Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March
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Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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| << | Selected anniversaries for March | >> | ||||
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| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2020 day arrangement | ||||||
March 1: Nineteen-Day Fast begins (Baháʼí Faith, 2020); Independence Day in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992); National Pig Day in the United States; Saint David's Day in Wales; Yap Day in Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia
Hoover Dam by Ansel Adams
- 1811 – Muhammad Ali Pasha, governor of Ottoman Egypt, killed the Mamluk leaders of Cairo and seized power.
- 1896 – French physicist Henri Becquerel discovered the principle of radioactive decay when he exposed photographic plates to uranium salts.
- 1936 – Hoover Dam (pictured), straddling the Arizona–Nevada border on the Colorado River, was completed.
- 1950 – In a trial lasting less than 90 minutes, German–British physicist Klaus Fuchs was convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act by supplying information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union.
- 2014 – A group of knife-wielding terrorists attacked passengers at Kunming railway station in Kunming, China, leaving 31 victims dead and more than 140 others injured.
Samuel Werenfels (b. 1657) · Angelo Emo (d. 1792) · Kesha (b. 1987)
More anniversaries:
March 2: Clean Monday (Eastern Christianity, 2020)
Replica of one of Claude Chappe's semaphore towers
- 1484 – The College of Arms, one of the few remaining official heraldic authorities in Europe, was incorporated by royal charter in the City of London.
- 1791 – French inventor Claude Chappe and his brothers first demonstrated the semaphore telegraph, a system that conveys information by means of visual signals, using towers (replica pictured) with pivoting crossarms.
- 1901 – U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and once the world's largest producer of steel, was founded by financier J. P. Morgan.
- 1943 – World War II: Australian and U.S. air forces attacked and destroyed a large Japanese naval convoy in the Bismarck Sea, north of Papua New Guinea.
- 1995 – Researchers at Fermilab in Illinois announced the discovery of the top quark, the most massive of all observed elementary particles.
Charles I, Count of Flanders (d. 1127) · Louis-Gabriel Suchet (b. 1770) · Grete Hermann (b. 1901)
March 3: Liberation Day in Bulgaria (1878); Hinamatsuri in Japan
Jethro Tull in concert in 1973
- 1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted, introducing English common law to the Principality of Wales.
- 1820 – The U.S. Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, which balanced the admission of Missouri as a slave state with that of Maine as a free state.
- 1891 – Shoshone National Forest, in the U.S. state of Wyoming, was established as the country's first national forest.
- 1945 – A Polish Home Army unit massacred at least 150 Ukrainian civilians in Pawłokoma, Poland.
- 1972 – The British rock band Jethro Tull (pictured) released Thick as a Brick, a parody concept album allegedly adapted from an epic poem by an eight-year-old boy.
Matthias de l'Obel (d. 1616) · Thomas Otway (b. 1652) · May Cutler (d. 2011)
March 4: Feast day of Saint Casimir (Catholicism)
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Forth Bridge
- 1461 – Wars of the Roses: Henry VI, the Lancastrian king of England, was deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who succeeded him as Edward IV.
- 1890 – The Forth Bridge (pictured), a railway bridge connecting Edinburgh to Fife over the Firth of Forth, opened, eventually becoming an internationally recognised Scottish landmark.
- 1966 – During an interview, John Lennon of the Beatles argued that the band had become "more popular than Jesus".
- 1990 – College basketball player Hank Gathers died after collapsing during a West Coast Conference Tournament semifinal game in Los Angeles.
Hans von Aachen (d. 1615) · Paul Lacôme (b. 1838) · Gary Gygax (d. 2008)
March 5: Learn from Lei Feng Day in China; St Piran's Day in Cornwall, England
The Bloody Massacre, engraved by Paul Revere
- 1496 – King Henry VII of England issued letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore undiscovered lands.
- 1770 – American Revolution: British soldiers fired into a crowd (engraving shown) in Boston, killing five people.
- 1825 – Roberto Cofresí, one of the last Caribbean pirates, was apprehended after his flagship sloop Anne was captured by authorities.
- 1960 – Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took his iconic photograph Guerrillero Heroico of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
Hermann Balk (d. 1239) · Michael von Faulhaber (b. 1869) · Elaine Paige (b. 1948)
March 6: Independence Day in Ghana (1957)
Petru Groza
- 845 – The Abbasid Caliphate executed 42 Byzantine officials who had been captured in the Sack of Amorium of 838 for refusing to convert to Islam.
- 1853 – Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata premiered at La Fenice in Venice, but the performance was considered so bad that it caused him to revise portions of the opera.
- 1930 – Organized by the Communist International, hundreds of thousands of people in major cities around the world marched to protest mass unemployment associated with the Great Depression.
- 1943 – World War II: National Liberation Front forces defeated Italian occupiers in the Battle of Fardykambos, a major sign of the Greek Resistance's growth.
- 1945 – Petru Groza (pictured) of the Ploughmen's Front became the first prime minister of the Communist Party-dominated government of Romania.
Luigi Alamanni (b. 1495) · Ella P. Stewart (b. 1893) · Francisco Xavier do Amaral (d. 2012)
March 7: Feast day of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism)
Police attacking civil rights activists outside Selma, Alabama
- 1277 – Bishop Étienne Tempier promulgated a condemnation of 219 heretical propositions that were being discussed at the University of Paris.
- 1573 – A peace treaty brought the Ottoman–Venetian War to an end, ceding Cyprus from the Republic of Venice to the Ottoman Empire.
- 1900 – The German ocean liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ship to send a wireless telegraph message to an onshore receiver.
- 1945 – World War II: At the beginning of the Battle of Remagen, Allied forces unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge, which possibly hastened the war's conclusion.
- 1965 – Unarmed civil rights activists marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, were attacked by police (pictured) on "Bloody Sunday".
Ewald Christian von Kleist (b. 1715) · Harriet Jacobs (d. 1897) · Hideki Noda (b. 1969)
March 8: International Women's Day; Ali's Birthday / Father's Day in Iran (2020)
Maya ruins at Copán
- 1576 – A letter was written to King Philip II of Spain, containing the first European mention of the Maya ruins of Copán (pictured) in present-day Honduras.
- 1655 – The court of Northampton County, Virginia, issued a ruling that made John Casor the first person of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be declared a slave for life as a result of a civil suit.
- 1963 – The Ba'ath Party came to power in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council for the Revolutionary Command.
- 1978 – BBC Radio 4 began broadcasting Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other formats.
Adela of Normandy (d. 1137) · Simon Cameron (b. 1799) · Petra Kvitová (b. 1990)
March 9: Fast of Esther (Judaism, 2020); National Heroes and Benefactors Day in Belize (2020); Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2020)
Costume sketch for the original production of Nabucco
- 1009 – The first known record of the name of Lithuania appeared in an entry of the Annals of Quedlinburg, written in Saxony-Anhalt, present-day Germany.
- 1842 – Nabucco (costume pictured), an opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi that established his reputation, premiered at La Scala in Milan.
- 1945 – World War II: In a coup d'état, Imperial Japanese Army officers ousted the government of French Indochina.
- 2010 – The first legal U.S. same-sex marriages south of the Mason–Dixon line took place in the District of Columbia.
Catherine of Bologna (d. 1463) · Mary Harris Armor (b. 1863) · Takaaki Kajita (b. 1959)
False-color image of Uranus, its rings and some of its moons
- 241 BC – The Roman Republic defeated Carthage in the Battle of the Aegates off the western coast of Sicily, the final battle of the First Punic War.
- 1916 – The final letter in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence was written, agreeing that Britain would recognise Arab independence in return for the Sharif of Mecca launching a revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
- 1959 – An anti-Chinese uprising erupted in Lhasa, as thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Potala Palace to prevent the Dalai Lama from leaving or being removed by the Chinese army.
- 1967 – British progressive-rock band Pink Floyd released their first single, "Arnold Layne".
- 1977 – Astronomers using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered a faint ring system (pictured) around Uranus.
Tvrtko I of Bosnia (d. 1391) · Violet Brown (b. 1900) · Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy (d. 2010)
Fresco of the eruption of Mount Etna by Giacinto Platania
- 1669 – Mount Etna in Sicily began erupting (depicted), eventually producing the largest lava flow in the volcano's history, and damaging Catania and other towns.
- 1708 – Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, in the most recent veto by a British monarch of a bill that had been passed by Parliament.
- 1845 – Māori forces, led by chiefs Te Ruki Kawiti and Hōne Heke, attacked the British settlement of Kororāreka, New Zealand, beginning the Flagstaff War.
- 1993 – The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Janet Reno as the country's first female attorney general.
- 2010 – During the inauguration of Chilean president Sebastián Piñera, an earthquake registering 6.9 MW struck the O'Higgins Region near the city of Pichilemu, causing widespread damage.
Mary of Woodstock (b. 1278) · Anna Bochkoltz (b. 1815) · Anastasios Charalambis (d. 1949)
Mahatma Gandhi (left) and Sarojini Naidu (right)
- 1913 – At a ceremony at Kurrajong Hill, Lady Denman, the wife of Governor-General Lord Denman, announced that the future capital of Australia would be named Canberra.
- 1930 – Mahatma Gandhi (pictured with Sarojini Naidu) began the Salt March, a 24-day nonviolent walk to defy the British salt tax in colonial India.
- 1940 – The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed, ending the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.
- 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee submitted a memorandum at CERN with details of an information-management system, the first proposal for what would become the World Wide Web.
Stefan Dragutin (d. 1316) · Gemma Galgani (b. 1878) · Jack Kerouac (b. 1922)
Participants of the Kapp Putsch in Berlin
- 1567 – A Spanish mercenary army surprised and killed a band of rebels in the Battle of Oosterweel near Antwerp in the Habsburg Netherlands, beginning the Eighty Years' War.
- 1639 – Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was named after its first principal donor, clergyman John Harvard.
- 1920 – The Kapp Putsch (participants pictured), an attempted coup aiming to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919, briefly ousted the government of the Weimar Republic.
- 1954 – Việt Minh forces under General Võ Nguyên Giáp began a massive artillery bombardment on the French military, beginning the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the climactic battle of the First Indochina War.
- 1996 – A gunman killed sixteen children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, before committing suicide.
Daniel Lambert (b. 1770) · Mustafa Reşid Pasha (b. 1800) · Encarnacion Alzona (d. 2001)
March 14: New Year's Day (Sikhism); White Day in parts of East Asia; Pi Day
Lakeview Gusher
- 1674 – Third Anglo-Dutch War: The Royal Navy captured the Dutch East India Company ship Wapen van Rotterdam in Ronas Voe, Shetland.
- 1910 – Prospectors drilled into a pressurized deposit within the Midway-Sunset Oil Field in California, resulting in the largest accidental oil spill in history (pictured), which eventually released 9 million barrels (1.4 million m3) of crude oil over 18 months.
- 1931 – Alam Ara, the first Indian sound film, premiered at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay.
- 1972 – Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, known for his translation of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago after it had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union, died in a mysterious explosion.
- 1973 – Vietnam War: After having been captured by North Vietnamese forces five and a half years earlier, U.S. Navy pilot John McCain was released with 108 other prisoners of war.
Matilda of Ringelheim (d. 968) · Ferdinand Hodler (b. 1853) · S. Truett Cathy (b. 1921)
Nicholas II of Russia
- 856 – Byzantine emperor Michael III overthrew his mother Theodora's regency to assume power for himself.
- 1311 – In the Battle of Halmyros, the Catalan Company defeated the forces of Walter V, Count of Brienne, taking control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in present-day Greece.
- 1917 – Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II (pictured) was forced to abdicate in the February Revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
- 1956 – The musical My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, debuted at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway in New York City.
- 1990 – Iraqi authorities hanged Iranian freelance reporter Farzad Bazoft on charges of spying for Israel.
Albert of Schwarzburg (d. 1327) · Johan Vaaler (b. 1866) · Lauren Ebsary (b. 1983)
March 16: Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires
United States Military Academy
- 934 – Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period: Chinese general Meng Zhixiang proclaimed himself emperor and established Later Shu as a new state independent of Later Tang.
- 1244 – Albigensian Crusade: Following the successful Siege of Montségur, French royal forces burned about 210 unrepentant Cathars in a bonfire.
- 1802 – Congress passed the Military Peace Establishment Act, authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to operate the U.S. Military Academy (pictured) at West Point, New York.
- 1872 – In the first ever final of the FA Cup, the world's oldest association football competition, Wanderers defeated Royal Engineers 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.
- 1988 – Iran–Iraq War: Iraqi forces began attacking the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons, killing up to 5,000 people.
Jean de Brébeuf (d. 1649) · Ami Boué (b. 1794) · Iso Rae (d. 1940)
March 17: Saint Patrick's Day (Christianity)
Effigy of Edward the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral
- 1337 – Edward the Black Prince (effigy pictured) was created Duke of Cornwall, becoming the first duke in English history.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The 11‑month Siege of Boston ended with the evacuation of the city's British garrison.
- 1950 – Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the synthesis of californium, a radioactive transuranium element.
- 1988 – Eritrean War of Independence: Eritrean People's Liberation Front troops encircled Ethiopian forces in the Battle of Afabet, gaining a decisive victory three days later.
- 2000 – Hundreds of followers of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a Ugandan sect, died in a mass murder committed by its leaders.
Gertrude of Nivelles (d. 659) · Menno van Coehoorn (d. 1704) · Stormy Daniels (b. 1979)
March 18: Feast day of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (Christianity)
Bouvet capsizing after striking a mine during the Gallipoli campaign
- 1068 – An estimated 20,000 people died across the Near East when a violent earthquake struck the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba.
- 1834 – The Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation to Australia for swearing a secret oath as members of a friendly society in Dorset, England.
- 1915 – First World War: In one of the largest naval battles of the Gallipoli campaign, Ottoman forces sank three Allied battleships (French battleship Bouvet pictured) and severely damaged three others.
- 1970 – U.S. postal workers began an eight-day strike after Congress raised their wages by only 4 percent despite increasing its own pay by 41 percent.
- 1990 – Thieves stole thirteen works of art collectively valued at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (d. 1781) · John Plankinton (b. 1820) · Edith Mayo (b. 1940)
Clara Zetkin
- 1279 – Mongol conquest of Song China: Emperor Bing, the last emperor of the Song dynasty, died during the Battle of Yamen, bringing the dynasty to an end after three centuries.
- 1911 – Established by Clara Zetkin (pictured), Käte Duncker, and others, the first International Women's Day was observed.
- 1962 – Influential American musician Bob Dylan released his eponymous debut album, mainly comprising traditional folk songs.
- 1987 – American televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as the host of The PTL Club in the midst of a sex scandal.
- 2016 – Flydubai Flight 981 crashed during an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don Airport, Russia, resulting in the deaths of all 62 passengers and crew on board.
Elizabeth Seymour, Lady Cromwell (d. 1568) · Minna Canth (b. 1844) · Bruce Willis (b. 1955)
March 20: Baháʼí Naw-Rúz (Baháʼí Faith, 2020)
Bust of Maximinus Thrax
- 235 – Maximinus Thrax (bust pictured) succeeded to the throne of the Roman Empire, a so-called barracks emperor who gained power by virtue of his command of the army.
- 1852 – Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was first published, profoundly affecting attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the United States.
- 1942 – World War II: After being forced to flee the Philippines, U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur announced in Terowie, South Australia, "I shall return."
- 1987 – The antiretroviral drug zidovudine (AZT) became the first antiviral drug approved for use against HIV and AIDS.
- 1993 – The Troubles: The second of two bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA in Warrington, England, killed two children.
Maurice Csák (d. 1336) · Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (b. 1870) · Dorothy Campbell (d. 1945)
March 21: Galactic Tick Day (2020)
Alexander H. Stephens
- 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: At the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, Napoleon suddenly realized his army was vastly outnumbered and hurriedly ordered a retreat.
- 1861 – Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander H. Stephens (pictured) extemporaneously gave the "Cornerstone Speech", in which he laid out the Confederacy's causes for declaring secession.
- 1937 – A police squad, acting under orders from Governor of Puerto Rico Blanton Winship, opened fire on demonstrators protesting the arrest of Puerto Rican Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos, killing 21 people and injuring 235 others.
- 1983 – In the West Bank, a number of Palestinian girls complained of breathing difficulties due to strange odors, leading to accusations of poison gas.
- 2006 – A man using a hammer smashed the statue of Phra Phrom in the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, and was subsequently beaten to death by bystanders.
Alice Henry (b. 1857) · Salvador Lutteroth (b. 1897) · Wolfgang Wagner (d. 2010)
March 22: World Water Day; Mothering Sunday (Western Christianity, 2020)
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Amerigo Vespucci
- 1508 – Ferdinand II of Aragon appointed Amerigo Vespucci (pictured) to the post of Chief Navigator of Spain.
- 1638 – Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her participation in the Antinomian Controversy.
- 1913 – Phan Xích Long, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Vietnam, was arrested for organising a revolt against the colonial rule of French Indochina, which was nevertheless carried out by his supporters the following day.
- 1942 – Second World War: The Royal Navy confronted Italy's Regia Marina at the Second Battle of Sirte in the Mediterranean Sea near the Gulf of Sirte.
- 2014 – A massive landslide in Oso, Washington, killed 43 people after engulfing a rural neighborhood, the largest death toll for a standalone landslide in U.S. history.
Caroline Norton (b. 1808) · Juan Uribe (b. 1979) · Bebo Valdés (d. 2013)
Bhagat Singh
- 1775 – American Revolution: Patrick Henry made his "Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech to the House of Burgesses of Virginia, urging military action against the British Empire.
- 1848 – Scottish settlers on the John Wickliffe, captained by William Cargill, arrived at what is now Port Chalmers in the Otago Region of New Zealand.
- 1931 – Bhagat Singh (pictured), one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement, and two others were executed by British authorities.
- 1989 – Two researchers announced the discovery of cold fusion, a claim which was later discredited.
- 2007 – The Iranian military arrested 15 Royal Navy personnel, claiming that they had entered Iran's territorial waters.
Zhou Chi (d. 851) · Nathaniel Reed (b. 1862) · Akira Kurosawa (b. 1910)
March 24: World Tuberculosis Day
M. tuberculosis cells
- 1882 – German physician Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (pictured), a bacterium that causes tuberculosis.
- 1922 – Irish War of Independence: In Belfast, two men wearing police uniforms broke into a house and murdered a Catholic family in what was believed to be a reprisal for the deaths of two policemen the day before.
- 1976 – Military leaders in Argentina led by Jorge Rafael Videla deposed President Isabel Perón in a coup d'état, established a military junta known as the National Reorganization Process, and began state-sponsored violence against dissidents known as the Dirty War.
- 1989 – The tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million US gallons (260,000 bbl; 41,000 m3) of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska, causing one of the most devastating man-made maritime environmental disasters.
Elizabeth Ridgeway (d. 1684) · Lorna Hodgkinson (d. 1951) · Jessica Chastain (b. 1977)
March 25: Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day; Cheti Chand begins / Ugadi in parts of India (2020)
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King Faisal of Saudi Arabia
- 1410 – The Yongle Emperor of Ming dynasty China launched the first of his military campaigns against the Mongols, resulting in the fall of the Mongol khan Bunyashiri.
- 1655 – Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest natural satellite of the planet Saturn.
- 1807 – The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
- 1949 – The Soviet Union began mass deportations of more than 90,000 people from the Baltic states to Siberia.
- 1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (pictured) was shot and killed by his nephew Faisal bin Musaid.
José de Espronceda (b. 1808) · Selim Sırrı Tarcan (b. 1874) · Lorna Arnold (d. 2014)
March 26: Independence Day in Bangladesh (1971)
A page from William Caxton's
edition of Aesop's Fables
edition of Aesop's Fables
- 1344 – Reconquista: The Muslim city of Algeciras surrendered after a 21-month siege and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile.
- 1484 – William Caxton printed the first English translation of Aesop's Fables (page pictured).
- 1939 – Spanish Civil War: Nationalists began their final offensive of the war, at the end of which they controlled almost the entire country.
- 1979 – By signing the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, Egypt became the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel.
- 1999 – Jack Kevorkian, an American advocate for and practitioner of physician-assisted suicide, was charged with murder in the death of a terminally ill patient.
Julie-Victoire Daubié (b. 1824) · Fred Karno (b. 1866) · Constantin Fehrenbach (d. 1926)
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Emilio Aguinaldo
- 1794 – To protect American merchant ships from Barbary pirates, Congress passed the Naval Act to authorize the building of six frigates, which eventually became the U.S. Navy.
- 1899 – Philippine–American War: For the only time during the course of the war, Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo (pictured) personally led troops against the U.S. in the Battle of Marilao River.
- 1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland staged a warning strike, the biggest strike in the history of the Eastern Bloc, in which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs for four hours.
- 1999 – During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an Army of Yugoslavia unit shot down a U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth aircraft.
- 2009 – A failure of the dam holding Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Tangerang District, Indonesia, resulted in floods killing at least 100 people.
Jane Colden (b. 1724) · Jan van Beers (b. 1852) · Elisheva Bikhovski (d. 1949)
March 28: Serfs Emancipation Day in Tibet
James Callaghan
- 193 – Praetorian Guards assassinated Roman emperor Pertinax and sold the Imperial office in an auction to Didius Julianus.
- 1802 – German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered 2 Pallas, the second asteroid ever identified.
- 1930 – Turkey changed the name of its largest city Constantinople to Istanbul.
- 1979 – British Prime Minister James Callaghan (pictured) was defeated by one vote in a motion of no confidence by the House of Commons after his government struggled to cope with widespread strikes during the "Winter of Discontent".
- 1999 – Serbian police and special forces killed about 93 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Izbica, in the Drenica region of central Kosovo.
Isabella Markham (b. 1527) · Maxim Gorky (b. 1868) · Charles Schepens (d. 2006)
March 29: Boganda Day in the Central African Republic; Martyrs' Day in Madagascar (1947)
Memorial for the Battle of Towton
- 1461 – During the Wars of the Roses, Yorkist troops defeated Lancastrian forces at the Battle of Towton (memorial pictured) in Yorkshire, England, the largest and bloodiest battle fought in England.
- 1638 – Swedish settlers founded New Sweden near Delaware Bay, the first Swedish colony in America.
- 1941 – The North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement to define technical standards for AM band radio stations came into effect.
- 1969 – The New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, was formed.
- 1999 – The strongest earthquake to hit the foothills of the Himalayas in more than 90 years killed at least 100 people.
Thomas Coram (d. 1751) · Georges Seurat (d. 1891) · Ruth A. M. Schmidt (d. 2014)
March 30: Land Day (Palestinians)
Alex Trebek, longtime host of Jeopardy!
- 1842 – American physician Crawford Long became the first person to use diethyl ether as an anesthetic in a surgical procedure.
- 1861 – British chemist William Crookes announced his discovery of thallium, which he had done using flame spectroscopy.
- 1918 – Fighting began during the March Days revolt in Baku, Azerbaijan, resulting in about 12,000 deaths.
- 1964 – Jeopardy! (current host Alex Trebek pictured), the popular American game show created by Merv Griffin, made its debut on the NBC television network.
- 2009 – Twelve gunmen attacked the Manawan Police Academy in Lahore, Pakistan, and held it for several hours before security forces could retake it.
Kazimierz Łyszczyński (d. 1689) · Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (d. 1842) · DJ AM (b. 1973)
March 31: Cesar Chavez Day in various U.S. states
Woodcut picture of Matthew C. Perry
- 1854 – U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry (Japanese depiction pictured) and the Tokugawa shogunate signed the Convention of Kanagawa, forcing the opening of Japanese ports to American trade.
- 1889 – The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated in Paris, later becoming a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world.
- 1901 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the Black Sea, the most powerful ever recorded in the area.
- 1942 – Second World War: Because of a mutiny by Indian soldiers against their British officers, Japanese troops captured Christmas Island without any resistance.
- 1964 – Brazilian Armed Forces led an overthrow of Brazilian President João Goulart and established a military government that lasted for 21 years.
Anne Hyde (d. 1671) · Pieter Burman the Elder (d. 1741) · Liz Claiborne (b. 1929)
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