massacring 350 men, women, & children.

1664: Charles II gave large tracts of land from west of the Connecticut River to east of Delaware Bay to his brother James, the Duke of York (and future James II).

1719: Frederick William abolished serfdom on crown lands in Prussia.

1765: The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act. It was the first tax designed explicitly for revenue as opposed to mercantilist regulation (which the colonists often found easy to ignore). The colonists hated this "taxation without representation" and organized protests and boycotts to fight it, forcing a repeal almost a year later.

1775: British statesman Edmund Burke gave a speech in the House of Commons urging a policy of reconciliation with the American colonists. The War for Independence began less than a month later.

1790: Thomas Jefferson became the first U.S. Secretary of State.

1794: Congress passed laws prohibiting slave trading with foreign nations although the African slave trade was still legal (prohibition was constitutionally delayed until 1808) and slavery itself was untouched.

1797: Birthday of Wilhelm I, first emperor of Germany

1820: Stephen Decatur, American naval hero from the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, was mortally wounded in a duel. He died hours later.

1904: The first color photograph was published in the London Daily Illustrated Mirror.

1908: Birthday of Louis L'Amour, American western novelist

1915: A German Zepplin made a night raid on Paris railway stations.

1919: The first international airline service was inaugurated on a weekly schedule between Paris and Brussels.

1923: Birthday of Marcel Marceau, French mime

1930: Birthday of Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist

1933: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Beer and Wine Revenue Act to tax the selling of alcoholic beverages for the first time in years. Prohibition had been repealed.

1935: Persia was renamed Iran.

1945: Representatives of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabi, Iraq, and Yemen met in Cairo to form the Arab League to promote economic growth.

1946: The first American built rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere reached a height of 50 miles.

1947: Pres. Harry S. Truman ordered loyalty checks on federal employees due to fears that many of them might be communists or communist sympathizers. This inspired politicians of both parties and both houses of Congress to exploit the issue for their own advantage, including Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Rep. Richard M. Nixon.

19489: Birthday of Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer (Evita, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, etc)

1954: The London gold market reopened for the first time since 1939.

1968: Pres. Lyndon B Johnson names Gen. William Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff.

1972: Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment. It was never ratified by enough states. Although the deadline has expired, some are still seeking ratification of this broad, open-ended amendment.

1990: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska found Capt. Hazelwood not guilty in the Exxon-Valdez oil spill.

historian said:

---

March 22:


1599: Birthday of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish artist

1622: Indian massacre: Fearing the continued spread of white settlers in the region, Native Americans attacked colonists along the James River in the Virginia colony, massacring 350 men, women, & children.

1664: Charles II gave large tracts of land from west of the Connecticut River to east of Delaware Bay to his brother James, the Duke of York (and future James II).

1719: Frederick William abolished serfdom on crown lands in Prussia.

1765: The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act. It was the first tax designed explicitly for revenue as opposed to mercantilist regulation (which the colonists often found easy to ignore). The colonists hated this "taxation without representation" and organized protests and boycotts to fight it, forcing a repeal almost a year later.

1775: British statesman Edmund Burke gave a speech in the House of Commons urging a policy of reconciliation with the American colonists. The War for Independence began less than a month later.

1790: Thomas Jefferson became the first U.S. Secretary of State.

1794: Congress passed laws prohibiting slave trading with foreign nations although the African slave trade was still legal (prohibition was constitutionally delayed until 1808) and slavery itself was untouched.

1797: Birthday of Wilhelm I, first emperor of Germany

1820: Stephen Decatur, American naval hero from the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, was mortally wounded in a duel. He died hours later.

1904: The first color photograph was published in the London Daily Illustrated Mirror.

1908: Birthday of Louis L'Amour, American western novelist

1915: A German Zepplin made a night raid on Paris railway stations.

1919: The first international airline service was inaugurated on a weekly schedule between Paris and Brussels.

1923: Birthday of Marcel Marceau, French mime

1930: Birthday of Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist

1933: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Beer and Wine Revenue Act to tax the selling of alcoholic beverages for the first time in years. Prohibition had been repealed.

1935: Persia was renamed Iran.

1945: Representatives of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabi, Iraq, and Yemen met in Cairo to form the Arab League to promote economic growth.

1946: The first American built rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere reached a height of 50 miles.

1947: Pres. Harry S. Truman ordered loyalty checks on federal employees due to fears that many of them might be communists or communist sympathizers. This inspired politicians of both parties and both houses of Congress to exploit the issue for their own advantage, including Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Rep. Richard M. Nixon.

19489: Birthday of Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer (Evita, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, etc)

1954: The London gold market reopened for the first time since 1939.

1968: Pres. Lyndon B Johnson names Gen. William Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff.

1972: Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment. It was never ratified by enough states. Although the deadline has expired, some are still seeking ratification of this broad, open-ended amendment.

1990: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska found Capt. Hazelwood not guilty in the Exxon-Valdez oil spill.

---

1599: I really liked his chalk drawings the he and the kids jumped into with Mary. Didn't he go by Burt?

Anthony, not Dick

But it was a great film and that was one of several great scenes. He even had a neat cameo in the decades-later sequel.

March 23:

1657: France and England formed an alliance against Spain

1743: Premiere of Handel's Messiah in London

1775: Addressing Virginia's House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry gave his famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. In less than a month, the colonists would be at war with the British.

1806: Lewis & Clarkleft the fort they had established on the Pacific coast to begin their return journey to the east.

1848: Hungary proclaimed their independence from Austria. It did not stick.

1857: Elisha Otis installed the first modern passenger elevator in a public building in New York City.

1858: Eleazer Gardner of Philadelphia patented the cable street car running from overhead cables.

1862: Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson suffered his only defeat at the Battle of Kernstown, Virginia.

1880: John Stevens patented the grain crushing mill that increased the production of flour by 70%.

1901: Members of the U.S. Army captured Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of Philippine Insurrection of 1899.

1903: The Wright brothers patented the airplane.

1908: Birthday of Joan Crawford, American actress

1909: Theodore Roosevelt began an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society.

1912: Birthday of Werner on Braun, German-born rocket pioneer, leading engineer in developing America's space program

1917: Austrian Emperor Charles I made a peace proposal to French President Raymond Poincare.

1919: Benito Mussolini established the Fascist Party in Italy.

1920: Great Britain denounced the U.S. for its delay in joining the League of Nations. The U.S. never joined that organization.

1929: Birthday of Sir Roger Bannister, first man to run the mile in less than 4 minutes

1933: The German Reichstag passed the Enabling Act which gave Chancellor Adolf Hitler the authority to rule by decree. In essence, he was now a legally authorized dictator.

1956: Pakistan became the first Islamic republic, although still a member of the British Commonwealth.

1967: Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed the Vietnam War the greatest obstacle to civil rights.

1970: Mafia boss Carlo Gambino was arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.

1983: Pres. Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). He believed the U.S. was capable of developing a missile defense system to make nuclear weapons obsolete. But the technology did not yet exist, hence the press's "Star Wars" label. SDI would prove instrumental in ending the Cold War and the technology would come as demonstrated during the Gulf War.

2011: Death of Elizabeth Taylor

March 24:

1603: Death of Queen Elizabeth I.

1663: Charles II of England awarded land in America known as Carolina to eight members of the nobility that aided him in the restoration of the monarchy after the death of Oliver Cromwell.

1664: In London, Roger Williams was granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island.

1721: Johann Sebastian Bach published his Six Brandenburg Concertosin Germany.

1764: Birthday of Charles Earl Grey, British Prime Minister

1765: Britain's Parliament passed the Quartering Act, requiring the American colonies to provide room and board to British soldiers stationed there.

1855: Birthday of Percival Lowell, astronomer who predicted the discovery of the planet Pluto

1855: Birthday of Andrew Mellon, U.S. financier and philanthropist, Secretary of the Treasury during the 1920s

1862: Abolitionist Wendell Phillips spoke to a crowd in Cincinnati, Ohio about emancipation and was pelted with eggs.

1874: Birthday of Harry Houdini, escape artist

1902: Birthday of Thomas E. Dewey, New York governor and presidential candidate

1918: German forces crossed the Somme River, achieving the first major goal of their Spring offensive. However, the push would soon bog down ending all hopes they had for winning WWI.

1955: The play Cat on a Hot Tin Roofby Tennessee Williams premiered in New York City.

1958: Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army.

1975: Ignoring the Peace Accords signed two years earlier, North Vietnamese forces attacked South Vietnam Congress refused Pres. Ford's request to aid our allies and so they fell to the communists soon thereafter.

1989: Exxon Valdez crashed causing a massive oil spill. Extremists worried about the irreparable environmental damage but within a few years, Prince William Sound was returning to normal.

1996: American astronaut Shannon Lucid transferred from space shuttle Atlantis to the Russian Mir space station. She became the first American female astronaut to live aboard a space station.

1999: NATO forces began air strikes against Serbian positions in Kosovo.

March 25:


708: Beginning of the pontificate of Pope Constantine

1634: The first colonists arrived in Maryland due to a charter granted by King Charles I to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

1767: Birthday of Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law whom Napoleon placed on the throne of the Kingdom of Naples in 1808

1774: The British Parliament passed the Boston Port Act, closing the port of Boston until the city's citizens paid for the damages from the Boston Tea Party. This was one of the Coercive Acts, dubbed Intolerable Acts by the colonists, designed to punish the city for the tea party (collective guilt) and helped to unite the colonists against Britain like never before.

1776: The Continental Congress authorized a medal for Gen. George Washington.

1807: British Parliament abolished the slave trade.

1867: Birthday of Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore

1868: Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor

1908: Birthday of A.J.P. Taylor, British historian

1908: Birthday of David Lean, British film director (Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia)

1911: Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 in NYC. This led to fire safety laws in the work place.

1915: First submarine disaster: an American sub sank off the Hawaiian coast.

1931: Riots broke out in India killing 50. Gandhi among those attacked.

1934: Birthday of Gloria Steinem, feminist activist

1940: The U.S. agreed to give Britain and France access to all American war planes.

1941: Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers.

1942: Birthday of Aretha Franklin, American singer, the "Queen of Soul"

1954: RCA began mass production of their first color television set.

1957: Establishment of the European Common Market with the signing of the Rome Treaty, a precursor to the EU.

1965: Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march consisting of 25,000 people to the state capital in Montgomery, Alabama.

1970: First supersonic flight of the Concorde.

1975: Assassination of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

March 26:

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte captured Jaffa, Palestine.

1804: Congress ordered the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.

1804: The territory of New Orleans was organized in the Louisiana Purchase.

1827: Death of composer Ludwig von Beethoven in Vienna. Deaf for much of his later years, on his death bed he said, "I shall hear in heaven."

1874: Birthday of Robert Frost, American poet, multiple Pulitzer Prize winner

1885: Eastman Film Co. manufactured the first commercial motion picture film.

1911: Birthday of Tennessee Williams, American playwright

1913: The Balkan allies captured Adrianople.

1914: Birthday of William Westmoreland, U.S. Army general during Vietnam War

1920: F.Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published.

1930: Birthday of Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman Supreme Court Justice

1938: Herman Goering warned all Jews in Austria to leave the country.

1942: The Germans began sending Jews to Auschwitz.

1951: The United States Air Force flag design was approved.

1953: Dr. Jonas Salk announced the polio vaccine.

1954: The U.S. detonated a hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands, the second in 4 weeks.

1961: Pres. John F. Kennedy met with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in Washington to discuss increase Communist activity in Laos.

1979: Menachim Begin and Anwar el-Sadat signed a historic peace agreement. Egypt was the first Arab nation to normalize relations with Israel paving the way for a productive relationship to this day. They would earn the Nobel Peace Prize but Sadat would be assassinated.

1982: Groundbreaking for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1989: In the first free elections in Soviet history, Boris Yeltsin was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies with 92% of the vote.

2010: Baylor Men's Basketball had a blowout win over St. Mary's in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16.

Baylor's highlight reel:



The full game:

March 27:


1350: While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile died of the black death.

1512: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida.

1775: Thomas Jefferson was elected to the Second Continental Congress by the voters of Virginia.

1785: Birthday of Louis XVII, son of the Louis XVI who was beheaded during the French Revolution. The boy never became king as he died as a prisoner of the revolutionary regime

1802: The Treaty of Amiens was signed ending the War of the Second Coalition and the French Revolutionary Wars. After a brief pause, the Napoleonic Wars would begin.

1809: Birthday of Georges-Eugene Haussmann, French city planner responsible for the creation of modern Paris under the Second Empire.

1813: Birthday of Nathaniel Currier, lithographer for Currier and Ives

1814: American forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson won a decisive victory over the Creek Indians in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. As a side note, one of the soldiers under Gen. Jackson's command and wounded in the battle was a young Sam Houston.

1829: Pres. Andrew Jackson appointed John Eatonas his Secretary of War, defying Washington society and leading to scandal: Eaton's wife had a colorful background concerning her first husband, divorce, and his death so was shunned by elite society.

1836: Soldiers from the Mexican army massacred 417 Texas revolutionaries under James W. Fannin at Goliad.

1845: Birthday of Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen, German physicist who accidentally discovered X-rays

1863: Birthday of Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of the Rolls-Royce automobile company

1865: Pres. Abraham Lincoln met with Gens. Grant & Sherman to plan the last stages of the Civil War.

1866: Pres. Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill. Congress later turned these provisions into the 14thamendment.

1884: The first long distance telephone call was made from Boston to New York.

1905: Fingerprint evidence was used to solve a British murder.

1912: Japanese cherry trees were planted along the Potomac in Washington, D.C.

1924: Birthday of Sarah Vaughan, American jazz singer

1939: First "March Madness" and first NCAA MBB champion (Oregon)

1852: Elements of the U.S. 8thArmy arrived at the 38thparallel, the border between the two Koreas.

1958: Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier.

1964: Largest earthquake in American history: a 9.2 quake rocked Alaska and created a deadly tsunami.

1977: Washington, D.C. opened the Metro subway system.

1977: Two 747 jumbo jets collided on the runway at Canary Islands airport killing 592 people.

Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo!

WOW!

Nice to have a family connection.

March 28:

1774: Britain's Parliament adopted the Coercive Acts in response to the Boston Tea Party. The American colonists made their opinions clear when they nicknamed them the "Intolerable Acts."

1834: Congress censured Pres. Andrew Jackson for his refusal to turn over documents. Congress was upset that Jackson had vetoed a bill to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. (He was the first president to veto extensively and for political reasons).

1854: Britain and France declared war on Russia. The Crimean War would last a couple years and end with a Russian defeat but, like most wars, was fought for frivolous reasons.

1862: Birthday of Aristide Briand, French premier instrumental in the Kellogg-Briand Pact which outlawed war

1868: Birthday of Maxim Gorky, Russian short story writer and novelist

1910: The first seaplane took off from water at Martiniques, France.

1921: Pres. Warren G. Harding named William Howard Taftas chief justice of the Supreme Court, the job the former president had wanted all along.

1930: Constantinople and Angora were renamed Istanbul and Ankara respectively.

1933: In Nazi Germany Jews were banned in businesses, professions, and schools.

1939: The Spanish Civil War ended with a victory for Gen. Francisco Franco.

1945: Germany launched the last of their V-2 rocketsagainst England.

1946: Juan Peron was elected President of Argentina.

1969: Death of Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower

1979: The worst accident in the history of America's nuclear power industry began at Three Mile Island in central Pennsylvania.

1990: Jesse Owens received the Congressional Gold Medal from Pres. George H.W. Bush.

2006: Duke's lacrosse team was suspended after fraudulent sexual assault allegations.

March 29:

1638: The first permanent settlement was established in Delaware as a Swedish trading post.

1790: Birthday of John Tyler, 10thpresident of the U.S.

1819: Birthday of Edwin Drake who drilled the first productive oil well

1827: Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was buried in Vienna with a crowd of 10,000+ mourners in attendance.

1847: American forces under Gen. Winfield Scott took possession of the Mexican stronghold at Vera Cruz.

1865: Beginning of the Appomattox campaign, the final campaign of the Civil War. Gen. Robert E. Lee desperately tried to avoid the inevitable but after a few weeks he was forced to surrender.

1867: Birthday of Cy Young, major league baseball pitcher with the most wins

1886: Coca-Cola went on sale for the first time at a drugstore in Atlanta. Dr. John Pemberton, its inventor, claimed it could cure anything from hysteria to the common cold. Originally, it did contain a small amount of cocaine.

1888: Birthday of James E. Casey, founder of the Unite Parcel Service

1916: Birthday of Eugene McCarthy, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate

1918: Birthday of Pearl Bailey, singer and actress

1929: First telephone was installed in the Oval Office for Pres. Herbert Hoover.

1936: Italy firebombed the Ethiopian city of Harar.

1951: Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage.

1951: The Chinese rejected Gen. Douglas MacArthur's offer for a truce in Korea.

1952: Pres. Harry S. Truman decided not to seek reelection.

1961: The 23rdamendment allowing Washington, D.C. residents to participate in presidential elections was ratified.

1966: Leonid Brezhnev became the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

1967: France launched its first nuclear submarine.

1971: Lt. William Calley was found guilty of the My Lai massacre.

1973: The last U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam.

1974: America's Marinerbecame the first space probe to reach Mercury.

1975: Egyptian president Anwar Sadat announced that he would reopen the Suez Canal.

1976: Ohio National Guardsmen were indicted for shooting four Kent State students during an antiwar protest on ay 4, 1970.

March 30:

1853: Birthday of Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch artist

1858: Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patented the pencil with an eraser on the end.

1867: Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia to purchase Alaska. It was known as "Seward's folly"because many thought the territory was worthless. They were wrong.

1870: Congress passed the 15thamendment guaranteeing the right to vote to Americans of all races.

1870: Pres. Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill readmitting Texas into the Union, the last Confederate state to be readmitted.

1909: The Queensboro Bridge opened in New York, the first double decker bridge. It links Manhattan to Queens.

1916: Mexican bandit Pancho Villa killed 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.

1941: The German Afrika Korps under Gen. Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox," began its first offensive against British forces in Libya.

1943: The first Rodgers and Hammerstein production,Oklahoma, opened on Broadway.

1944: The American fleet attacked the Japanese at Palau, near the Philippines.

1945: The Red Army advanced into Austria.

1950: Pres. Harry S. Truman denounced Sen. Joseph McCarthy for sabotaging American foreign policy.

1981: John Hinckley, Jr. shot Pres. Ronald Reaganin a failed assassination attempt.

1987: The Vincent Van Gogh painting Sunflowers was purchased for $39.85 million

2019: The Baylor Lady Bears defeated South Carolina again, this time to win the Sweet Sixteen in the Greensboro Regionals of the NCAA Tournament. They were one step closer to their goal of the Final Four in Tampa.

March 31:

1282: The great massacre of the French in Sicily known as The Sicilian Vespers ended.

1492: The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand & Isabella signed the Alhambra Decree for the expulsion of all Jews.

1547: Death of French king Francis. He was succeeded by his son, Henry II.

1596: Birthday of Rene Descartes, French philosopher ("I think, therefore I am."

1732: Birthday of Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer

1776: In a private letter, Abigail Adams urged her husband John Adams, a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, to "remember the ladies."

1790: Maximilien Robespierre was elected president of the Jacobin Club.

1811: Birthday of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist, inventor of the Bunsen burner

1836: The first monthly installment of The Pickwick Papersby Charles Dickens was published in London.

1854: Commodore Matthew C. Perry signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with Japan opening the country to trade. Japan had been closed to all outside influence except a brief annual trade in Nagasaki. By forcing the issue, the U.S. created turmoil that ultimately caused the collapse of the shogunate, the establishment of a new regime under the Meiji Restoration, and the modernization of Japan throughout all aspects of society.

1878: Birthday of Jack Johnson, first black boxer to become the world heavyweight champion

1880: Electric lights were turned on in Wabash, Indiana, the first municipality to install them.

1889: Official opening of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Built to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution, it was the tallest man made structure until the completion of the Chrysler Building in NYC.

1905: First Moroccan Crisis: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany arrived in Germany to declare his support of the sultan of Morocco angering France and creating an international crisis.

1916: General John J. Pershing and his army routed the forces of Pancho Villa in Mexico.

1917: The U.S. purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.

1918: Daylight Savings Time went into effect throughout the U.S. for the first time.

1933: Congress authorized the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of the New Deal. It was a jobs program for unemployed single young men.

1939: Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade.

1940: La Guardia airport officially opened to the public in New York City.

1948: The Soviets began controlling western trains headed to Berlin. The beginning of the Berlin Blockade.

1948: Birthday of Al Gore, Vice President of the U.S., presidential candidate in 2000

1949: Winston Churchill declared the atomic bomb was the only ting preventing the Soviet Union from conquering Europe.

1954: Realizing that Dien Bien Phu, the last French stronghold in Vietnam, cannot be taken by direct assault, the Viet Minh begin a siege.

1959: The Dalai Lama fled the Chinese invasion of Tibet and began his long exile.

1970: American forces in Vietnam shot down a Mig-21, the first since September 1968.

1980: Pres. Jimmy Carter deregulated the banking industry.

1991: The Warsaw Pact, the military alliance of the Soviet Union and communist nations of eastern Europe during the Cold War, ceased to exist.

1991: Albania offered a multi-party election for the first time in 50 years.

April 1:

1578: Birthday of William Harvey, English physician and biologist

1621: Pilgrim-Wampanoag peace treaty between colonists in Plymouth on behalf of King James I and Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags.

1778: Oliver Pollock created the the dollar sign.

1815: Birthday of Otto von Bismarck, chancellor who unified Germany creating the modern state

1863: The first wartime conscription law in U.S. history went into effect.

1868: Birthday of Edmond Rostand, French dramatist who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac

1873: Birthday of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff

1883: Birthday of William Manchester U.S. historian

1918: Founding of the Royal Air Force in Great Britain.

1920: Germany's Workers Party changed its name to the National Socialist German Worker's Party (the Nazis).

1924: Adolf Hitler sentenced to five years in prison for his treasonous attempt to overthrow the government in the Beer Hall Putsch. This would take place in Landsberg jail, dictating Mein Kampfto his personal secretary but would only serve nine months.

1928: Chiang Kai-shek, leader of Chinese nationalists, began his attacks on the communists.

1942: The U.S. began a partial convoy system in the Atlantic while still neutral.

1945: American forces began the invasion of Okinawa.

1954: The U.S. Air Force Academy was founded in Colorado Springs.

1982: The U.S. transferred control of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.

2000: Baylor introduced Kim Mulkey as new head coach for women's basketball.

2019: The Baylor Lady Bears defeated Iowa in the Elite 8 during the Greensboro Regionals of the NCAA Tournament. This would lead to Baylor's first trip to the Final Four since 2012.

April 2:

742: Birthday of Charlemagne, first Holy Roman Emperor

1513: Ponce de Len claimed Florida for Spain.

1725: Birthday of Giovanni Casanova, Italian adventurer

1796: Haitian rebel leader Toussaint L'Ouverture took command of French forces a Santo Domingo.

1805: Birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer of fairy tales

1840: Birthday of Emile Zola, French novelist and activist

1865: President Jefferson Davis fled the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia as Gen. Grant broke through Gen. Lee's line at Petersburg.

1875: Birthday of Walter P. Chrysler, founder of Chrysler Automobile Co.

1891: Birthday of Max Ernst, German painter, sculptor and founder of surrealism

1914: Birthday of Alec Guinness, British actor

1917: Pres. Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

1917: Jeannette Pickering Rankin was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1931: Virne "Jackie" Mitchell became the first woman to play for an all-male professional baseball team. In an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

1932: Charles Lindbergh paid over $50,000 ransom for his kidnapped son.

1948: Birthday of Emmylou Harris, American singer

1958: The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics was renamed NASA.

1963: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.began his first non-violent protest campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.

1982: Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.

1992: Mob boss John Gotti was convicted of murder.

2005: Death of Pope John Paul II

April 3:

1367: John of Gaunt and Edward the Black Prince won the Battle of Najera in Spain, part of the Castilian Civil War, part of the much larger conflict known as the Hundred Years War.

1559: Philip II of Spain and Henry II of France signed a peace treaty ending the Hapsburg-Valois Wars between the two dynasties that had raged for decades.

1776: Congress authorized American privateers to attack British vessels.

1783: Birthday of Washington Irving, American writer

1823: Birthday of William Macy "Boss" Tweed, New York City political boss at Tammany Hall

1860: Debut of the Pony Express

1862: Slavery was abolished in Washington, D.C.

1865: Confederate capital Richmond, Virginia was captured by Union forces.

1882: Notorious outlaw Jesse James was shot to death by fellow gang member Bob Ford.

1898: Birthday of Henry R. Luce, magazine publisher, founder of Time, Fortune, and Life

1920: Marriage of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City

1924: Birthday of Doris Von Kappelhoff (Doris Day), American singer and actress

1924: Birthday of Marlon Brando, American actor

1930: Birthday of Helmut Kohl, chancellor of West Germany, instrumental in German reunification

1934: Birthday of Jane Goddall, British anthropologist famed for work with African chimpanzees

1936: Bruno Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, was executed in the electric chair.

1948: Pres. Harry S. Truman signed into law the Marshall Plan through which the US financed the economic recovery of postwar Europe.

1996: Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, was arrested by FBI agents in Montana.

1996: Secretary of Commerce under Pres. Bill Clinton was killed in a plane crash along with 32 others.

April 4:

527: Justin, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople, crowned his nephew as co-emperor because of his poor health.

1581: British explorer Francis Drake completed a circumnavigation of the globe.

1792: Birthday of Thadeus Stevens, U.S. congressional leader, prominent Radical Republican during Reconstruction

1802: Birthday of Dorothea Dix, American social reformer

1812: The territory of Orleans became the 18thstate, later renamed Louisiana.

1841: Pres. William Henry Harrison became the first president in U.S. history to die while in office. He died of pneumonia only 32 dies after his inauguration, the shortest presidency on record. He also holds the distinction of delivering the longest inaugural addressalmost 2 hours on a cold, wet day in March.

1884: Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese naval commander during WWII, planner of the attack on Pearl Harbor

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Pact was signed

1960: Ben Hurwon 11 Academy Awards.

1967: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. publicly spoke out against the Vietnam War.

1968: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while standing outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray.

1973: The World Trade Center, the world's tallest building at the time, opened in New York City.

1974: Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth's home run record.

1975: Founding of Microsoft

1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan, was executed by hanging a couple years after a military coup.

April 5:

1242: Russian forces stopped an invasion by Teutonic knights.

1588: Birthday of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher

1614: Pocahontas married John Rolfe, a Virginia colonist.

1792: Pres. George Washington vetoed a bill passed by Congress for the first time.

1827: Birthday of Joseph Lister, English physician who began using antiseptics during surgery

1839: Birthday of Robert Smalls, black congressman from South Carolina during Reconstruction

1843: Queen Victoria proclaimed Hong Kong as a British crown colony.

1856: Birthday of Booker T. Washington, former slave, educator, and founder of the Tuskegee Institute

1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin sent the first three chapters of his Origin of Speciesto his publisher.

1900: Birthday of Spencer Tracy, actor

1908: Birthday of Bette Davis, film actress

1916: Birthday of Gregory Peck, film actor

1919: Eamon de Valera became the president of Ireland.

1930: Mahatma Gandhi defied British law by making salt in India instead of buying it from the British monopoly.

1933: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of the New Deal. This program put unemployed single young men to work in the nation's forests and national parks.

1937: Birthday of Colin Powell, U.S. Army General, Secretary of State

1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for espionage.

1955: Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1976: Death of Howard Hughes

1984: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke the NBA all-time scoring record with his 31,420thpoint.

1986: A bomb exploded in a West Berlin disco filled with American soldiers, killing two and injuring dozens. When the U.S. learned that Libya was involved, Pres. Reagan ordered strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi. Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi escaped with his life and decided to cease terrorist activities.

1994: Kurt Cobain committed suicide.

2019: The Baylor Lady Bears defeated Oregon in the Semifinals in Tampa, Florida, punching their ticket to the finals in two days against reigning national champion Notre Dame.

historian said:

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April 5:

1242: Russian forces stopped an invasion by Teutonic knights.

1588: Birthday of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher

1614: Pocahontas married John Rolfe, a Virginia colonist.

1792: Pres. George Washington vetoed a bill passed by Congress for the first time.

1827: Birthday of Joseph Lister, English physician who began using antiseptics during surgery

1839: Birthday of Robert Smalls, black congressman from South Carolina during Reconstruction

1843: Queen Victoria proclaimed Hong Kong as a British crown colony.

1856: Birthday of Booker T. Washington, former slave, educator, and founder of the Tuskegee Institute

1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin sent the first three chapters of his Origin of Speciesto his publisher.

1900: Birthday of Spencer Tracy, actor

1908: Birthday of Bette Davis, film actress

1916: Birthday of Gregory Peck, film actor

1919: Eamon de Valera became the president of Ireland.

1930: Mahatma Gandhi defied British law by making salt in India instead of buying it from the British monopoly.

1933: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of the New Deal. This program put unemployed single young men to work in the nation's forests and national parks.

1937: Birthday of Colin Powell, U.S. Army General, Secretary of State

1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for espionage.

1955: Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1976: Death of Howard Hughes

1984: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke the NBA all-time scoring record with his 31,420thpoint.

1986: A bomb exploded in a West Berlin disco filled with American soldiers, killing two and injuring dozens. When the U.S. learned that Libya was involved, Pres. Reagan ordered strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi. Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi escaped with his life and decided to cease terrorist activities.

1994: Kurt Cobain committed suicide.

2019: The Baylor Lady Bears defeated Oregon in the Semifinals in Tampa, Florida, punching their ticket to the finals in two days against reigning national champion Notre Dame.

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1900-1916: that is a lot of talent!

Yes it is I wonder. if they did any movies together.