51 Nero, later to become Roman Emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth)
- 306 Martyrdom of Saint Adrian of Nicomedia, a Roman guard, who is beheaded for converting to Christianity under Roman Emperor Galerius
- 852 Croatian Duke Trpimir I issued a statute, a document with the first known written mention of the Croats name in Croatian sources
- 938 Translation of the relics of martyr Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, the patron saint of the Czech state
King John's Oath
1215 King John of England makes an oath to the Pope as a crusader to gain the support of Innocent III
- 1238 Battle of the Sit River: Mongol forces of Batu Khan overcome Russians under Yuri II of Vladimir-Suzdal near Yaroslavl in Russia, ending Russian resistance
- 1351 Ramathibodi becomes King of Siam
- 1386 Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) crowned King of Poland
Edward IV
1461 Edward Plantagenet lays claim to the throne of England as Edward IV in London
Scottish French Alliance
1492 King James IV of Scotland concludes an alliance with France against England
Anne Boleyn's Court Debut
1522 Anne Boleyn makes her debut at the English court at the Green Castle pageant
- 1570 King Philip II bans foreign Dutch students as part of his attempted suppression of Protestantism
Jesuit Arrive at Mughal Court
1580 Three Jesuit missionaries arrive at Mughal royal court of Fatehpur Sikri, at request of Emperor Akbar to take part in theologian discussions at the Ibadat Khana (House of Worship)
- 1590 Maurice of Nassau's ship reaches Breda
- 1611 George Abbot appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
- 1621 Jacarta, Java, is renamed Batavia
Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter
1628 England's King Charles I grants a royal charter to Massachusetts Bay Colony
- 1653 Dutch commodore Johan van Galen leads a Dutch fleet to victory against an English naval force at the Battle of Leghorn (Livorno) during the Anglo Dutch wars, later dies from his wounds on March 23
English Declare War
1665 English King Charles II declares war on Netherlands
Flamsteed 1st Astronomer Royal
1675 John Flamsteed is appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England
Penn Receives Royal Charter
1681 English Quaker William Penn receives charter from Charles II, making him sole proprietor of colonial American territory Pennsylvania
- 1699 Jews are expelled from residing in the Free Imperial City of Lübeck, Holy Roman Empire
- 1741 British fleet under Rear Admiral of the Blue Sir Chaloner Ogle reaches Cartagena de Indias (Colombia)
- 1776 American War of Independence: The Americans capture Dorchester Heights dominating the port of Boston, Massachusetts
1789 First US Congress meets and declares the Constitution in effect (9 senators, 13 representatives)
- 1789 US House of Representatives holds its first full meeting at Federal Hall in NYC. Frederick Muhlenberg is elected as first speaker.
- 1790 France is divided into 83 départements, which cut across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on noble ownership of land
- 1791 First Jewish member of US Congress, Israel Jacobs (PA), takes office
- 1791 President Washington calls the US Senate into its first special session
- 1791 Vermont admitted as 14th state (1st addition to the 13 colonies)
- 1792 Oranges introduced to Hawaii
- 1793 French troops conquer Geertruidenberg, Netherlands
President Inaugurated
1793 George Washington's second inauguration as US President at the Senate Chamber of Congress Hall, Philadelphia. The shortest inaugural speech of any president with only 133 words.
- 1804 The Battle of Vinegar Hill, colony of New South Wales (Australia), when Irish convicts (some of whom had been involved in Ireland's Battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798) led the colony's only significant convict uprising.
James Madison
1809 James Madison becomes the first US President inaugurated in American-made clothes
James Monroe
1817 James Monroe is inaugurated as the 5th President of the United States
- 1822 Boston residents eligible to vote ratify the incorporation of the city and accept the charter to convert their town into a city [1]
- 1824 The "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck" founded in the United Kingdom, later to be renamed The Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1858.
- 1826 1st US railroad chartered, Granite Railway in Quincy, Massachusetts
- 1829 Unruly crowd mobs the White House during President Andrew Jackson's inaugural ball
- 1830 Vincenzo Bellini's opera "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" premieres at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy
- 1835 HMS Beagle moves into Bay of Concepcion (Chile)
- 1837 Village of Chicago becomes incorporated as a city
- 1837 Weekly Advocate changes its name to the Colored American
London Assurance
1841 Dion Boucicault's stage comedy "London Assurance" opens at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London
- 1848 Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia
- 1848 Sardinia-Piemonte gets new Constitution
Zachary Taylor
1849 US President Zachary Taylor delays his swearing-in and inauguration ceremony for one day due to religious reasons, leading to the false belief by some that Senator David Atchison (President pro tempore) technically assumed the office of President for one day
- 1853 Pope Pius IX recovers Catholic hierarchy in Netherlands
- 1853 William Rufus de Vane King (D) sworn in as 13th US vice-president
- 1861 Confederate States adopt "Stars & Bars" flag (US Civil War)
- 1861 US President Abraham Lincoln opens Government Printing Office
- 1863 Battle of Thompson's Station, Tennessee
- 1863 Territory of Idaho established
1865 Abraham Lincoln inaugurated for his 2nd term as US President. The man who would assassinate him weeks later, John Wilkes Booth, is photographed attending the inauguration.
- 1865 US Confederate congress approves final design of "official flag"
Thomas Scott
1870 On command of Louis Riel, Thomas Scott is executed by a firing squad. Riel rejects all appeals and requests to intervene in an attempt to demonstrate to the Canadian government that the Métis must be taken seriously
- 1875 44th US Congress (1875-77) convenes with a Democratic majority
- 1876 US Congress decides to impeach Minister of War Belknap
- 1877 Tchaikovski's incomplete ballet "Zwanenmeer" premieres in Moscow
- 1880 NY Daily Graphic publishes 1st half-tone engraving, by S. H. Horgan
- 1881 47th US Congress (1881-83) convenes
- 1881 California becomes 1st state to pass plant quarantine legislation
James A. Garfield
1881 James A. Garfield inaugurated as the 20th President of the United States of America
- 1881 Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson begin their first case together in "A Study in Scarlet"
Boer War Ceasefire
1881 South African politician Paul Kruger accepts ceasefire during First Boer War
- 1882 Britain's first electric trams run in East London
Forth Bridge
1890 Longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Bridge (railway) at 1,710 ft in length is opened in Scotland by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII
- 1893 Francis Dhanis' Belgian Congo Free State army attacks the Lualaba, occupies Nyangwe
- 1893 Grover Cleveland (D) inaugrated as 24th US President (2nd term)
- 1894 Great fire in Shanghai; over 1,000 buildings destroyed
Resurrection
1895 Gustav Mahler conducts the premiere of his incomplete 2nd Symphony ("Resurrection") in Berlin, Germany, with the Berlin Philharmonic; the complete version debuts in December
- 1899 Cyclone Mahina sweeps in north of Cooktown, Queensland, with a 12 m wave that reaches up to 5 km inland - over 300 dead.
- 1901 Term of George H. White, last of post-Reconstruction US congressmen, ends
- 1901 William McKinley inaugurated for his 2nd term as US president; Theodore Roosevelt serves as Vice President; his inaugural address is the first to be published in advance
- 1902 American Automobile Association (AAA) is founded in Chicago
- 1903 Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal HC beats Winnipeg Victorias, 4-1 for a 2-1 challenge series victory
- 1908 Fire at Lakeview Elementary School in Collinwood, Ohio kills 172 students and 2 teachers: boiler room blaze trapped many victims in the building, prompting changes in school design and procedures nationwide [1]
Elihu Root Senator
1909 Elihu Root begins his tenure after being elected United States Senator for New York
- 1909 US prohibits interstate transportation of game birds
- 1910 Avalanche at Bear Creek in Rogers Pass, British Columbia, kills 58 railway line workers - Canada's worst avalanche disaster [1]
- 1911 Victor Berger (Wisc) becomes 1st socialist congressman in US
- 1913 1st US law regulating the shooting of migratory birds passed
- 1913 Gabriel Fauré's opera "Pénélope," based on Homer's "The Odyssey", premieres at the Salle Garnier in Monte Carlo, Monaco
- 1913 NY Yankees are 1st to train outside US (Bermuda)
- 1913 US Department of Commerce & Labor split into separate departments
- 1918 Terek Autonomous Republic established in RSFSR (until 1921)
1918 US Army mess cook Private Albert Gitchell of Fort Riley, Kansas becomes the first documented military case of Spanish flu; start of worldwide pandemic killing 50-100 million [some sources cite date as March 11]
- 1920 Last day of Julian civil calendar in Greece
- 1921 Hot Springs National Park created in Arkansas
Nosferatu
1922 First vampire film "Nosferatu," an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, premieres at the Berlin Zoological Garden in Germany
Lenin on Bureaucracy
1923 Vladimir Lenin's last article in Pravda (about Soviet bureaucracy)
- 1924 The song "Happy Birthday to You" is published by Clayton F. Summy Co
- 1925 Swain's Island, a remote coral atoll, is annexed by the United States and incorporated into American Samoa
- 1925 US President Coolidge's inauguration broadcast live on 21 radio stations
- 1926 De Geer government in Netherlands takes office
Ruth Highest-Paid
1927 Babe Ruth becomes the highest-paid player in MLB history when he signs 3-year, $70,000 per season contract with the New York Yankees
- 1928 "Bunion Run" race from LA to NYC begins; It is won by Andy Payne
- 1929 National Revolutionary Party founded in Mexico by Plutarco Elías Calles (will go on to hold power until 2000)
Curtis 1st Native American VP
1929 Republican Charles Curtis becomes the 1st Native American to be Vice President of the United States
- 1930 Coolidge Dam in Arizona dedicated
- 1930 Emma Fahning bowls 1st sanctioned 300 game by a woman
- 1930 Terrible floods ransack Languedoc and the surrounds in south-west France, resulting in twelve departments being submerged by water and causing the death of over 700 people.
- 1931 West Indies beat Australia for the 1st time, by 30 runs at SCG
- 1933 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dissolves Austrian parliament
- 1933 Frances Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor, 1st female member of the US Cabinet
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd US President, pledges to pull the US out of the Depression, stating in his inaugural address "that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
- 1933 Henderson, DeSylva & Brown's "Strike Me Pink" premieres in NYC
- 1933 Noordwijk soccer team forms
- 1934 Easter Cross on Mt. Davidson (San Francisco) dedicated
1936 First flight of the airship Hindenburg at Friedrichshafen, Germany
- 1941 18 Geuzen resistance fighters sentenced to death in The Hague
- 1941 Chicago Black Hawks goaltender Sam LoPresti faces NHL record 83 shots in a 3-2 loss to the Bruins in Boston
Prince Paul Rejects Hitler Deal
1941 Prince Paul, prince regent of Yugoslavia meets with Adolf Hitler at the Berghof, Bavaria, where he rejects deal to allow Nazi's access to Greece
- 1941 The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands, during World War II.
- 1943 Transport #50 departs with French Jews to Maidanek/Sobibor
- 1944 1st US bombing of Berlin
- 1944 Anti-Germany strikes in North Italy
- 1945 Finland declares war on Nazi Germany
- 1947 WWJ (now WDIV) TV channel 4 in Detroit, MI (NBC) begins broadcasting
Vishinsky Foreign Minister
1949 Andrei Vishinsky succeeds Molotov as Soviet Foreign minister
- 1949 Piet Van de Pol of the Netherlands crowned world champion in billiards
- 1949 Security Council of UN recommends membership for Israel
- 1954 James E. Wilkins appointed 1st black US sub-cabinet member
- 1954 Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, announces the first successful kidney transplant
- 1955 1st radio facsimile transmission sent across the continent
- 1957 Gold Coast officially changes its name to Ghana ahead of its independence
- 1957 The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90.
- 1959 NASA's scientific spacecraft Pioneer 4 misses the Moon, enters a heliocentric orbit, and becomes the second (and the first US) Earth-launched 'artificial planet' [1]
- 1960 French freighter "La Coubre" explodes in Havana Cuba, killing 100
- 1961 Paul-Henri Spaak resigns as Secretary-General of NATO
- 1962 AEC announces 1st atomic power plant in Antarctica in operation
- 1964 Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa convicted of jury tampering
- 1966 Canadian Pacific airliner explodes on landing at Tokyo, 64 die
More Popular Than Jesus
1966 John Lennon says "We (the Beatles) are more popular than Jesus"
- 1966 North Sea Gas 1st pumped ashore by BP
- 1967 Ice Dance Championship at Vienna won by Towler & Ford (GRB)
- 1967 Ice Pairs Championship at Vienna won by Belousova & Protopopov (USSR)
Peggy Fleming World Champion
1967 Worlds Ladies' Figure Skating Champion in Vienna won by Peggy Fleming (US)
Sports History
1968 Italian boxer Nino Benvenuti regains the world middleweight title with a 15-round points decision over American champion Emile Griffith at Madison Square Garden, NY, in the last of a famous trilogy of fights
Boxing Title Fight
1968 Joe Frazier takes his record to 20-0 and captures vacant world heavyweight boxing title; stops Buster Mathis in 11th round TKO at Madison Square Garden, NYC
- 1968 Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5 launched
- 1969 London East End gang bosses twins Ronnie Kray and Reggie Kray are found guilty of murder; both will die in custody
- 1970 French submarine "Eurydice" explodes off Cape Camarat in the Mediterranean, all 57 crew lost
- 1970 Jacksonville is 1st college basketball team to avg 100+ pts per game
- 1970 NY Rangers set then NHL record of 126 games without being shut-out
- 1971 "City Command" kidnaps 4 US military men at Ankara, Turkey
- 1972 Abercorn Restaurant bombing: a bomb explodes in a crowded restaurant in Belfast, killing two civilians and wounding 130
- 1972 Erhard Keller (Germany) skates world record 1000m (1:18.5)
- 1972 Last train run between Penrith to Keswick, UK
- 1972 Libya & USSR signs cooperation treaty
- 1973 15th Grammy Awards: 1st Time Ever I Saw Your Face, America
- 1974 David Hares' "Knuckle" premieres in London
- 1974 Educational series "The Letter People" debuts on KETC-TV (PBS) in St. Louis, Missouri
- 1976 John Pezzin bowls 33 consecutive strikes at Toledo, Ohio
- 1976 MLB's San Francisco Giants are bought for $8 million by Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth
- 1977 1st CRAY 1 supercomputer shipped, to Los Alamos Laboratories, New Mexico
- 1977 Earthquake in Romania kills 1,541
Music Premiere
1977 Roger Sessions' 6th Symphony premieres (in fully completed form) in New York City with José Serebrier conducting the Juilliard Orchestra
- 1977 West Indian cricket fast bowler Colin Croft takes 8-29 against Pakistan in 2nd Test win at Port-of-Spain; best Test figures by a pace bowler from the West Indies
- 1978 Chicago Daily News, founded in 1875, publishes last issue
The Ordeal of Patty Hearst
1979 "The Ordeal of Patty Hearst", television movie directed by Paul Wendkos, premieres on CBS
- 1979 200th episode of "All in the Family"
Catholic Encyclical
1979 Pope John Paul II publishes his first encyclical "Redemptor Hominis"
- 1979 US Voyager I photo reveals Jupiter's rings
Sports History
1980 40th hat trick in NHL New York Islander franchise history, scored by Mike Bossy
Election of Interest
1980 Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) comes to power, winning the parliamentary election in Zimbabwe, making Mugabe Zimbabwe's first black prime minister
- 1982 Bertha Wilson is appointed as first woman to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada
- 1982 NASA launches Intelsat V satellite, no. 504
- 1982 Second double hat trick in Islanders history: Bossy and D. Potvin
- 1983 U.S. Public Health Service's publishes its guidelines for blood donors and AIDS
Baseball Hall of Fame
1984 Pee Wee Reese & Rick Ferrell elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame
- 1985 STS 51-E vehicle rolls back to Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida); mission cancelled
- 1985 Virtual ban on leaded gas ordered by US Environment Protection Agency
- 1985 WWII veterans return to the "Bridge over the River Kwai"
- 1989 Eastern Airlines machinists strike
- 1989 Javier Sotomayor high jumps indoor world record (2.43m)
- 1990 US 65th manned space mission STS 36 (Atlantis 6) returns from space
- 1991 Bank of Credit & Commerce Intl divests itself of 1st American Bank
- 1991 Iraq releases six American, three British, and one Italian POW
Music Concert
1992 Singer-songwriter Paul Simon tapes an acoustic concert performance for "MTV Unplugged" at Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens, NYC
- 1994 Four Arab terrorists are found guilty of bombing the World Trade Center
- 1994 Space shuttle STS-62 (Columbia 16), launches into orbit
- 1995 Blind teenage boy receives a 'Bionic Eye' at a Washington Hospital
- 1995 First NYC Mayor's Trophy high school track meet in 19 years
Boxing Title Fight
1995 George Foreman loses WBA boxing title, refusing to fight Tony Tucker
- 1995 Michael Johnson runs world record 400m indoor (44.63 sec)
- 1995 Replacement NY Yankees beat NY Mets 2-1
- 1997 Brazil Senate allows women to wear slacks
- 1997 Comet Hale-Bopp directly above the Sun (1.04 AU)
- 1997 Russia launches spacecraft Zeya Start-1
- 1998 US Supreme Court in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are of the same sex
- 2001 Hintze Ribeiro disaster, a bridge collapses in northern Portugal, killing up to 70 people
- 2001 IRA detonates a bomb in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, injuring 11 people
- 2001 Tests in recent days confirm the world's largest oil find in three decades in the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea
- 2002 Canada bans human embryo cloning but permits government-funded scientists to use embryos leftover from fertility treatments or abortions
- 2002 Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers are killed attempting to infiltrate the Shahi Kot Valley in Afghanistan on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission
- 2005 Car carrying released Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena is fired upon by US soldiers in Iraq, killing an Italian Secret Service agent and injuring two passengers
- 2005 United Nations warns that about 90 million Africans could be infected by HIV in the future without further action against the spread of the disease.
- 2006 Final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network; no response is received
- 2007 Estonian parliamentary election: approximately 30,000 voters take advantage of electronic voting in Estonia, world's 1st nationwide vote where part of the vote casting allowed by remote electronic voting
Event of Interest
2009 International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, becoming the first sitting head of state to be indicted
- 2009 Malaysia has a 50% chance of slipping into the recession as growth is expected to reach just 0.5% for the year, announces the executive director Datuk Mohamed Ariff Abdul Kareem of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research
- 2009 U.S. Steel announce the closure of the Stelco Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ontario due to the increasingly worsening effects of the global economic slowdown
- 2012 Munitions dump explosions kill at least 250 people in the Republic of Congo
- 2012 Over 10,000 illegal Peruvian gold miners clash with police to gain control of Puerto Maldonado
Election of Interest
2012 Vladimir Putin wins Russian presidential election amid allegations of voter fraud
- 2013 11 children are killed after a bus collides a truck in the Jalandhar district, India
- 2013 40 Syrian soldiers are killed in an ambush in Western Iraq
Event of Interest
2013 The Papal Conclave begins to select the successor of Pope Benedict XVI
Event of Interest
2014 Chinese premier Li Keqiang declares war on pollution at the National People’s Congress
- 2016 Ben Carson announces he is dropping out of the Republican presidential nomination race
- 2018 Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal are poisoned by nerve agent in Salisbury, England
- 2018 Italian general election results in no clear winner; populist Five Star Movement led by Luigi Di Maio receives most votes with 32%
- 2018 World's worst listeria outbreak suspected of killing 180 tracked to processed meat factory in Polokwane, South Africa
Event of Interest
2019 Canadian minister Jane Philpott resigns in protest at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's and the government's handling of a scandal involving bribes from engineering firm SNC-Lavalin
- 2019 Return of a lock of hair of Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II to Ethiopia announced by the National Army Museum in London
- 2020 "Once in a century" winter in Moscow the hottest in 140 years, with 7.5° C (13.5° F) above average temperatures and virtually no snow [1]
2020 Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announces all sports in Italy will be played behind closed doors for at least a month in an effort to contain COVID-19
Election of Interest
2020 Michael Bloomberg drops out of the US Democratic presidential race after a disappointing showing during Super Tuesday primary elections
- 2020 New study confirms human-caused climate change did make the 2020 Australian bushfire season worse, published by World Weather Attribution
- 2022 Four-ton rocket debris crashes into the far side of the moon, unconfirmed booster from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission in first unintentional collision with the moon [1]
- 2022 Suspected suicide bomb attack on a shia mosque in Pakistani city of Peshawar kills at least 56 and injures 190 [1]
- 2023 Andrew Tate's legal team states he has a dark spot on his lung, sparking rumors about lung cancer
- 2023 Historic High Seas Treaty agreed by nations at the UN, aiming to place 30% of the seas into protected areas by 2030, 1st international ocean protection agreement for 40 years [1]
- 2023 Leaked US documents from the war in Ukraine from US Defence Department begin appearing on a Discord server associated with online game Minecraft [1]
- 2024 France is the first country in the world to enshrine access to abortion in its constitution, voting in an amendment [1]
- 2024 Haiti explodes in new wave of violence as armed gangs attempt to seize the main international airport, amid 72 hour state of emergency after gangs freed thousands of prisoners from jails [1]
- 2024 Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira pleads guilty for leaking US security secrets on social media site Discord in a deal that includes at least 11 years in prison [1]
States Can't Bar Trump
2024 US Supreme Court rules states can't bar federal candidates, including Donald Trump, from a ballot under 14th Amendment clause prohibiting those who “engaged in insurrection” [1]
- 2025 Chinese architect Liu Jiakun is announced as the 2025 Pritzker Prize recipient [1]
- 2025 President Donald Trump, speaks to US Congress in the longest-ever speech by a president at 99 minutes, including a vow the US will acquire Greenland "we're going to get it - one way or the other" [1]
- 2025 US tariffs of 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada come into effect, along with increasing tariffs on Chinese goods to 20%; Canada and China immediately retaliate [1]
- 2025 World's biggest iceberg A23a, weighing nearly a trillion metric tonnes (1.1 trillion tons), grounds off the coast of the island of South Georgia in the south Atlantic [1]
