February 25th
 

1723 ~ Death of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1778 ~ Birthday of José de San Martín, Argentine general, liberator along with Simón Bolívar, of Spanish South America.

1836 ~ Samuel Colt received a patent for the Colt revolver.

1841 ~ Birthday of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter, Graphic artist & sculptor.

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

1913 ~ The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing a graduated income tax, was ratified

1972 ~ Terrorism: Germany gave $5 million to an Arab terrorist as ransom for the passengers and crew of a hijacked jumbo jet.

1983 ~ Death of Tennessee Williams, playwright.

1999 ~ Death of Glenn T. Seaborg, Nuclear scientist.

2004 ~ On Ash Wednesday, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was released in movie theaters across the United States, grossing approximately $370 million, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made.

February 26th

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

1802 ~ Birthday of Victor Hugo, Poet.

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

1903 ~ Death of Richard Gatling, Inventor.

1918 ~ Birthday of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

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

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

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

1994 ~ Death of Bill Hicks, Comedian.

2001 ~ The Taliban destroyed two giant buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
__________________
eudamonia

February 27th

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

1812 ~ Poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddites.

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

1873 ~ Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor.

1887 ~ Death of Alexander Borodin, composer.

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

1912 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Durrell, Writer.

1933 ~ Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire.

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

2002 ~ Indian Sectarian Violence: a train caught fire a few minutes after it left the Godhra railway station, killing an estimated 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, triggering riots that led to the death of 1000 people, mostly Muslims.
__________________
eudaimonia

February 28th
 

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

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

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

1900 ~ The Boer War: The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted.

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

1935 ~ Nylon was discovered by Wallace Carothers.

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

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

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth..._50/default.stm
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html
In Crick’s words: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/Crick3.pdf

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

1983 ~ The final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast in the U.S. It became the most watched television episode in history, with > 75% viewership.

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

one important date today 28 February 2005.............my oldest daughter turns 13 today............... :jump:

March 1st
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Frédéric Chopin, Composer & Pianist.

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

1896 ~ Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity.

1904 ~ Birthday of Glenn Miller, Bandleader.

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

1927 ~ Birthday of Harry Belafonte, Musician & Actor.

1928 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seymour Papert, South African Mathematician & Artificial Intelligence researcher.

1950 ~ Cold War: Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union by giving them top secret atomic bomb data.

1954 ~ Nuclear testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

1966 ~ Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashed on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.


Holidays and observances

Tasmania, Australia ~ Eight Hours Day.

March 2nd
 

1824 ~ Birthday of Bedrich Smetana, Composer.

1836 ~ Texas Revolution: Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico.

1904 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seuss, Author.

1919 ~ The first Communist International met in Moscow.

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

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

1939 ~ Death of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1956 ~ Morocco declared its independence from France.

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

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

March 3rd
 

1706 ~ Death of Johann Pachelbel, Composer.

1831 ~ Birthday of George Pullman, Inventor & Industrialist,

1845 ~ Florida was admitted as the 27th U.S. state.

1845 ~ Birthday of Georg Cantor, German mathematician.

1847 ~ Birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor.

1923 ~ TIME magazine published for the first time.

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

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

1983 ~ Death of Hergé, Belgian comics creator.

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

March 4th
 

1461 ~ Wars of the Roses: Lancastrian King Henry VI was deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then became King Edward IV.

1678 ~ Birthday of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

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

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

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

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

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

1975 ~ Charlie Chaplin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

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

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

March 5th
 

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

1658 ~ Birthday of Antoine Cadillac, founder of Detroit.

1770 ~ The Boston Massacre: A pre-Revolutionary incident that grew out of anger towards British troops, occurred. Five anti-British rioters were killed.

1871 ~ Birthday of Rosa Luxemburg, German Revolutionary.

1908 ~ Birthday of Rex Harrison, English actor.

1933 ~ In the last free elections in Germany until after World War II, the Nazi Party received 44% of the vote.

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

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

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

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

March 6th
 

1475 ~ Birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian painter.

1521 ~ Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam.

1806 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet.

1853 ~ The Giuseppe Verdi opera La Traviata premiered in Venice.

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

1888 ~ Death of Louisa May Alcott, Novelist.

1926 ~ Birthday of Alan Greenspan, American economist.

1957 ~ U.K.colonies Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent Republic of Ghana.

1982 ~ Death of Ayn Rand, Author.

1992 ~ The Michelangelo computer virus began to affect computers.

March 7th
 

1274 ~ Death of Thomas Aquinas, Italian Scholastic Philosopher.

1792 ~ Birthday of John Herschel, Astronomer.

1850 ~ U.S. Senator Daniel Webster gave his Seventh of March speech in which he endorsed the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1875 ~ Birthday of Maurice Ravel, Composer.

1867 ~ Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent # 174,464).

1936 ~ World War II: In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupied the Rhineland.

1965 ~ In Selma, Alabama, State troopers and local law enforcement forcefully broke up a group of 600 civil rights marchers. The event was televised and was dubbed Bloody Sunday.

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

1999 ~ Death of Stanley Kubrick, Film Director.

2001 ~ The SpongeBob SquarePants You Wish TV special airs on Nickelodeon.

March 8th
 

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

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

1869 ~ Birthday of Hector Berlioz, Composer.

1917 ~ The first stage of the Russian Revolution, February Revolution breaks out in Russia.

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

1942 ~ World War II: Japan captured Rangoon, Burma.

1948 ~ The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.

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

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

1999 ~ Oklahoma City bombing: The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh.

March 9th
 

1454 ~ Birthday of Amerigo Vespucci, Explorer & Cartographer.

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

1900 ~ Birthday of Howard Aiken, Computing Pioneer.

1916 ~ Pancho Villa lead 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.

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

1943 ~ Birthday of Bobby Fischer, chess player.

1959 ~ The Barbie doll debuts.

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

1996 ~ Death of George Burns, Actor.

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

March 10th
 

241 BC ~ First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands - The Romans sank the Carthaginian fleet; ending the First Punic War.

1804 ~ Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, a formal ceremony was conducted to transfer ownership of Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.

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

1844 ~ Birthday of Pablo de Sarasate, Violinist.

1893 ~ Côte d'Ivoire became a French colony.

1928 ~ Birthday of James Earl Ray, Assassin.

1951 ~ Henri Queuille became Prime Minister of France.

1957 ~ Birthday of Osama bin Laden, Terrorist.

1977 ~ Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus.

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

March 11th
 

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

1864 ~ The Great Sheffield Flood: The largest man-made disaster ever to befall England killed more than 250 people.

1903 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Welk, Champagne musicmaker.

1942 ~ World War II: General Douglas MacArthur abandoned Corregidor.

1952 ~ Birthday of Douglas Adams, science fiction/comedy novelist.

1955 ~ Death of Alexander Fleming, Biologist.

1968 ~ Death of John Wyndham, Author.

1978 ~ Nine Palestinian Al Fatah guerillas hijacked a bus in Israel, killing 34 civilians and wounding 70 before being killed by security forces. The Israelis retaliated by invading southern Lebanon three days later, under codename Operation Litani.

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

2004 ~ Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid killed 191 people.

March 12th
 

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

1894 ~ Coca-Cola sold in bottles for the first time

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

1913 ~ Canberra officially named.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jack Kerouac, Writer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Harry Harrison, Science Fiction author.

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

1985 ~ Death of Eugene Ormandy, Hungarian conductor.

1987 ~ Les Misérables opened on Broadway.

1999 ~ Death of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

March 13th
 

1733 ~ Birthday of Joseph Priestley, Scientist & Minister.

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

1781 ~ William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

1855 ~ Birthday of Percival Lowell, Astronomer.

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

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

1938 ~ Death of Clarence Darrow, Attorney.

1964 ~ Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of multiple witnesses who all failed to help her, in an incident which shocked the world and prompted investigation into the Bystander effect.

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

1996 ~ The Dunblane Massacre: in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 children and 1 adult teacher were shot dead by a who then committed suicide.

March 14th
 

1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss Sr.

1835 ~ Birthday of Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian Astronomer.

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

1883 ~ Death of Karl Marx, political theorist.

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

1923 ~ Pete Parker made the first-ever complete radio broadcast of a hockey game in the world, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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

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

1996 ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton committed $100 million to an anti-terrorism agreement with Israel to track down and root out terrorists.

March 14th
 

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

1827 ~ The University of Toronto (née King's College) was chartered.

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

1898 ~ Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist.

1906 ~ Rolls-Royce Ltd. is registered.

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

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

1956 ~ My Fair Lady opens in New York City.

1975 ~ Death of Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate.

1991 ~ Germany formally regained complete independence after the four post-World War II occupying powers (France, the U.K., the U.S. and the Soviet Union) relinquish all remaining rights.

March 16th
 

1521 ~ Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines.

1736 ~ Death of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer.

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

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

1898 ~ Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British Artist.

1900 ~ Sir Arthur Evans purchases the land around the ruins of Knossos on Crete.

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

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

1984 ~ William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later died in captivity.

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

March 17th
 

180 ~ Death of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.

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

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

1782 ~ Death of Daniel Bernoulli, Mathematician.

1834 ~ Birthday of Gottlieb Daimler, Engineer & Inventor.

1845 ~ The rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry.

1861 ~ The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed.

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

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

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


Holidays and observances

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

March 18th
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Composer.

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

1858 ~ Birthday of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the compression ignition engine.

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

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

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

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

1978 ~ Death of Leigh Brackett, Science Fiction author.

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

1992 ~ Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1.

March 19th
 

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

1813 ~ Birthday of David Livingstone, Missionary & Explorer.

1848 ~ Birthday of Wyatt Earp, Policeman & Gunfighter.

1861 ~ The First Taranaki War ended in New Zealand.

1906 ~ Birthday of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi official.

1915 ~ Pluto was photographed for the first time but was not recognized as a planet.

1932 ~ Sydney Harbour Bridge opened.

1950 ~ Death of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Author.

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

1987 ~ Death of Louis-Victor de Broglie, French noble, Physicist and 1929 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.


Holidays and observances

The swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

March 20th
 

1602 ~ The Dutch East India Company was established.

1727 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist.

1815 ~ Napoleon entered Paris after escaping from Elba with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.

1828 ~ Birthday of Henrik Ibsen, playwright and dramatist.

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

1916 ~ Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity.

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

1993 ~ A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in Warrington, northwest England, killing two children.

1995 ~ Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 12 and wounded 1300 persons.

2003 ~ 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.

March 21st
 

1556 ~ In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.

1685 ~ Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1839 ~ Birthday of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

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

1960 ~ Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police opened fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.

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

1980 ~ President Jimmy Carter announced a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1980 ~ On the season finale of the soap opera Dallas, the infamous character J.R. Ewing is shot by an unseen assailant, leading to the catchphrase "Who Shot JR?"

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

2002 ~ In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh along with three other suspects were charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

March 22nd
 

1599 ~ Birthday of Anthony van Dyck, Painter.

1638 ~ Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

1687 ~ Death of Jean Baptiste Lully, French Composer.

1765 ~ The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct tax levied from England on the American colonies.

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

1923 ~ Birthday of Marcel Marceau, Mime.

1958 ~ Faisal became King of Saudi Arabia

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

1993 ~ The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips.

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

March 23rd
 

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

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

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

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

1912 ~ Birthday of Wernher von Braun, Engineer.

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

1983 ~ S.D.I: President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.

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

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

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

March 24th
 

1765 ~ American Revolutionary War: The U.K. Parliament passes the Quartering Act that requires the 13 American colonies to house British troops.

1874 ~ Birthday of Harry Houdini, Magician.

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

1882 ~ Death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet.

1893 ~ Birthday of Walter Baade, Astronomer.

1905 ~ Death of Jules Verne, Author.

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

1989 ~ Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels of oil after running aground.

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

1999 ~ Death of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, German Women's leader during Germany's Third Reich.

March 25th
 

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

1655 ~ Saturn's largest moon, Titan, was discovered by Christian Huygens.

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

1867 ~ Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Conductor.

1881 ~ Birthday of Béla Bartók, Composer.

1918 ~ Death of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1935 ~ Birthday of Gloria Steinem, Feminist & Journalist.

1942 ~ Birthday of Aretha Franklin, Singer.

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

1975 ~ King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.

March 26th
 

1707 ~ The Act of Union became law, making England and Scotland one country.

1827 ~ Death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.

1874 ~ Birthday of Robert Frost, Poet.

1892 ~ Death of Walt Whitman, Poet.

1904 ~ Birthday of Joseph Campbell, Author & Mythologist.

1911 ~ Birthday of Tennessee Williams, Dramatist.

1917 ~ World War I: First Battle of Gaza - British troops were halted after 17,000 Turks block their advance.

1953 ~ Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine.

1979 ~ Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in Washington, DC

1999 ~ The Melissa worm infects e-mail systems around the world.

March 27th
 

1836 ~ Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre - Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.

1845 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, physicist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in physics.

1863 ~ Birthday of Sir Henry Royce, automobile pioneer.

1871 ~ First international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.

1886 ~ Birthday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect.

1958 ~ Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union.

1968 ~ Death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

1972 ~ Death of M. C. Escher, Dutch artist.

1977 ~ Tenerife disaster: Two jumbo jets collided on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583.

2002 ~ Passover Massacre: A suicide bomber killed 28 people in Netanya, Israel.

March 28th
 

845 ~ Paris was sacked by Vikings, who collect a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.

1854 ~ Crimean War: United Kingdom and France declared war on Russia.

1881 ~ Death of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1903 ~ Birthday of Rudolf Serkin, Austrian pianist.

1939 ~ Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Franco conquered Madrid, ending the war.

1942 ~ Birthday of Neil Kinnock, British politician.

1943 ~ Death of Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and pianist.

1947 ~ The last episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on radio.

1979 ~ A pump in the reactor cooling system fails at Three Mile Island, resulting in the evaporation of some contaminated water causing a nuclear meltdown.

1987 ~ Death of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

March 29th
 

1638 ~ Swedish colonists established first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.

1799 ~ New York passed a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state.

1867 ~ Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act which established the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1899 ~ Birthday of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1912 ~ Death of Robert Falcon Scott, Explorer.

1981 ~ First running of the London Marathon.

1982 ~ The Canada Act 1982 (U.K.) received the Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1984 ~ The Baltimore Colts of the NFL moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.

2004 ~ Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cooke, Television Host.

March 30th
 

1746 ~ Birthday of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter and engraver.

1820 ~ Birthday of Anna Sewell, British author.

1842 ~ Anesthesia (ether) was used for the first time in an operation.

1853 ~ Birthday of Vincent van Gogh, Painter.

1870 ~ Texas was readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.

1912 ~ France established a protectorate over Morocco.

1945 ~ World War II: Soviet Union forces invaded Austria and took Vienna.

1951 ~ Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC I computer to the U.S. Census Bureau.

1977 ~ Death of Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer.

1987 ~ Vincent Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers was bought for $39.85 million.

March 31st
 

1596 ~ Birthday of René Descartes, Mathematician.

1621 ~ Birthday of Andrew Marvell, English poet.

1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter.

1855 ~ Death of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

1889 ~ The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated.

1918 ~ Daylight Savings Time went into effect in the United States for the first time.

1959 ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum.

1970 ~ Eight terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.

1991 ~ The Warsaw Pact came to an end.

April 1st
 

1578 ~ Birthday of William Harvey, Physician (discovered blood circulation)

1815 ~ Birthday of Otto von Bismarck, Politician.

1873 ~ Birthday of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Composer, Pianist & Conductor.

1917 ~ Death of Scott Joplin, Musician & Composer.

1918 ~ The Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.

1924 ~ Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (he spent only nine months in jail).

1948 ~ Cold War: Berlin Airlift - Military forces, under direction of the Soviet-controlled government in East Germany, set-up a land blockade of West Berlin.

1969 ~ The Hawker Siddeley Harrier entered service with the RAF.

1976 ~ Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

2001 ~ An EP-3E U.S. Navy plane collided with a Chinese PLA fighter jet. The Navy crew made an emergency landing in Hainan, PRC and were detained.

April 2nd
 

1725 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Casanova, adventurer and writer.

1755 ~ Commodore William James captured the pirate fortress of Severndroog on the west coast of India.

1805 ~ Birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer.

1875 ~ Birthday of Walter Chrysler, automobile pioneer.

1917 ~ The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, took her seat as a representative from Montana.

1930 ~ Haile Selassie was proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia.

1966 ~ Death of C.S. Forester, Author.

1982 ~ Falklands War: Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands starting the war.

1986 ~ A grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter were sucked out of a TWA jet to their death when it was bombed by a group calling itself the Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells.

2004 ~ Islamist terrorists involved in the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks attempted a bombing of the Spanish high-speed train near Madrid.

April 3rd
 

1783 ~ Birthday of Washington Irving, Author.

1823 ~ Birthday of William Marcy Tweed, political boss.

1882 ~ Outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back and killed for a $5,000 reward.

1885 ~ Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.

1895 ~ The libel trial instigated by Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensbury began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1897 ~ Death of Johannes Brahms, Composer.

1901 ~ Death of Richard D'Oyly Carte, Impresario.

1922 ~ Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.

1934 ~ Birthday of Jane Goodall, Zoologist.

1996 ~ Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin.

April 4th
 

1866 ~ Alexander II of Russia narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the city of Kiev. A design for a city gate to commemorate his escape was the inspiration for Mussorgsky's The Great Gate of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition.

1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.

1885 ~ Birthday of Arthur Murray, dancer.

1949 ~ Twelve nations signed The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

1964 ~ The Beatles occupied all of the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.

1968 ~ Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.

1969 ~ Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.

1984 ~ President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons.

1984 ~ Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, begins writing in his secret diary.

1994 ~ Netscape Communications Corporation was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark.