This Day In History （请勿跟贴，谢谢！）

brianleeeee

March 28


1930:
Constantinople renamed Istanbul.

Built as Byzantium about 657 BC, then renamed Constantinople in the 4th century AD after Constantine the Great made the city his capital, the Turkish city of Istanbul officially received its present name on this day in 1930.

1979:
At 4:00 AM an automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage.

1969:
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, died in Washington, D.C.

1939:
Francisco Franco, leader of the Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, captured the capital city of Madrid en route to his overthrow of the democratic Spanish republic.

1920:
American motion-picture actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were wed.

1890:
American bandleader Paul Whiteman, called the “King of Jazz” for popularizing a musical style that helped to introduce jazz to mainstream audiences during the 1920s and '30s, was born.

brianleeeee

March 27



47 :
Cleopatra reinstated as queen of Egypt.

The legendary Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, aided by her Roman lover Julius Caesar, was reinstated as coruler of Egypt (with her brother Ptolemy XIV) this day in 47 BC following a civil war with her brother Ptolemy XIII.

1998:
The drug Viagra from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in treating erectile dysfunction.
1977: Two airplanes, a Pan Am 747 and a KLM 747, collided on a runway in the Canary Islands, killing 582.

1958:
Nikita Khrushchev replaced Nikolay Bulganin as premier of the Soviet Union.

1886:
German American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose rectilinear forms crafted in elegant simplicity epitomized the International style of architecture, was born.

1814:
At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (Tohopeka, Alabama) in the Creek War, Andrew Jackson and his 3,000 troops defeated the Creek Indians, slaughtering more than 800 warriors and imprisoning 500 women and children.

1625:
Upon the death of James I, Charles I ascended the throne of Great Britain and Ireland.

1351:
As part of the struggle between Charles of Blois (supported by the king of France) and John of Montfort (backed by the king of England) over succession to the duchy of Brittany, their knights waged the Battle of the Thirty near Plo雛mel.

brianleeeee

March 26


1979:
Signing of Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

The historic peace accord between Israel and Egypt, agreed to by Menachem Begin and Anwar el-Sādāt and negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland, in September 1978, was signed this day in 1979.

1992:
Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sentenced to six years in prison following a rape conviction in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1971:
Members of the Awami League set up a government-in-exile in Calcutta (Kolkata) and declared Bangladesh an independent state.

1930:
Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, was born in El Paso, Texas.

1927:
The Mille Miglia, the famed automobile race across Italy, was inaugurated.
1885: The first clash of the Riel Rebellion in Canada took place in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.

1827:
Ludwig van Beethoven died of cirrhosis of the liver in Vienna.

brianleeeee

March 25


1306:
Robert the Bruce crowned king of Scotland.

Robert the Bruce, crowned Scottish king at Scone this day in 1306, freed Scotland from English rule, winning the decisive Battle of Bannockburn (1314) and confirming Scottish independence in the Treaty of Northampton (1328).

1975:
King Fayṣal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by his nephew.

1957:
The Treaties of Rome were signed, establishing the European Community and the European Atomic Energy Community.

1918:
French composer Claude Debussy died in Paris.

1911:
A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City killed 146 people, prompting the creation of health and safety legislation.

1881:
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was born in Nagyszentmiklós.

1807:
The British Parliament abolished the slave trade in the British West Indies.

1305:
The Arena Chapel, containing frescoes by Giotto, was consecrated in Padua, Italy.

brianleeeee

March 24


1989:
Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill.

On this day in 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, spilling some 11 million gallons (41 million litres) of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska and creating the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

2002:
Film stars Denzel Washington and Halle Berry became the second and third African Americans to win Academy Awards for performances in leading roles.

1945:
With the debut of the Billboard magazine pop album chart, American pianist and singer Nat King Cole's King Cole Trio became the first record album to appear at No. 1.

1905:
Pioneering French science-fiction author Jules Verne died in Amiens, France.

1882:
Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had isolated and grown the tubercle bacillus, which he believed to be the cause of all forms of tuberculosis.

brianleeeee

March 23


1806:
Lewis and Clark's return trip begun.

Having completed the first U.S. overland expedition to the Pacific coast, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark this day in 1806 began their return to St. Louis, Missouri, where their journey had begun in May 1804.

2001:
Although designed for only 5 years of service, the Soviet/Russian space station Mir ended 15 years in orbit when it reentered Earth's atmosphere, falling into the South Pacific Ocean.

1983:
In a nationwide television address, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, a proposed strategic defensive system against potential nuclear attacks.

1976:
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights entered into force, incorporating almost all the international human rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

1933:
The German Reichstag, dominated by the Nazi Party and German National People's Party, voted to pass the Enabling Act, thereby assuring Nazi primacy, in a process that began with the Reichstag fire about a month prior.

1849:
At the Battle of Novara, during the first Italian War of Independence, outnumbered Austrian troops under Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky destroyed the poorly trained Italian troops of Charles Albert, king of Sardinia-Piedmont.

1775:
Patrick Henry, a major figure of the American Revolution, delivered the well-known speech featuring the phrase “give me liberty or give me death” at the second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church, Richmond.
Find more historical events and

brianleeeee

March 22


1622:
Murder at Jamestown.

Opechancanough, brother of Chief Powhatan and his successor as the leader of the Powhatan Indian empire, led an attack on the Jamestown Colony this day in 1622, killing at least 347 colonists and initiating the Powhatan War.

1945:
The Arab League, a regional organization of Arab states in the Middle East, was organized in Cairo by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan (now Jordan), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

1934:
The Augusta National Golf Club hosted the first Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

1894:
The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association won ice hockey's first Stanley Cup.

1832:
German author and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar.

1820:
U.S. Navy Commissioner Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel.

1765:
The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, inflaming relations with the American colonies.

1599:
Anthony Van Dyck, after Peter Paul Rubens the most prominent Flemish painter of the 17th century, was born in Antwerp.

brianleeeee

March 21


1963:
Closing of Alcatraz prison.

The U.S. federal prison on San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island, which had held some of the most dangerous civilian prisoners—including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz”—was closed this day in 1963.

1965:
American civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr., began a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1960:
About 70 black African demonstrators were killed by police during a protest in Sharpeville, Gauteng province, against South Africa's pass laws.

1918:
The Second Battle of the Somme began during World War I.

1806:
Mexican national hero Benito Juárez was born in San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca.

1768:
French mathematician Joseph Fourier was born in Auxerre.

1556:
Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake for violating heresy laws revised under the Roman Catholic queen Mary I, known as Bloody Mary.

brianleeeee

March 20


1995:
AUM subway attack.

Top leaders of AUM Shinrikyo (Japanese: “AUM Supreme Truth”), a Japanese Buddhist sect founded in 1987 by Asahara Shoko, released nerve gas into a Tokyo subway this day in 1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands.

2004:
The U.S. Army announced that charges were being brought against six American soldiers in connection with the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war being held in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the Iraq War.

1987:
AZT (azidothymidine) became the first drug to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of AIDS.

1854:
A meeting of Whigs, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Free-Soilers in Ripon, Wisconsin, proposed the formation of what became the Republican Party in the United States.

1852:
American author Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form.

1828:
Playwright Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien, Norway.

1815:
The Hundred Days—during which Napoleon, having ended his exile by escaping the island of Elba, would try to recapture his empire in France—began with Napoleon's arrival in Paris.

1770:
German lyric poet Friedrich H鰈derlin was born in Lauffen am Neckar, Württemberg.

43:
Roman poet Ovid was born in what is now Sulmona, Italy.

brianleeeee

March 19


1982:
Conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom.

On this day in 1982, Argentine forces mobilized after a dispute between Argentine workers and British scientists on British-controlled South Georgia island, leading to Argentina's invasion of the Falklands two weeks later.

2003:
U.S. President George W. Bush ordered air strikes against Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, thus launching the Second Persian Gulf War to oust Iraqi dictator Ṣaddām Ḥussein.

1996:
One of the worst fires in the history of the Philippines swept through a Manila discotheque, killing 159 of the 400 people in the nightclub, which was intended to hold no more than 35.

1920:
Józef Piłsudski was named marshal of Poland.

1918:
The U.S. Congress approved daylight saving time, a system for uniformly advancing clocks so as to extend daylight hours during conventional waking time (but its unpopularity forced its repeal in 1919).

1860:
William Jennings Bryan, a Democratic and Populist leader and a magnetic orator who ran unsuccessfully three times for the U.S. presidency (1896, 1900, 1908), was born.

1560:
In the Conspiracy of Amboise, French Huguenot aristocrats failed to overthrow the Roman Catholic house of Guise.

1452:
Frederick III became the last Holy Roman emperor to be crowned by a pope, Nicholas V.

brianleeeee

March 18



1974:
Seven member countries of OPEC lifted a five-month oil embargo against the United States.

1965:
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksey Arkhipovich Leonov became the first man to walk in space after passing through an air lock on the spacecraft Voskhod 2.

1964:
Speed skater Bonnie Blair, one of the most successful American women athletes in Olympic competition, was born in Cornwall, New York.

1906:
The first monoplane, constructed by the Romanian inventor Trajan Vuia, made a flight of 12 metres (40 feet).

1902:
Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso, one of the first musicians to document his voice on the gramophone, made his first phonograph recording.

1871:
The Commune of Paris, an insurrection of Parisians against the French government, began, lasting until May 28.

1869:
Neville Chamberlain, who was British prime minister from May 28, 1937, to May 10, 1940, and whose name is identified with the policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler's Germany, was born.

1766:
The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act of 1765 after violent protests from American colonists.

brianleeeee

March 17


1992:
Vote to end apartheid.

On this day in 1992, nearly 69 percent of white South African voters backed F.W. de Klerk's reforms—which included the repeal of racially discriminatory laws—and effectively endorsed the dismantling of apartheid.

Today:
St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, died this day in 461, according to legend, and now his feast day is celebrated widely in Ireland and the United States.
1938: Poland issued an ultimatum to Lithuania in an attempt to settle the territorial dispute over the city of Vilnius.

1917:
Nat King Cole, an American musician who first came to prominence as a jazz pianist but who reached enormous popularity with his warm, relaxed, somewhat breathy-voiced ballad singing, was born.

1905:
Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, married her distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt, later U.S. president.

1861:
In Turin, Italy, after more than 10 years of revolution led by such figures as Giuseppe Garibaldi, a parliament assembled and officially proclaimed the unified Kingdom of Italy.

1776:
British General William Howe evacuated Boston after a successful siege by American revolutionaries led by General George Washington.

brianleeeee

March 16


1968:
My Lai Massacre.

On this day in 1968, during the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers dispatched on a search-and-destroy mission killed as many as 500 unarmed villagers in the hamlet of My Lai, considered a stronghold of the Viet Cong.

1945:
U.S. Marines captured the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II.

1926:
American inventor Robert H. Goddard launched the first successful liquid-propellant rocket.

1921:
The Treaty of Moscow established friendly relations between the nationalist government of Turkey and the Soviet Union.

1850:
American author Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was published.

1802:
The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York—one of the oldest service academies in the world—was originally founded as a training centre for the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

1521:
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under the Spanish flag on his circumnavigation of the globe, reached the Philippines, securing the first alliance in the Pacific Islands for Spain.

brianleeeee

March 15


44 :
Julius Caesar assassinated on the Ides of March.

In 44 BC Roman dictator Julius Caesar was launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated this day, the Ides of March, by a group of nobles, among whom were Cassius and Brutus.

2003:
Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin as the president of China.

1917:
During the first phase of the Russian Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, thus ending the rule of the Romanov dynasty.

1875:
Pope Pius IX appointed John McCloskey the first American cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

1781:
American revolutionaries won a strategic victory over the British at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.

1614:
Franciscus Sylvius, whose studies helped shift medical emphasis from mystical speculation to a rational application of the laws of physics, was born in Hanau, Germany.

brianleeeee

March 14


2004:
Reelection of Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin, the intelligence officer and politician who became president of Russia in 1999 upon the resignation of Boris Yeltsin, was overwhelmingly reelected to a second term as president this day in 2004.

1969:
The Beatles' Yellow Submarine became the rock band's 14th gold album.

1964:
In the first courtroom verdict to be televised in the United States, Jack Ruby was found guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

1951:
United Nations forces recaptured Seoul during the Korean War.

1883:
Historian and revolutionary Karl Marx died in London.

1864:
Celebrated American railroad engineer Casey Jones was born in southeastern Missouri.

1826:
The first Pan-American conference convened in Panama with representatives from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Central America in attendance.

1794:
American inventor Eli Whitney received a patent for the cotton gin.

1681:
German composer Georg Philipp Telemann was born in Magdeburg, Brandenburg.

brianleeeee

March 13


1781:
The planet Uranus discovered.

English astronomer William Herschel observed this day in 1781 the seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus—first described by him as “a curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet” and named for the father of the god Saturn.

1986:
Soviet cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyev were sent aloft aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to rendezvous with the space station Mir and become its first occupants.

1938:
The Anschluss, political union between Austria and Germany, was announced.

1884:
Al-Mahdī began the Siege of Khartoum, capital of the Sudan, which was defended by an Egyptian garrison under the British general Charles George (“Chinese”) Gordon.

1881:
Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in St. Petersburg.

brianleeeee

March 12


1947:
Truman Doctrine pronounced.

On this day in 1947, U.S. President Harry S. Truman articulated what became known as the Truman Doctrine when he asked Congress to appropriate aid for Greece and Turkey, both of which were facing communist threats.

2003:
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a worldwide health alert, one of the first in a decade, regarding an illness it later called severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that struck hundreds of people in China, and Vietnam.

1999:
Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic became members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) shortly before the group's 50th anniversary.

1948:
American singer, songwriter, and guitarist James Taylor was born.

1940:
Finland agreed to Soviet peace terms, including the cession of western Karelia and the construction of a Soviet naval base on the Hanko Peninsula, to end the Russo-Finnish War.

1849:
The Sikh army surrendered to the British at the end of the Second Sikh War, conceding to the annexation of the Punjab in northwestern India.

1831:
American manufacturer Clement Studebaker, founder of the Studebaker automobile company, was born in Pinetown, Pennsylvania.

1804:
Samuel Chase became the first (and, so far, only) U.S. Supreme Court justice to be impeached.

brianleeeee

March 11


2004:
Terrorist bombings in Madrid.

On this day in 2004, Madrid suffered a series of terrorist attacks when 10 bombs, detonated by Islamist militants, exploded on four trains at three different rail stations, killing 191 people and injuring some 1,800 others.

1985:
Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as leader of the Soviet Union.

1959:
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun became the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

1942:
During World War II, Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Theatre came under the command of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur following his tour on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines.

1941:
The U.S. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act.

1930:
William Howard Taft was the first U.S. president to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

1926:
African American civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy was born in Linden, Alabama.

1544:
Torquato Tasso, the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, was born in Sorrento, Kingdom of Naples.

brianleeeee

March 10


1933:
Opening of the Nazis' first concentration camp.

On this day in 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, the first concentration camp in Germany opened at Dachau, where at least 32,000 people would die from disease, malnutrition, physical oppression, and execution.

1913:
In Toledo, Ohio, William Knox became the first bowler to make a perfect score of 300 in an American Bowling Congress tournament.

1903:
American jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa.

1876:
Alexander Graham Bell's “liquid” transmitter design permitted the first transmission of speech by Bell to his assistant, Thomas Watson.

1864:
The Red River Campaign began in the American Civil War.

1793:
In Paris, on the proposal of Georges Danton, the National Convention decreed the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

brianleeeee

March 9


1831:
Creation of French Foreign Legion.

The Foreign Legion, whose unofficial motto is “Legio patria nostra” (“The legion is our fatherland”), was founded this day in 1831 by King Louis-Philippe as an aid in controlling French colonial possessions in Africa.

1975:
Belgian novelist and poet Marie Gevers, who wrote works that evoked Kempenland, a rural area in which she spent most of her life, died.

1945:
The U.S. Army Air Forces bombed Tokyo with napalm, causing fires that destroyed a quarter of the city and killed some 80,000 civilians.

1943:
American chess master Bobby Fischer was born in Chicago.

1930:
American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Ornette Coleman was born in Fort Worth, Texas.

1916:
Pancho Villa's men killed more than a dozen in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico.

1862:
The Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, a duel between ironclads during the American Civil War, marked the beginning of a new era of naval warfare.

1454:
Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence.

432:
The Parthenon was consecrated in Athens.