NO...!


I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've been moving and my internet hasn't been reconnected yet. Thanks for laying down a blanket of cover-fire while I've been gone, Pam. This is the first time I've been able to access a public computer and check in (I can't get into my E-mail from here either...I probably don't want to know how much I have waiting for me in my inbox).

Should be back online in a couple of days; catch up with you all then.

Ron

February 26th...



~747 BC – The epoch (origin) of Claudius Ptolemaeus' Nabonassar Era. Ptolemaeus set a start point for chronological calculations, in the first year of Nabonassar's reign, on New Year's day in the Egyptian calendar (Wednesday February 26th, 747 BC) in the proleptic Julian calendar. On this day the Nabonassar era (AN - Anno Nabonassari) began. The starting was used by Ptolemaeus because it was the earliest reign that included an astronomical observation he used and was used by later astronomers, but not by the Babylonians themselves. (So NOW ya' know...!)

~364 – Valentinian I was proclaimed Roman Emperor.

~1266 – The Battle of Benevento was fought near Benevento, in present-day Southern Italy. An army led by Charles, Count of Anjou, defeated a combined German and Sicilian force led by King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred was killed in the battle and Pope Clement IV invested Charles as king of Sicily and Naples.

~1658 – The Treaty of Roskilde was signed in the Danish city of Roskilde. After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (1655–1661), the King of Denmark-Norway was forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden.

~1794 – The (1st of 3) Christiansborg Palace burnt to the ground in Copenhagen.

~1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba. He then returned to France for the Hundred Days.

~1863 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the National Currency Act into law. It established a system of national charters for banks and encouraged development of a national currency based on bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities, the so-called National Bank Notes.

~1870 – In New York City, a demonstration of the first pneumatic subway in America opened to the public.

~1884 - Portugal made a treaty with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to block off the Congo Society's access to the Atlantic.

~1907 - The U.S. Congress raised their own annual salary to $7500.

~1914 – HMHS Britannic, the 3rd and largest Olympic class ocean liner of the White Star Line, was launched at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She was the sister ship of HMRMS Olympic and HMRMS Titanic. She was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner but the start of the First World War saw her quickly put to use as a hospital ship. In that role she struck a mine off the Greek island of Kea on November 21st, 1916 and sank with the loss of 30 lives.

~1916 - Charlie Chaplin became the highest paid entertainer in the world when he signed a contract with Mutual Film Corporation for a salary of $670,000 per year. Mutual built Chaplin his very own studio and allowed him total freedom to make 12 2-reel films during this fruitful 12 month period. (Let's hear it for the Little Tramp!)

~1917 – The Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded Livery Stable Blues, the first jazz record, for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York.

~1918 - In Hongkong, the Happy Valley Racecourse caught fire. The ensuing blaze claimed at least 590 lives and left more than 1000 others injured. An unknown number of the horses died in the inferno as well.

~1919 – An act of the U.S. Congress established most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park.

~1929 – The Grand Teton National Park was created. The park, named after the Grand Teton which (at 13,770 ft - 4,197 m) is the highest mountain in the Teton Range, covers 484 square miles - 1,250 km2 of land and water. As well, there are nearly 200 miles (320 km) of trails set aside for hikers and riders in the park.

~1929 - The first of the beautiful little Boeing P-12 fighters was delivered to Army Air Corps Captain Ira C. Eaker, for a special goodwill flight to Central America. Later, Brazil became an international customer for the fighters.

~1930 - New York City installed its first traffic lights. (Verified date on 3 out of 5 sources.)

~1935 – Adolf Hitler ordered Hermann Göring to establish the Luftwaffe, breaking the Treaty of Versailles's ban on German military aviation. Germany violated the treaty without sanction from Britain, France, or the League of Nations, and neither they nor the league did anything to oppose this. (Spineless bastards...)

~1935 – The Daventry Experiment: Robert Watson-Watt carried out a demonstration near Daventry which led directly to the development of RADAR used in Britain during the Second world War.

~1936 – In the February 26 Incident, young activist Japanese military officers attempted to stage a coup against the government with 1,483 troops of the Imperial Japanese Army. Several leading politicians were killed, and the center of Tokyo was briefly occupied by the rebelling troops. At the time, the incident was called “the deplorable incident in the capital”. The officers noted problems of political corruption and extreme poverty in rural areas and decided the solution would be to remove some of the elder statesmen in the government.

~1952 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that his nation has an atomic bomb.

~1966 – AS-201 was launched. It was the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket

~1971 – U.N. Secretary General U Thant signed United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day. (The hippies were happy...)

~1972 – In West Virginia, the Buffalo Creek Flood, caused by a burst dam, killed 125 people while injuring 1,121 and leaving over 4,000 homeless.

~1984 – The US Marines begin to withdraw from Beirut. US President Ronald Reagan had sent the troops as a peacekeeping force in August 1982.

~1987 – The Tower Commission Report was delivered to US President Ronald Reagan. It found that he was not involved in, or had knowledge of, the Iran-Contra affair but rebuked him for not controlling his national security staff.

~1990 – The Sandinistas were declared defeated in the Nicaraguan elections held the previous day.

~1991 – Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait, following the attack of Coalition forces, lit the Kuwaiti oilfields on fire as they withdrew. 737 oilwells were set ablaze.

~1991 - The Highway of Death: A long convoy of retreating Iraqi troops formed along the main Iraq-Kuwait highway. Although they were retreating, this convoy was bombed so extensively by Coalition air forces that it came to be known as the Highway of Death, where hundreds of Iraqi troops were killed. Forces from the United States, the Britain and France continued to pursue retreating Iraqi forces over the border and back into Iraq. Frequent battles were fought which resulted in massive losses for the Iraqi side and light to no losses on the coalition side, eventually moving to within 150 miles (240 km) of Baghdad before withdrawing from the Iraqi border.

~1993 - 6 people were killed and 1,042 more were injured when a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York City. The bomb had been placed by Islamic extremists.

~1995 – Britain's oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapsed after a securities broker, Nick Leeson, lost $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.

~2000 – Iceland's Mount Hekla, a stratovolcano, erupted. The eruption was relatively short, starting on February 26th and only lasting until March 8th.

~2003 – The conflict in the Darfur region began when a group calling itself the Darfur Liberation Front (DLF) publicly claimed credit for an attack on Gulu, the headquarters of Jebel Marra District.

~2004 – Boris Trajkovski, the Republic of Macedonia President, was killed in a plane crash. The aircraft went down in very poor weather (thick fog and heavy rain) on a mountainside in southeastern Herzegovina, near the villages of Huskovici and Rotimlja some 8 miles (15 km) form Mostar. 8 other people were also aboard but none survived the impact which broke the aircraft into three pieces. The crash occurred in an area that had been heavily mined during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, this significantly hampered the rescue and recovery efforts.

~2005 – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the constitution changed to allow multi-candidate presidential elections before September 2005, by having the Egyptian parliament amend Article 76.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 27th....



~1560 – The Treaty of Berwick, which would expel the French from Scotland, is signed by England and the Congregation of Scotland.

~1594 – Henry IV was crowned King of France at the Cathedral of Chartres. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France.

~1617 – After nearly 2 months of negotiations, representatives from Sweden and Russia met at the (now derelict) village of Stolbovo, south of Lake Ladoga and signed the Treaty of Stolbovo, ending the Ingrian War and shutting Russia out of the Baltic Sea.

~1626 – Yuan Chonghuan was appointed Governor of Liaodong, after he led the Chinese into a great victory against the Manchurians under Nurhaci.

~1700 – William Dampier and his crew became the first known Europeans to visit New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, Dampier dubbed the island with the Latin name Nova Britannia.

~1797 – The Bank of England issued the first 1 pound and 2 pound notes. (3 out of 5 sources confirming - Wiki claims feb 26th)

~1801 – Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. was placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress.

~1812 – Poet Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.

~1844 – The Dominican Republic gained its independence from Haiti.

~1860 – The Cooper Union Speech was delivered by Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union, in New York City. Lincoln was not yet the Republican nominee for the presidency, as the convention was scheduled for May, but this is considered one of his most important yet little known speeches. Most have argued it was responsible for making him President. In the speech, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery, affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers would agree with this position. The New York Tribune hailed it as "one of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City ... No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience."

~1861 – Russian troops fire on a crowd in Warsaw protesting against Russian rule over Poland, killing 5 protesters.

~1864 – The first Union prisoners arrived at Camp Sumter, the Confederate hell-hole prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

~1867 - Dr. William G. Bonwill invented the dental mallet. (I say we string the bastard up for that!)

~1877 - Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet masterpiece Swan Lake premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as "The Lake of the Swans".

~1883 - Oscar Hammerstein patented the first cigar rolling machine.

~1900 – In South Africa, British military leaders received an unconditional notice of surrender from Boer General Piet Cronje at the Battle of Paardeberg.

~1900 – The British Labour Party was founded at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street in Londodn.

~1917 - At Congress Heights outside of Washington DC, in front of a crowd of 300 people (including high-ranking military officials, Congressmen, Senators, foreign dignitaries and the press) John Browning staged a live fire demonstration of his Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) which so impressed the gathered crowd, that he was immediately awarded a contract for the weapon and it was hastily adopted into military service.

~1922 – A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.

~1933 – The Reichstag Fire: An arson attack on the Reichstag (Germany's parliament building) took place in Berlin. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany due to the communist connections to the blaze.

~1940 – Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discovered carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon with a nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons, at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley. Its existence, however, had been suggested by Franz Kurie in 1934.

~1942 – The Battle of the Java Sea: Allied navies suffered a disastrous defeat at the hand of the Imperial Japanese Navy and in secondary actions over successive days in the Java Sea off the Dutch East Indies.

~1943 – An explosion ripped through Smith Mine #3, a deep shaft coal mine located between the towns of Bearcreek and Washoe in Montana. Since it was a Saturday, there was a short crew in the mine but of the 77 men working that day, only 3 got out of the mine alive, as well, 1 of the rescue workers died soon afterwards. (The worthless hole was never reopened.)

~1943 – In Berlin, the Fabrikaktion (Factory Action) began. This is the term for the roundup of the last Jews to be deported to concentration camps. Most of these remaining Jews were working in Berlin plants or they were working for the Jewish welfare organisation. The term was coined by the victims after World War II, the Gestapo called the plan Großaktion Juden (Major Action on Jews) and in the communications with the factories it was named Evakuierungsaktion (Evacuation Action). While the plan was not restricted to Berlin it became later most notable for that city's ensuing Rosenstrasse protest by the non-Jewish (Aryan) wives and relatives of the Jewish men who had been arrested for deportation.

~1951 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.

~1961 – The first congress of the Spanish Trade Union Organisation (Organización Sindical Española - OSE) was inaugurated.

~1963 – The Dominican Republic received its first democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, since the end of the dictatorship led by Rafael Trujillo.

1964 – The government of Italy asked for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over. It was, however, considered important to retain the current tilt due to the vital role that this element played in promoting the tourism industry of Pisa.

~1971 – Doctors in the first Dutch abortion clinic (the Mildredhuis in Arnhem) began performing aborti provocati.

~1972 - The Shanghai Communique was issued by U.S. President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai. The document pledged that it was in the interest of all nations for the United States and China to work towards the normalization of their relations, although this would not occur until the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations seven years later.

~1973 – The American Indian Movement occupied the Pine Ridge Reservation near Wounded Knee, South Dakota in protest against the federal government and its policies related to Native Indians. A 71 day standoff between federal authorities and the AIM ensued until the militants surrendered on May 8th.

~1976 – The formerly Spanish territory of Western Sahara, under the auspices of the Polisario Front, declared independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. To date it has only been partially recognized.

~1986 – The United States Senate permitted its debates to be televised on a trial basis.

~1989 – The Caracazo Riots: A wave of protests, riots and looting occurred in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and the surrounding towns. The riots, the worst in Venezuelan history, resulted in a death toll of up to 3,000, mostly at the hands of security forces.

~1999 - While trying to circumnavigate the world by balloon, Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new endurance record after flying in a Rozière combined helium and hot air balloon (the Cable & Wireless balloon) for 233 hours and 55 minutes.

~2002 – Ryanair Flt. 296, a Boeing 737, was engulfed in heavy smoke from engine #2 shortly after landing in Stansted at London Stansted Airport. There were no injuries but subsequent investigations criticized Ryanair's handling of the aircraft's evacuation.

~2002 – The Godhra Train Burning: The Sabarmati Express, with many kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers) on their way back from a ceremony organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad at the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Mosque site, was burnt by a mob of Muslims. There was an altercation between some of the kar sevaks and the mostly Muslim hawkers on the platform. A rumour spread that a Muslim girl Shofiabanu had been abducted (this was later found to be baseless).After its scheduled 5 minute halt, the train was pulling out when someone pulled the chain to stop it, and stones were pelted at the train by the Muslim crowd. Then the train left, but was stopped again near a railway cabin where a large Muslim mob of about 500 attacked it. During the attack, the Woman's reserved Coach # S6 was burned. A total of 58 Hindu pilgrims (23 men, 15 women and 20 children) were asphyxiated in the smoke, while 250 others managed to escape.

~2002 - In Boston, 20 people working at Logan International Airport were charged with lying to get their jobs and/or security badges.


~2004 – An Islamic terrorist attack resulted in the sinking of the ferry SuperFerry 14 and the deaths of 116 people in the Philippines' deadliest terrorist attack and the world's deadliest terrorist attack at sea. The 10,192 ton ferry sailed out of Manila for Cagayan de Oro City via Bacolod City and Iloilo City with about 900 passengers and crew. A television set containing an 8-pound (4 kilograms) TNT bomb had been placed on board by a member of the military Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf. 90 minutes out of port, the bomb exploded and 63 people were killed immediately. Another 53 were missing and presumed dead. It's believed that Abu Sayyaf bombed Superferry 14 because the company that owned it, WG&A, did not comply with an extortion letter demanding (USD) $1 million in protection money. (It would be a cold day in the bowels of hell before I would ever pay "protection money", too!)

~2005 - Wordman came home.

~2007 – The Chinese Correction: The Shanghai Stock Exchange fell over 9%, the largest drop in 10 years. The Chinese Correction triggered drops and major unease in nearly all financial markets around the world. After the Chinese market drop, the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the US dropped 416 points (3.29% from 12,632 to 12,216) amid fears for growth prospects, then the biggest 1 day slide since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. The S&P 500 saw a comparable 3.45% slide. Sell orders were made so fast that a 2nd analysis computer had to be used, causing an instantaneous 200 point drop at one point in the Dow Industrials.

~2008 - Died this day: Boyd Coddington, American automobile designer and Hot Rod King; the greatest of the greats (b. 1944).

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

February 28th



~202 BC – The coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han took place, initiating 4 centuries of the Han Dynasty's rule over China.

~870 – The Fourth Council of Constantinople closed. The Council met in 10 sessions beginning on October 5th, 869 and issued 27 canons. The 4th Council was called by Emperor Basil I the Macedonian and Pope Adrian II. It deposed Photios, a layman who had been appointed as Patriarch of Constantinople, and reinstated his predecessor Ignatius.

~1638 – The process of signing the new Scottish National Covenant began at Greyfriars Kirk; it was the death warrant of the Divine Right of Kings. The enemies of King Charles I acquired the name The Covenanters.

~1648 – Died this day: King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway. With a reign of 36 days short of 60 years, he holds the record of being the longest reigning monarch of Denmark (b. 1577).

~1710 – The Battle of Helsingborg: On the Ringstorp heights northwest of Helsingborg, 14,000 Danish invaders under Jørgen Rantzau were decisively defeated by an equally large Swedish army under Magnus Stenbock.

~1787 – The charter establishing the Pittsburgh Academy, now known as the University of Pittsburgh, was granted.

~1838 – Robert Nelson, leader of the Patriotes, proclaimed the independence of Lower Canada, today's Canadian province of Québec. The 1838 declaration was primarily inspired by the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence and the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, but it also included some other political ideas that were popular in the 19th century. The movement for the independence of Lower Canada ultimately failed as it did not result in the creation of an independent nation state.

~1844 – 1 of the USS Princeton's pair of 12 inch heavy guns, Peacemaker, exploded during a firing demonstration while the boat was on a Potomac River cruise. The blast killed 8 people, including two United States Cabinet members, and injured another 20.

~1849 – Regular steamboat service from the west to east coast of the United States began with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, 4 months and 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.

~1854 – The Republican Party of the United States was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin by a group of 30 opponents of the Kansas–Nebraska Act.

~1861 – Outgoing US President James Buchanan signed an act of Congress organizing the free Territory of Colorado. The original boundaries of Colorado remain unchanged today. The name Colorado was chosen because at the time it was commonly believed that the Colorado River originated in the territory.

~1870 – The Bulgarian Exarchate (Bulgarian Orthodox Church) was established by a firman of Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz of the Ottoman Empire.

~1893 - The USS Indiana, the US Navy's first truly modern battleship, was launched in Philadelphia. Although modern in 1893, Indiana had some quaint features. Her turrets were round and lacked a counterweight to offset the weight of the gun barrels. This meant that the ship listed in the direction to which the guns were trained, requiring added elevation to lay the gun on target. Indiana also carried Whitehead electric torpedoes in bow and stern mounts, but they were never used in action. The ship's prow was fashioned to a point, curved up and reinforced, exactly like the prow of an ancient trireme. Even at the dawn of the 20th Century, ramming enemy vessels was considered a viable tactic. Indiana and her sisterships, Massachusetts and Oregon, cost America the then staggering sum of $3,000,000 a piece.

~1897 – Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, was deposed by a French military force. (Trust the French to meddle where they don't belong...)

~1900 – The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" was lifted. The first party of the relief column, under Major Hubert Gough and which included Winston Churchill, rode in that evening. Lieutenant General Sir George White reportedly greeted them saying, "Thank God we kept the flag flying".

~1914 – The Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus is proclaimed in Gjirokastër, by the Greeks living in southern Albania. (THAT gig didn't last long...)

~1927 - The Curtiss F7C Seahawk, a carrier-capable biplane fighter aircraft of the United States Navy Marine Corps in the late 1920s and early 1930s, made its maiden flight.

~1928 – The Raman effect: C.V. Raman discovered the radiation effect which bears his name.

~1933 – The Reichstag Fire Decree (German: Reichstagsbrandverordnung) was passed in Germany a day after the Reichstag fire.

~1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers produced 1/2 ounce of a polymer, which was labeled polyamide 6-6. This was the substance that would eventually become Nylon.

~1939 – The first issue of Serbian weekly magazine Politikin zabavnik was published.

~1939 – The erroneous word "Dord" was discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation. (That was a rather humorous screwup on Webster's part.)

~1940 – Basketball is televised for the first time (Fordham University vs. the University of Pittsburgh in Madison Square Garden).

~1941 – Died this day: King Alfonso XIII of Spain (b. 1886)

~1942 – The heavy cruiser USS Houston was sunk by Japanese warships in the Battle of Sunda Strait with 693 crew members killed, along with HMAS Perth which lost 375 men.

~1947 – 228 Incident: An anti-government uprising in Taiwan began on February 27th and was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang (KMT) government on the 28th. Estimates of the number of deaths vary from ten thousand to thirty thousand or more. The Incident marked the beginning of the Kuomintang's White Terror period in Taiwan, in which thousands more Taiwanese vanished, were killed, or imprisoned. The number "228" refers to the day the massacre began: February 28, or 02-28.

~1948 - Bud Gartiser set a world record when he cleared the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.

~1951 - A Senate committee issued a report that stated that there were at least two major crime syndicates in the U.S.

~1954 - In San Francisco "Birth of a Planet" was aired. It was the first American phase-contrast cinemicrography film to be presented on television.

~1956 - A patent was issued to Forrester for a computer memory core.

~1962 - The John Glenn for President club was formed by a group of Las Vegas republicans.

~1958 – A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hit a wrecker and plunged down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork River. The driver and 26 children died in what remains tied with the 1988 Carrollton school bus disaster as the 2 deadliest school bus accidents in U.S. history.

~1975 – The Moorgate Tube Crash: A southbound train on the Northern Line (Highbury Branch) crashed into the tunnel end beyond the platform at London's Moorgate station. 43 people were killed at the scene, either from the impact or from suffocation, and several more subsequently died from severe injuries. It is the greatest loss of life in peacetime on the London Underground, and the second greatest loss of life on the entire London Transport system (the first being the July 7th, 2005 London bombings). The cause of the incident was never conclusively determined.

~1983 - "M*A*S*H" became the most watched program in television history when the final episode aired. The series was ranked #1 when it went off the air.

~1985 – The Provisional IRA carried out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry. The attack was jointly planned by members of the South Armagh Brigade and an IRA unit in Newry. 9 shells were launched from a Mark 10 mortar bolted onto the back of a Ford lorry that had been hijacked in Crossmaglen. 8 shells overshot the station, but one 50 lb shell landed directly on a Portakabin containing a temporary canteen. 9 police officers were killed, including a cousin of Unionist politician Jeffrey Donaldson, and 37 people were injured including 25 civilian police employees. The death toll was the highest inflicted on the RUC in its history.

~1986 – Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was assassinated in Stockholm. Walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight, the couple was attacked by an assassin. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range. A second shot wounded his wife Lisbet.

~1991 – The first Gulf War ended. (Nuff said about that.)

~1993 – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a search warrant. 4 BATF agents and 5 Davidians died in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

~1994 - NATO made its first military strike when U.S. F-16 fighters shot down four Bosnian Serb warplanes in violation of a no-fly zone over central Bosnia.

~1995 – Denver International Airport officially opened in Denver, Colorado to replace Stapleton International Airport, 16 months behind schedule and at a cost of $4.8 billion, nearly $2 billion over budget.

~1997 – The North Hollywood Shootout occurred. 2 heavily armed bank robbers fought a raging gun battle with patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, California. The violence erupted when responding patrol officers engaged the pair leaving a bank which the 2 men had just robbed. 10 officers and 7 civilians sustained injuries before both robbers were killed.

~2001 – The Nisqually Earthquake measuring a magnitude 6.8 struck the Nisqually Valley, the Seattle-Tacoma and Olympia area of the U.S. state of Washington. Moderate damage was inflicted but while there were over 400 injuries reported no deaths resulted.

~2001 – 6 passengers and 4 railway staff were killed and a further 82 people suffered serious injuries in the Selby Rail Crash in North Yorkshire. A Land Rover towing a loaded trailer with a car on it swerved off the M62 motorway just before a bridge over the East Coast Main Line. The vehicle ran down an embankment and onto the southbound railway track. Thr driver tried to back off the track but could not. As he was using a mobile telephone to call the emergency services, the Land Rover was hit by a southbound GNER Intercity 225 heading from Newcastle to London King's Cross at over 120 mph.

~2002 - Sotheby's auction house announced that it had identified Peter Paul Reubens as the creator of the painting "The Massacre of the Innocents." The painting was previously thought to be by Jan van den Hoecke.

~2004 – Over 1 million Taiwanese participating in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally formed a 500 kilometre (300 mile) long human chain to commemorate the 228 Incident in 1947.

~2005 – Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister, Omar Karami, resigned amid large anti-Syrian street demonstrations in Beirut.

~2005 – A suicide bomber drove an explosive laden vehicle into a line of people queueing outside a police recruiting centre in Al Hillah, Iraq and exploded it. 127 people were killed and hundreds more injured. The explosion also affected a nearby market, killing many passers-by. The targeted unemployed men were waiting for medical examination to get the job.

~2007 – The Jupiter flyby of the New Horizons Pluto-observer spacecraft took place. It flew into Saturn's orbit on June 8, 2008.

~2009 – Died this day: Paul Harvey, American radio broadcaster (b. 1918) (OK, so he was a general idiot...he was broadcast nationwide and millions of people loved him.)

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

ON THIS DATE in the year 1077, Westminster Abbey opened.

I cannot speak for the Tower of Big Ben, or ther rosy red cheeks of the little children...

On this date, in 1692, the Salem Witch Hunt began. My ex-wife is still on the lose...heh..heh..heh....



Just me, Keny! Trying to fix your broken bobber!

This post has been edited at member's request.La Juliette,

February 29th

~1468 – Born this day: Pope Paul III (d. 1549)

~1504 – Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies.

~1604 – Died this day: John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1530)

~1704 – During the Queen Anne's War, French forces and native warriors staged a raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts. The attack occurred just before dawn, the town was razed and 56 colonists were killed. 25 of the 56 were children. A total of 109 residents, including children who had survived the attack, were taken captive and forced on a months long 300 mile trek to Quebec in harsh winter conditions. 21 of them died along the way.

~1712 – February 29th was followed by February 30th in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar for a return to the old style.

~1720 – Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden abdicated in favour of her husband, who became King Frederick I. (Personally, I think that anybody with a shnoz like hers shouldn't be on the throne...)

~1808 - Slave Sally Hemmings gave birth to her son Eston. DNA tests conducted in 2001 showed that he was the illegitimate son of then US President Thomas Jefferson.

~1854 -The steamship SS Bartley burnt to the waterline 3 miles off the coast of Vancouver Island, after one of her boilers exploded and sent coal embers flying throughout the hull of the wooden ship. Miraculously there were only 2 minor injuries and no deaths in the mishap.

~1868 – Died this day: King Ludwig I of Bavaria (b. 1786).

~1892 – St. Petersburg, Florida was incorporated when it had a population of only some 300 people.

~1896 - The SS Palmer ran aground on Ripple Rock in British Columbia's Seymour Narrows on the Inside Passage. Though badly holed, the ship managed to free itself from the rock at high tide and limp to nearby Nanaimo for repairs.

~1904 – Born this day: Jimmy Dorsey, American bandleader, one of the most important and influential alto saxophone players of the Big Band and Swing era (d. 1957).

~1916 – Child labor: In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers was raised from 12 to 14 years old.

~1932 – TIME magazine features eccentric American politician William "Alfalfa" Murray on its cover after Murray stated his intention to run for President of the United States.

~1932 - Plans for an all new, and radically designed, teardrop recreational trailer first appeared in the March 1932 edition of Mechanix Illustrated magazine. Today, 78 years later, the much sought after classic teardrop is still being produced in large numbers.

~1936 – Baby Snooks, played by Fanny Brice, debuted on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.

~1940 – For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the black person to win an Academy Award. The award was presented by the show's host, Bob Hope.

~1940 – Finland initiated the Winter War peace negotiations. (But not before they'd kicked the Soviet's ass around the block.)

~1940 – In a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, because of the war, physicist Ernest Lawrence received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's Consul General in San Francisco.

~1944 – The Admiralty Islands were invaded in Operation Brewer by US forces led by General Douglas MacArthur.

~1944 - (Unofficial) Sadie Hawkins Day was inaugurated where the tradition of "allowing" women to propose marriage on February 29th started as a result of a comment made on radio by cartoonist Al Capp with regards to the Sadie Hawkins Day Race he featured in his comic strip Li'l Abner.

~1952 – The island of Heligoland was restored to German authority.

~1956 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced to the nation that he would run for a second term.

~1960 – A magnitude 5.7 earthquake in Morocco killed approximately 15,000 people (about a third of the city's population of the time) and injured another 12,000. At least 35,000 people were left homeless. Despite its moderate magnitude, the earthquake's shallow focus and close proximity to the major city of Agadir made it very destructive.

~1960 – The comic Family Circus made its debut. (And in 50 years the story line has never changed.)

~1972 – South Korea withdrew 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from war torn Vietnam.

~1972 – Hank Aaron became the first player in the history of Major League Baseball to sign a $200,000 contract.

~1980 – Gordie Howe of the then Hartford Whalers makes NHL history as he scores his 800th goal.

~1984 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced that he would retire as soon as the Liberal Party could elect another leader. (John Turner smiled...)

~1988 – South African archbishop Desmond Tutu was arrested along with 100 clergymen during a 5 day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town.

~2000 - The first leap year in 400 years that occurred at the start of a century. There was no February 29th in 1700, 1800 or 1900.

~1996 – (Compañía de Aviación) Faucett Flt. 251, a Boeing 737, crashed in the Andes killing all 123 people aboard. The accident was a controlled flight into terrain, the aircraft was flown into the ground while attempting to land. The flight crew had been issued an outdated barometric altimeter setting after bypassing an ILS signal, causing them to fly 1000 feet lower than the altitude they believed they were flying at. The pilots were under the impression that the aircraft was at 9500 feet, when in fact they were flying at 8644 feet. The elevation of Rodriguez Ballon Airport is 8404 feet.

2004 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned as President of Haiti following a popular rebel uprising. Under disputed circumstances, Aristide had been flown out of the country by the U.S. the previous day.

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March 1st



~86 BC – Lucius Cornelius Sulla, at the head of a Roman Republic army, entered Athens, removing the tyrant Aristion who was supported by troops of Mithridates VI of Pontus.

~589 – Died this day: Saint David, Patron Saint of Wales (b. 500).

~986 – Died this day: King Lothair of France (b. 941).

~1131 – Died this day: King Stephen II of Hungary (b. 1101).

~1320 – Died this day: Buyantu Khagan, Emperor of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (b. 1286).

~1562 – The Massacre of Vassy: François the second Duke of Guise, while travelling to his estates, stopped in Vassy and decided to attend mass. He found a large congregation of Huguenots holding religious ceremonies in a barn that was their church. When some of the duke's party attempted to push their way inside they were repulsed. Events escalated, stones began to fly and the Duke was struck. Outraged, he ordered his men to fortify the town and set fire to the church, killing just over 80 unarmed Huguenots and lnjuring hundreds of others. This event started the Wars of Religion which would continue with intermissions for more than a century.

~1565 – The city of Rio de Janeiro proper was founded by the Portuguese.

~1593 – The Uppsala Synod, the most important synod of the Lutheran Church of Sweden,was summoned to confirm the exact forms of the church.

~1633 – Samuel de Champlain reclaims his role as commander of New France on behalf of Cardinal Richelieu.

~1642 – By charter of King Charles I, Gorgeana Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) became the first incorporated city in America.

~1692 – Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates on the complaint of witchcraft and interrogated for several days before being sent to jail in Salem Village, Massachusetts. This event began what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

~1781 – The Continental Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation after Maryland finally ratified it following a 3 year holdout over land claims.

~1784 - In London E. Kidner opened what is believed to be the first cooking school.

~1792 – Died this day: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1747). (Today seems to have been a bad day in history for royalty...)

~1803 – Ohio was admitted as the 17th state of the Union.

~1805 – Justice Samuel Chase was acquitted at the end of his impeachment trial by the U.S. Senate and returned to his duties on the court. He is the only U.S. Supreme Court justice to have been impeached.

~1810 - Sweden became the first country to appoint an Ombudsman, Lars August Mannerheim.

~1811 – Leaders of the Mameluke dynasty were killed by Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali. Ali invited the Mamluk leaders to a celebration held at the Cairo Citadel in honor of his son, Tusun, who was being appointed to lead a military expedition into Arabia. When the Mamluks arrived, they were trapped and killed. After the leaders were killed, Ali dispatched his army throughout Egypt to rout and kill the remainder of the Mamluk forces. (I wonder if Cassius Clay knew about all this before he changed his name...)

~1815 – Napoleon returned to France from his exile on Elba, landing at Golfe-Juan near Antibes.

~1836 – A convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convened in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas to deliberate independence from Mexico.

~1845 – US President John Tyler signed a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.

~1852 – Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

~1854 – German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappeared. 2 years later his remains were found in a canal near Charlottenburg. There was some suspicion that he had committed suicide in a fit of mental depression.

~1864 - Louis Ducos de Hauron patented a machine for taking and projecting motion pictures. The machine was never built.

~1867 – Nebraska was admitted as the 37th state of the Union.

~1869 - Postage stamps with scenes were issued for the first time.

~1870 – Marshal F.S. López died during the Battle of Cerro Corá, marking the end of the War of the Triple Alliance. (Outnumbering the Paraguayans 20 to 1 you'd kind of expected the Brazilians to win that one...)

~1872 – Yellowstone National Park was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant as the world's first national park.

~1873 – E. Remington and Sons in Ilion, New York began production of the first commercial typewriter.

~1886 – The Anglo-Chinese School, Singapore was founded by Bishop William F. Oldham.

~1893 – Nikola Tesla gave the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri.

~1896 – The Battle of Adowa: An Ethiopian army defeated the main Italian force, ending the First Italo–Ethiopian War. (Again, outnumbering the Italians 7 to 1 you'd kind of expect the Ethiopians to win that one...)

~1907 - In Spain, a royal decree abolished civil marriages.

~1910 - The Wellington Avalanche: The deadliest avalanche in US history buried the Great Northern Railway depot and parked trains at the town of Wellington in northeastern King County, Washington. 96 people were killed in the disaster.

~1912 – Albert Berry made the first confirmed parachute jump from a moving airplane, a Benoit pusher biplane from 1,500 feet (457 m) and landed successfully at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. The pilot was Tony Jannus. The 36 foot (11 m) diameter parachute was contained in a metal canister attached to the underside of the plane. When Berry dropped from the plane his weight pulled the parachute from the canister. Rather than being attached to the parachute by a harness Berry was seated on a trapeze bar. According to Berry he dropped 500 feet (152 m) before the parachute opened. (*sigh* - shakes head in disbelief at the suicidal tendencies of the man...)

~1914 – The Republic of China joined the Universal Postal Union. (Welcome to the party...see how fast YOU clowns can lose the mail...)

~1917 – The U.S. government released the unencrypted text of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public. The revelation of its contents in the American press caused public outrage that contributed to the United States' declaration of war against Germany and its allies on April 6th.

~1919 – March 1st Movement began in Korea. The 33 nationalists who formed the core of the Samil Movement convened at Taehwagwan Restaurant in Seoul, and read the Korean Declaration of Independence that had been drawn up by the historian/writer Choe Nam-seon and the poet/Buddhist monk Manhae. During the series of demonstrations that began that day and spread throughout Korea, 7,000 people were killed by Japanese police and soldiers.

~1932 – The 20 month old son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from his home.

~1936 – A sit down strike occurred aboard the S.S. California. This would lead to a series of events that resulted in the demise of the International Seamen's Union and the creation of the National Maritime Union.

~1939 – Trans-Canada Air Lines (the forerunner of Air Canada) began transcontinental operations with inaugural service between Vancouver and Montreal. The first Flt. 2, a Lockheed Electra 10A, took off from YVR at 07:15 that morning. (Dad still has his old photo of the bird lifting off from the end of runway 08 that morning.)

~1941 – World War II: Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact, allying itself with the Axis powers. The Kingdom of Bulgaria had been on the losing side in World War I, losing territory to Serbia and Greece. During World War II, Germany needed military access through Bulgaria in order to attack Greece. Adolf Hitler promised the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III that Bulgaria would receive all the territory she had lost in return for Bulgaria joining the Axis. Boris agreed and signed the Pact.

~1950 – Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union by disclosing top secret atomic bomb data. He was sentenced the next day to 14 years in prison, the maximum possible for passing military secrets to a friendly nation. In the infancy of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was nonetheless still classed as an ally, "a friendly nation".

~1953 – Joseph Stalin sufferred a severe stroke and collapsed. (Awww...poor old Uncle Joe - see my tears?)

~1954 – The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb and the first U.S. test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It resulted in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States and created international concern about atmospheric thermonuclear testing. The bomb tested at Castle Bravo was, however, the first practical deliverable fusion bomb in the U.S. arsenal.

~1954 - Born this day: Ron Howard, ("Opie" and Richie Cunningham) American actor and movie director.

~1954 – The United States Capitol shooting incident: Puerto Rican nationalists attacked the United States Capitol building, injuring 5 Representatives. The attackers unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and began shooting at the 240 Representatives of the 83rd Congress who were on the floor during debate over an immigration bill.

~1956 – The International Air Transport Association finalized a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet (NATO phonetic alphabet) for the International Civil Aviation Organization.

~1958 – Turkish passenger ship Uskudar capsized and sank at Izmit Bay, Turkey. More than 300 died in the incident.

~1961 – US President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924 establishing the Peace Corps.

~1962 – American Airlines Flt. 1, a Boeing 707, crashed on take off in New York. All 95 on board perished.

~1964 – Chile's Villarrica Volcano began a strombolian eruption. Combined with vast amounts of water from melting snow, lahas destroyed half of the town of Coñaripe which was later reconstructed further east.

~1966 – The Venera 3 Soviet space probe impacted on the night side of Venus, near the terminator, probably around -20° to 20° N, 60° to 80° E. However, its communications systems failed before it could return any information about the planet.

~1971 – A bomb exploded in a men's room in the United States Capitol. The Weather Underground claimed responsibility saying it was "in protest of the US invasion of Laos".

1973 – Black September stormed the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan taking 10 hostages. After US President Richard Nixon stated that he refused to negotiate with terrorists, and demanded that "no concessions" would be made, the 3 Western hostages were subsequently murdered.

~1974 – The Watergate Scandal: 7 individuals were indicted for their role in the Watergate break in and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

~1981 – Provisional Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands begans his hunger strike in HM Prison Maze. He died of starvation in the prison hospital 66 days later.

~1984 – Died this day: Jackie Coogan, American actor, from childhood to Uncle Fester (b. 1914).

1990 – Steve Jackson Games was raided by the United States Secret Service. More than 3 years later, a federal court awarded damages of $50,000 and attorneys' fees of $250,000 to SJ Games, ruling that the raid had been carelessly executed, illegal, and completely unjustified. Cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling discussed the affair in his non-fiction book The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. The case also helped to prompt the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as spawning a new game, Hacker.

~1992 – Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

~1995 – Yahoo! was incorporated in Santa Clara, California by founders Jerry Yang and David Filo. "Yahoo!", for which the official backronym is "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, which comes from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated and uncouth".

~2002 – Operation Anaconda began in eastern Afghanistan, the first large scale battle in the United States war in Afghanistan since the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.

~2002 – The Envisat satellite, an Earth-observing satellite built by the European Space Agency, was launched aboard an Ariane 5 into a Sun synchronous polar orbit at a height of 790 km (±10 km). It orbits the Earth in about 101 minutes with a repeat cycle of 35 days. It is a very large satellite with a total mass of 8211 kg.

~2002 – The Spanish peseta lost its legal tender status in Spain, being replaced by the euro (€). (I dunno, in view of what's happened to the euro of late maybe they should have stuck with the peseta...)

~2003 – The United States Customs Service and the United States Secret Service were merged into the United States Department of Homeland Security. (That was nothing short of a collossal blunder.)

~2003 - In New York, a $250,000 Salvador Dali sketch was stolen from a display case in the lobby at Rikers Island jail. On June 17, 2003, it was announced that four corrections officers had surrendered and plead innocent in connection to the theft. The mixed-media composition was a sketch of the crucifixion.

~2007 – Tornadoes, which had initially broken out across the southern United States the day previously, killed at least 20 people. 8 of the deaths and more than 50 injuries were at a high school in Enterprise, Alabama.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 2nd



~986 – Louis V ascended the throne of the Western Francia on the day following the death of his father, King Lothair.

~1127 – The assassination of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders. As Charles knelt in prayer in the church of St. Donatian, a group of knights answering to the Erembald family entered the church and hacked him to death with broadswords. The brutal and sacrilegious murder of the popular count provoked a massive public outrage, and he was almost immediately regarded popularly as a martyr and saint, although not formally beatified until 1884. The Erembalds, who had planned and carried out the murder of Charles, were arrested and tortured to death by the enraged nobles and commons of Bruges and Ghent. King Louis VI of France, who had supported the revolt against the Erembalds, used his influence to select his own candidate (William Clito) as the next Count of Flanders.

~1657- The Great Fire of Meireki: Fire destroyed 60-70% of the Japanese capital city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the 3rd year of the Meireki Imperial era. The blaze lasted for 3 days and is estimated to have claimed over 100,000 lives.

~1717 – The Loves of Mars and Venus, by Joihn Weaver, became the first ballet performed in England.

~1791 – The Semaphore Line: Claude Chappe and his brother (in the summer of 1790) set about to devise a system of communication that would allow the central government to receive intelligence and to transmit orders in the shortest possible time. On March 2nd, 1791 at 11 A.M., Chappe and his brother sent the message “si vous réussissez, vous serez bientôt couverts de gloire” (If you succeed, you will soon bask in glory) between Brulon and Parce, a distance of 10 miles (16 km). The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message.

~1808 – The inaugural meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, was held in Edinburgh.

~1815 – The Kandyan Convention Treaty opened for signatures in Sri Lanka under terms dictated by the conquering British. This unique treaty was not signed by the deposed King, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, but by members of his court and other dignitaries of the Kandyan Kingdom.

~1835 – Died this day: Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1768)

~1836 – The Declaration of Iindependence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico was made. It was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos and formally signed the following day after errors were noted in the text.

~1842 – The Grand National steeplechase at Aintree near Liverpool England was won by Gay Lad, ridden by Tom Olliver.

~1855 - Died this day: Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (b. 1796).

~1855 – Alexander II ascended the throne as Tsar of Russia upon the death of his father Nicholas I.

~1865 – The East Cape War: The Volkner Incident occurred in New Zealand. The missionary Carl Völkner discovered that his Māori congregation had moved on from Christianity to Hau Hauism. Although warned to stay away from the town, on his next visit Völkner was captured, put on trial and hung from a tree; after an hour or so he was decapitated.

~1861 - The U.S. Congress created the Territories of Nevada and Dakota.

~1866 - The Excelsior Needle Company began mass producing sewing machine needles.

~1867 – The U.S. Congress passed the Reconstruction Act. The 1st of 4.

~1877 – Just 2 days before inauguration, the U.S. Congress declared Rutherford B. Hayes the winner of the 1876 election, even though Samuel J. Tilden had won the popular vote on November 7th, 1876.

~1897 - As he was leaving office, U.S. President Grover Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have required a literacy test for immigrants entering the country.

~1899 - U.S. President McKinley signed a measure that created the rank of Admiral of the Navy. The first (and to date the only) Admiral of the Navy was George Dewey.

~1899 – Mount Rainier National Park was established in the state of Washington. Today the park contains 368 square miles (950 km2) including all of Mount Rainier, a stratovolcano. The highest point in the Cascade Range at 14,411-foot (4,392 m) The mountain rises abruptly from the surrounding land, around it are valleys, waterfalls, subalpine wildflower meadows, old growth forest and more than 26 glaciers.

~1901 – The U.S. Congress passed the Platt amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.

~1903 – In New York City the Martha Washington Hotel opened. It was the first hotel exclusively for women.

~1906 - A tornado in Missouri killed 33 and caused $5 million in damage. (A lot of coin back in '06.)

~1917 – The Jones-Shafroth Act, granting Puerto Ricans United States citizenship, was signed into law by US President Woodrow Wilson.

~1925 - State and federal highway officials developed a nationwide route numbering system and adopted the familiar U.S. shield shaped, numbered marker.

~1931 – Born this day: Mikhail Gorbachev, Last President of the Soviet Union, 7th and last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Nobel laureate.

~1933 – The movie King Kong opened at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The film is notable for its stop-motion animation along with its musical score. It has been released to video and DVD over the years and remains a strong seller some 77 years after its debut. In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It has been computer colorized for retail sale and rebroadcast. (Alright...that was a classic which should NEVER have been colorized!)

~1937 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee signs a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel, eventually leading to unionization of the United States steel industry.

~1939 - The Massachusetts legislature voted to ratify the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. These first 10 ammendments had gone into effect 147 years before.

~1939 – Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope and took the name Pius XII.

~1941 – The first German military units entered Bulgaria after it joined the Axis Pact the day previous. (Old Adolph didn't waste any time on that one...)

~1943 – The Battle of the Bismarck Sea: In the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) aicraft of the United States Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops to Lae, New Guinea. Most of the task force was destroyed, and Japanese troop losses were extremely high.

~1944 - The first flight of the Horten Ho IX fighter/bomber was made in Germany. The late World War II prototype flying wing was designed by Reimar and Walter Horten and built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik. It was the first pure flying wing powered by a turbojet, and was the first aircraft designed to incorporate what became known as stealth technology. The Ho IX was a personal favorite of German Luftwaffe chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring as it was the only aircraft to come close to meeting his "1000, 1000, 1000" performance requirements. The aircraft's speed was estimated at 1,024 km/h (636 mph) and its service ceiling was 15,000 meters (49,213 ft). (3 out of 5 sources list March 2nd as the date of first flight, 2 out of 5 list March 1st.)

~1949 – The B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II landed in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around the world flight in 94 hours and 1 minute. The plane had a double crew with 3 pilots, with each crew taking a shift of 4 to 6 hours on duty and 4 to 6 off.

~1955 – King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicated the throne in favor of his father, King Norodom Suramarit.

~1956 – Morocco declared its independence from France. (Hey...dem dere guyz jus' be a tellin us to go to hell den dere, huh!)

~1962 – In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win Ne Win seized power in a military coup d'etat. Ne Win became head of state as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and also Prime Minister. The coup was characterized as "bloodless" by the world's media. Following riots at Rangoon University, troops were sent to restore order. Ne Win's military used comparative restraint against protesters. Shortly afterwards, around 8 p.m. local time, Ne Win addressed the nation in a 5 minute long radio speech which concluded with the famous statement: "if these disturbances were made to challenge us, I have to declare that we will fight sword with sword and spear with spear".

~1969 – In Toulouse, France the first flight of the supersonic Anglo-French Concorde was made.

~1969 – Soviet and Chinese forces clashed at a border outpost on the Ussuri River. A group of Chinese troops ambushed Soviet border guards. The Soviets suffered 31 dead and 14 wounded. They retaliated on March 15 by bombarding Chinese troop concentrations on the Chinese bank of the Ussuri and storming Chinese positions. (The Chinese then retired to lick their wounds.)

~1972 - The first outer-planetary probe, Pioneer 10, was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. On December 3, 1973 the probe sent back the first close up images of Jupiter. On June 13, 1983, the spacecraft became the first man made object to leave the solar system.

~1974 - In the US, postage stamps jumped from 8 to 10 cents for first class mail.

~1989 – 12 European Community nations agreed to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.

~1995 - Nick Leeson was arrested in Germany and extradited back to Singapore, for his role in the collapse of Britain's Barings Bank.

~1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicated that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice and a source of interior heat.

~2000 - In Great Britain, Chile's former President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was freed from house arrest and allowed to return to Chile. Britain's Home Secretary Jack Straw had concluded that Pinochet was mentally and physically unable to stand trial. Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland had sought the former Chilean leader on human rights violations.

~2004 – Al-Qaeda carried out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq that killed 178 and injured at least 500 Iraqi Shi'a Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura.

~2004 - NASA announced that the Mars rover Opportunity had discovered evidence that water had existed on Mars in the past.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 3rd



~1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted by the King of England Edward I. This after the military conquest in 1282-83 of the Principality of Wales, which had been established by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Lord of Aberffraw and Prince of Wales. The statute assumed the lands held by the Princes of Gwynedd under the title Prince of Wales as legally part of the lands of England under Edward I.

~1575 – The Battle of Tukaroi was fought near the village of Tukaroi, West Bengal between forces of the Mughal Empire and those of the Sultanate of Bangala and Bihar. The Mughal army achieved a decisive victory the battle led to the Treaty of Katak in which Sultan Daud Khan Karrani ceded the whole of Bengal and Bihar, retaining only Orissa.

~1585 – The Teatro Olimpico (Olympic Theatre), designed by Andrea Palladio, was inaugurated in Vicenza with a production of Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The Teatro Olimpico is the oldest surviving enclosed theatre in the world.

~1776 – The Battle of Nassau began. The naval action and amphibious assault by American forces against the British port of Nassau in the Bahamas (during the American Revolutionary War) is considered the first cruise and one of the first engagements of the newly established Continental Navy and the Continental Marines, the progenitor of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The action was also the Marines' first amphibious landing.

~1817 - The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans was opened.

~1820 – The 2nd Missouri Compromise was introduced in the U.S. Congress.

~1845 – Florida was admitted as the 27th state of the Union.

~1845 – For the first time the U.S. Congress passed legislation overriding a presidential veto.

~1849 – The United States Department of the Interior was established on the eve of President Zachary Taylor's inauguration, when the Senate voted 31 to 25 to create the Department. The first Secretary of the Interior was Thomas Ewing.

~1849 – The U.S. Congress passed the Gold Coinage Act that allowed for the minting of 2 new denominations of gold coins, the gold dollar and the gold $20, or double eagle. It further defined the variances which were permissible in United States gold coinage.

~1851 - The U.S. Congress authorized the 3 cent piece. It was the smallest U.S. silver coin evr minted.

~1857 – The British House of Commons passed a resolution by 263 to 249 against the Government regarding its entry into the Second Opium War against the Qing Dynasty of China.

~1865 – After raising a capital stock of $5 million (Hong Kong dollars), the "Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company Limited" opened its doors. It went on to become the founding member of today's HSBC Group.

~1873 – The U.S. Congress enacted the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information. In addition to banning contraceptives, this act also banned the distribution of information on abortion for educational purposes.

~1875 – Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, today a worldwide favorite, premièred at the Opéra Comique in Paris.

~1875 – The first recorded indoor ice hockey game took place at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal, Canada. Organized by James Creighton, who also captained one of the teams, the game was between a pair of 9 member teams that used a wooden 'puck'. The team members used skates and sticks designed for outdoor hockey.

~1875 - The U.S. Congress authorized the 20-cent piece. The 20 cent coin had one of the shortest mintages and lowest circulations in US coin history, for both the series and the denomination. It was minted from 1875-1878, but was only released for circulation in 1875 and 1876 with a few hundred proofs released during the remaining 2 years. The coin also has the distinction of being one of the few coins minted in the short lived Carson City Mint branch of the United States Mint in Carson City, Nevada (which only operated from 1870-1893).

~1877 – Because March 4, 1877 was a Sunday, incoming US President Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath of office in the Red Room of the Executive Mansion, becoming the first president to take the oath of office in the White House. This ceremony was held in secret, because the previous year's election had been so bitterly divisive that outgoing President Grant feared an insurrection by supporters of the defeated Tilden and wanted to ensure that any Democratic attempt to hijack the public inauguration ceremony would fail. With Hayes having been sworn in already in private this was assurred. Hayes took the oath again publicly on March 5 on the East Portico of the United States Capitol.

~1879 – The United States Geological Survey was created. (I am eternally grateful to them and their Public Domain photos!)

~1885 – In 1880, the management of American Bell created what would become AT&T Long Lines. The project was the first of its kind to create a nationwide long distance network with a commercially viable cost structure. This project was formally incorporated into a separate company named American Telephone and Telegraph Company on this date.

~1894 - The "Atlantis" was first published. It was the first Greek newspaper in America.

~1901 - Born this day: Claude Choules, at age 109 one of the last 3 World War I veterans in the world. He is also the last veteran in the world to have served in both world wars and the last seaman from the First as of March 2010.

~1903 - In St. Louis, MO, Barney Gilmore was arrested for spitting.

~1903 - The U.S. imposed a $2 head tax on immigrants.

~1904 – (According to 2 different sources) Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany became the first person to make a sound recording of a political document, using Thomas Edison's phonograph cylinder. (I'm gonna have to give that honor to Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 with his Parks Policy statement.)

~1907 - The SS Dakota was wrecked when she struck a reef off the coast of Yokohama on her 7th journey. The ship was close enough to shore to avoid any deaths and the passengers along with the cargo were evacuated before she sank. 80 bags of mail later washed ashore.

~1909 - Aviators Herring, Curtiss and Bishop announced that airplanes would be made commercially in the U.S.

~1910 - In New York, Robert Forest founded the National Housing Association to fight deteriorating urban living conditions.

~1910 - Nicaraguan rebels admitted defeat in open war and resorted to guerrilla tactics in the hope of U.S. intervention.

~1915 – The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was founded. It was the predecessor of today's NASA.

~1918 – Germany, Austria and Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending Russia's involvement in World War I, and leading to the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

~1923 – The first issue of TIME magazine was published.

~1924 – The 1400 year old Islamic caliphate was abolished when Caliph Abdul Mejid II of the Ottoman Empire was deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gave way to the reformed Turkey of Kemal Atatürk.

~1930 - "Flying High" opened at the Apollo Theatre in New York City.

~1931 – The United States officially adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem by a congressional resolution.

~1938 - A world record for the indoor mile run was set by Glenn Cunningham. He ran the distance in 4 minutes, 4.4 seconds.

~1938 – Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. (Hmmm...this could prove troublesome down the road.)

~1940 – 5 people were killed, including 2 children, in an arson attack on the offices of the communist newspaper Norrskensflamman in Luleå, Sweden, another 5 persons were injured in the blaze. As well, the newspaper's offices were completely destroyed.

~1942 – World War II: Ten Japanese warplanes raid the town of Broome, Western Australia killing more than 100 people. The town of Broome, Western Australia was attacked by Japanese fighter planes. At least 88 people were killed in the assault. Although Broome was a small pearling port at the time, it was also a refuelling point for aircraft, on route between the Netherlands East Indies and major Australian cities. As a result, Broome was on a line of flight for Dutch and other refugees, following the Japanese invasion of Java, and had become a significant Allied military base. During a 2 week period in February–March 1942, more than 8,000 refugees from the Dutch East Indies (many of them in flying boats, which often served as airliners at the time) passed through Broome.

~1943 – In London, 173 people died while trying to enter an air raid shelter at Bethnal Green tube station. Families had crowded into the underground station due to an air raid siren. There was a panic coinciding with the sound of an anti-aircraft battery being fired at nearby Victoria Park. In the wet, dark conditions, a woman slipped on the entrance stairs and the 173 victims died in the resulting crush.

~1945 – The last pocket of Japanese resistance at the Finance Building, which was already reduced to rubble, was flushed out by heavy artillery, ending the protracted Battle of Manila, in the Philippines. The American/Filipino victory was a costly one as large areas of the city had been leveled. The battle left 1,010 U.S. soldiers dead and another 5,565 wounded. An estimated 100,000 Filipinos civilians were killed, both deliberately by the Japanese and from artillery and aerial bombardment by the U.S. military force. About 12,000 Japanese soldiers died, mostly sailors from the Japanese Manila Defense Force.

~1945 - The MiG I-250, the first foray into jet propulsion in a fighter by the Soviet Air Force, took to the air on its maiden flight. The Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau decided to focus on a design that used something more mature than the jet engine, which was still at an experimental stage in the Soviet Union, and chose a mixed-power solution with the VRDK motorjet powered by the Klimov VK-107 V12 engine. While quite successful when it worked, with a maximum speed of 820 km/h (510 mph) being reached during trials, production problems with the VRDK fatally delayed the program and it was canceled in 1948 as obsolete.

~1945 - Superman encountered Batman and Robin for the first time on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

~1952 - "Whispering Streets" debuted on ABC Radio.

~1952 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld New York's Feinberg Law that banned Communist teachers in the U.S.

~1953 – A new Canadian Pacific Airlines De Havilland Comet 1A (CF-CUN), being delivered to Australia, failed to become airborne on takeoff from Karachi, Pakistan. The aircraft plunged into a dry drainage canal and collided with an embankment, killing all 5 crew and 6 passengers on board, the first ever fatal crash of a jet airliner.

~1958 – Nuri as-Said became the prime minister of Iraq for the 14th time. Only 4 months later, on July 15th, 1958 (the day after the republican revolution) he attempted to flee the country disguised as a woman, but was captured and killed.

~1961 – Hassan II ascended the throne of Morocco.

~1969 – NASA launched Apollo 9 to test the lunar module. Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart tested several aspects critical to landing on the moon, including the LM engines, backpack life support systems, navigation systems, and docking maneuvers. The mission was the 2nd manned launch of a Saturn V rocket, and was the 3rd manned mission of the Apollo Program.

~1972 – Mohawk Airlines Flt. 405, a Fairchild FH227B twin-engine turboprop, crashed into a house while on final approach to Albany International Airport, New York, killing 17 people including 1 on the ground and injured 35 others. It remains the deadliest air crash in the history of the Capital District as of March 2010.

~1974 – Turkish Airlines Flt. 981, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, crashed just outside Senlis, France. Known as the "Ermenonville air disaster", from the forest where the aircraft crashed, the accident resulted in the deaths of all 346 on board. The crash of Flt. 981 was the deadliest air disaster of all time before the Tenerife Disaster in 1977, and remained the deadliest single-airliner disaster until the crash of Japan Airlines Flt. 123 in 1985. Flt. 981 has the highest death toll of any aviation accident in France and the highest death toll of any accident involving a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 anywhere in the world. The crash resulted from the failure of the rear cargo hatch latching system, which allowed the hatch to blow off in flight. The resulting decompression of the cargo hold caused the cabin floor above the hatch to collapse. The flight control cables for the airplane that ran through the floor were severed, leaving the pilots with almost no control over the aircraft.

~1980 – After 25 years of service the USS Nautilus, the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first vessel to complete a submerged transit across the North Pole, was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. The Nautilus was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982. She has been preserved as a museum of submarine history in New London, Connecticut, where she receives some 250,000+ visitors a year.

~1985 - ABC Television premiered "Moonlighting". Its run of 66 episodes lasted for 5 seasons. (I seem to recall that Bruce Willis still had hair back then, didn't he?)

~1985 - Women Against Pornography awarded its ‘Pig Award’ to Huggies Diapers. The activists claimed that the TV ads for diapers had "crossed the line between eye-catching and porn."

~1991 – An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by 4 Los Angeles police officers. (This could prove to be troublesome, no?)

~1991 – United Airlines Flt. 585, a Boeing 737, crashed on approach into Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing all 25 aboard. The cause of the crash was determined to be the result of a sudden malfunction of the rudder power control unit.

~1997 – The tallest free standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after 2 1/2 years of construction.

~1999 - In Egypt, 19 people were killed when a bus plunged into a Nile canal.

~1999 - Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones began their attempt to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon non-stop. They succeeded on March 20, 1999.

~2004 – Belgian brewer Interbrew and Brazilian rival AmBev merged (in a $11.2 billion deal) to form InBev, the world's largest brewer.

~2005 – The Mayerthorpe Incident: A crazed farmer murdered four Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables during a drug bust at his property in Rochfort Bridge, Alberta before committing suicide. It was the deadliest peace time incident for the RCMP since 1885 and the North West Rebellion.

~2005 – Steve Fossett became the first person to fly an airplane non stop around the world solo without refueling, in a time of 67 hours 1 minute. The flight speed of 590.7 km/h (342.2 mph) broke the Absolute World Record for the fastest nonstop unrefueled circumnavigation set by the previous Rutan designed Voyager aircraft at 9 days 3 minutes and an average speed of 186.11 km/h (115.65 mph).

~2009 – A bus carrying Sri Lankan cricketers, part of a larger convoy, was fired upon by 12 gunmen, near the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, Pakistan. The cricketers were on their way to play the third day of the second Test against the Pakistani cricket team. 6 members of the Sri Lanka national cricket team were injured. 6 Pakistani policemen and 2 civilians were killed. These were the first attacks on a national sports team since the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants in 1972.

~2009 – The building of the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln (Historical Archives) in Cologne, Germany, collapsed. It is generally believed that the construction of a new subway line of the Cologne Stadtbahn system was closely related to the collapse. Construction workers who built an underground switch facility noticed that water flooded the building pit. They quickly warned staff and visitors of the archive and told them to leave the building. Shortly afterwards, an underground landslide into the subway tunnel caused the archive building to collapse. 2 adjacent apartment buildings also collapsed, killing 2 residents. It is still not known how many of the historical archives can be excavated safely and saved.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 4th


~1634 - Samuel Cole opened the first tavern in Boston, MA.

~1681 - England's King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn for an area that later became the state of Pennsylvania.

~1766 - The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, which had caused bitter and violent opposition in the U.S. colonies.

~1778 - The Continental Congress voted to ratify the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. The two treaties were the first entered into by the U.S. government.

~1789 - The first Congress of the United States met in New York and declared that the U.S. Constitution was in effect.

~1791 - Vermont was admitted as the 14th U.S. state. It was the first addition to the original 13 American colonies.

~1813 - The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin. The French garrison evacuated the city without a fight.

~1826 - The first railroad in the U.S. was chartered. It was the Granite Railway in Quincy, MA.

~1837 - The state of Illinois granted a city charter to Chicago.

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

~1877 - Emile Berliner invented the microphone.

~1880 - Halftone engraving was used for the first time when the "Daily Graphic" was published in New York City.

~1881 - Eliza Ballou Garfield became the first mother of a U.S. President to live in the executive mansion.

~1902 - The American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago.

~1904 - In Korea, Russian troops retreated toward the Manchurian border as 100,000 Japanese troops advanced.

~1908 - The New York board of education banned the act of whipping students in school.

~1908 - France notified signatories of Algeciras that it would send troops to Chaouia, Morocco.

~1914 - Doctor Fillatre successfully separated Siamese twins.

~1917 - Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.

~1925 - Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office in Washington, DC. The presidential inauguration was broadcast on radio for the first time.

~1930 - Emma Fahning became the first woman bowler to bowl a perfect game in competition run by the Women’s International Bowling Congress in Buffalo, NY.

~1933 - U.S. President Roosevelt gave his inauguration speech in which he said "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

~1933 - Labor Secretary Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a Presidential administrative cabinet.

~1942 - "Junior Miss" starring Shirley Temple aired on CBS radio for the first time.

~1942 - The Stage Door Canteen opened on West 44th Street in New York City.

~1944 - Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc., was executed for murder at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY. He was the leader of U.S. organized crime during the 1930's.

~1946 - Canada reported that it had uncovered a spy ring that had been organized by the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. All four people accused admitted to being involved.

~1947 - France and Britain signed an alliance treaty.

~1950 - Walt Disney’s "Cinderella" was released.

~1952 - U.S. President Harry Truman dedicated the "Courier," the first seagoing radio broadcasting station.

~1952 - Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were married.

~1954 - In Boston, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital reported the first successful kidney transplant.

~1963 - Six people received a death sentence in Paris for plotting to kill French President Charles de Gaulle.

~1975 - Queen Elizabeth knighted Charlie Chaplin.

~1977 - More than 1,500 people were killed in an earthquake that effected southern and eastern Europe.

~1986 - "Today" debuted in London as England’s newest, national, daily newspaper.

~1989 - Time, Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. announced a plan to merge.

~1991 - Sheik Saad al-Jaber al-Sabah, the prime minister of Kuwait, returned to his country for the first time since Iraq's invasion.

~1993 - Authorities announced the arrest of Mohammad Salameh. He was later convicted for his role in the World Trade Center Bombing in New York City.

~1994 - Bosnia's Croats and Moslems signed an agreement to form a federation in a loose economic union with Croatia.

~1994 - Four extremists were convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in which six people were killed and more than a thousand were injured.

~1997 - U.S. President Clinton barred federal spending on human cloning.

~1998 - Microsoft repaired software that apparently allowed hackers to shut down computers in government and university offices nationwide.

~1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court said that federal law banned on-the-job sexual harassment even when both parties are the same sex.

~1999 - Monica Lewinsky's book about her affair with U.S. President Clinton went on sale in the U.S.

~1999 - U.S. Marine Captain Richard Ashby was acquitted in a military court of the charge of recklessly flying his jet. 20 people were killed in Italy when his jet hit a gondola cable.

~2002 - Canada banned human embryo cloning but permitted government-funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions.

~2002 – The Battle of Takur Ghar, a short but intense military engagement between United States Special Operations Forces and al-Qaeda insurgents, was fought atop Takur Ghar mountain in Afghanistan. For the US side the battle proved the deadliest entanglement of Operation Anaconda, an effort early in the war in Afghanistan to rout al-Qaeda and Taliban forces from the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains. The battle saw 3 helicopter landings by the U.S. on the mountain top, each greeted by direct assault from Taliban forces. Although Takur Ghar was eventually taken, 8 US soldiers were killed and many more wounded.

~2003 - In the southern Philippines, a bomb hidden in a backpack exploded and killed at least 19 people at an airport.

~2003 - In the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, at least 9 people were killed and 52 were injured when a bus fell into a deep gorge.

~2005 – The car of a released Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, was fired upon by US soldiers after it allegedly ran a roadblock in Iraq, causing the death of an Italian Secret Service Agent and the wounding of Sgrena and another passenger. Sgrena later testified that US forces fired on the car without warning, this incident caused serious strain in the diplomatic relations between Italy and the United States.

~2009 – The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. Al-Bashir is, to date, the only sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002.

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This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 5th

~1623 - The first alcohol temperance law in the colonies was enacted in Virginia.

~1624 - In the American colony of Virginia, the upper class was exempted from whipping by legislation.

~1750 - "King Richard III" was performed in New York City. It was the first Shakespearean play to be presented in America.

~1766 - The first Spanish governor of Louisiana, Antonio de Ulloa, arrived in New Orleans.

~1770 - "The Boston Massacre" took place when British troops fired on a crowd in Boston killing five people. Two British troops were later convicted of manslaughter.

~1793 - Austrian troops defeated the French and recaptured Liege.

~1836 - Samuel Colt manufactured the first pistol (.34-caliber).

~1842 - A Mexican force of over 500 men under Rafael Vasquez invaded Texas for the first time since the revolution. They briefly occupied San Antonio, but soon headed back to the Rio Grande.

~1845 - The U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to ship camels to the western U.S.

~1864 - For the first time, Oxford met Cambridge in track and field competition in England.

~1867 - An abortive Fenian uprising against English rule took place in Ireland.

~1868 - The U.S. Senate was organized into a court of impeachment to decide charges against President Andrew Johnson.

~1872 - George Westinghouse patented the air brake.

~1900 - The American Hall of Fame was founded.

~1900 - Two U.S. battleships leave for Nicaragua to halt revolutionary disturbances.

~1901 - Germany and Britain began negotiations with hopes of creating an alliance.

~1902 - In France, the National Congress of Miners decided to call for a general strike for an 8-hour day.

~1905 - Russian troops began their retreat from Mukden in Manchuria, China. Over 100,000 had been killed in 3 days of fighting.

~1907 - In St. Petersburg, Russia, the new Duma opened. 40,000 demonstrators were dispersed by troops.

~1910 - In Philadelphia, PA, 60,000 people left their jobs to show support for striking transit workers.

~1910 - The Moroccan envoy signed the 1909 agreement with France.

~1912 - The Italians became the first to use dirigibles for military purposes. They used them for reconnaissance flights behind Turkish lines west of Tripoli.

~1918 - The Soviets moved the capital of Russia from Petrograd to Moscow.

~1922 - Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee broke all existing records for women's trap shooting. She hit 98 out of 100 targets.

~1923 - Old-age pension laws were enacted in the states of Montana and Nevada.

~1924 - Frank Caruana of Buffalo, NY, became the first bowler to roll two perfect games in a row.

~1933 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a four-day bank holiday in order to stop large amounts of money from being withdrawn from banks.

~1933 - The Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote in German parliamentary elections.

~1934 - In Amarillo, TX, the first Mother's-In-Law Day was celebrated.

~1943 - Germany called fifteen and sixteen year olds for military service due to war losses.

~1946 - Winston Churchill delivered his "Iron Curtain Speech".

~1946 - The U.S. sent protests to the U.S.S.R. on incursions into Manchuria and Iran.

~1953 - Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died. He had been in power for 29 years.

~1956 - The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the ban on segregation in public schools.

~1969 - Gustav Heinemann was elected West German President.

~1970 - A nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.

~1976 - The British pound fell below the equivalent of $2 for the first time in history.

~1977 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter appeared on CBS News with Walter Cronkite for the first "Dial-a-President" radio talk show.

~1982 - John Belushi died in Los Angeles of a drug overdose at the age of 33.

~1984 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities had the right to display the Nativity scene as part of their Christmas display.

~1985 - Mike Bossy, of the New York Islanders, became the first National Hockey League player to score 50 goals in eight consecutive seasons.

~1993 - Cuban President Fidel Castro said that Hillary Clinton is "a beautiful woman."

~1993 - Sprinter Ben Johnson was banned from racing for life by the Amateur Athletic Association after testing positive for banned performance-enhancing substances for a second time.

~1997 - North Korea and South Korea met for first time in 25 years for peace talks.

~1997 - Chuck Niles received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

~1998 - NASA announced that an orbiting craft had found enough water on the moon to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.

~1998 - It was announced that Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins would lead crew of Columbia on a mission to launch a large X-ray telescope. She was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.

~2004 - Martha Stewart was found guilty of lying about the reason for selling 3,298 shares of ImClone Systems stock, conspiracy, making false statement and obstruction of justice.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 6th

~1521 - Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam.

~1808 - At Harvard University. the first college orchestra was founded.

~1820 - The Missouri Compromise was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by U.S. President James Monroe. The act admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibited slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.

~1834 - The city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

~1836 - The thirteen-day siege of the Alamo by Santa Anna and his army ended. The Mexican army of three thousand men defeated the 189 Texas volunteers.

~1854 - At the Washington Monument, several men stole the Pope's Stone from the lapidarium.

~1857 - The U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ruled that blacks could not sue in federal court to be citizens.

~1886 - "The Nightingale" was first published. It was the first magazine for nurses.

~1899 - Aspirin was patented by German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser.

~1900 - In West Virginia, an explosion trapped 50 coal miners underground.

~1901 - An assassin tried to kill Wilhelm II of Germany in Bremen.

~1907 - British creditors of the Dominican Republic claimed that the U.S. had failed to collect debts.

~1928 - A Communist attack on Peking, China resulted in 3,000 dead and 50,000 fled to Swatow.

~1939 - In Spain, Jose Miaja took over the Madrid government after a military coup and vowed to seek "peace with honor."

~1941 - Les Hite and his orchestra recorded "The World is Waiting for the Sunrise".

~1944 - During World War II, U.S. heavy bombers began the first American raid on Berlin. Allied planes dropped 2000 tons of bombs.

~1946 - Ho Chi Minh, the President of Vietnam, struck an agreement with France that recognized his country as an autonomous state within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

~1947 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the contempt conviction of John L. Lewis.

~1947 - Winston Churchill announced that he opposed British troop withdrawals from India.

~1948 - The USS Newport News, a Des Moines-class heavy cruiser, was launched from Newport News, Virginia. She was the first air conditioned surface ship in the US Navy. (Drat that blasted heat while cruising on the ocean with its soothing breeze...WE NEED A/C DAMMIT!!!)

~1957 - The British African colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

~1960 - Switzerland granted women the right to vote in municipal elections.

~1960 - The United States announced that it would send 3,500 troops to Vietnam.

~1964 - Tom O’Hara set a new world indoor record when he ran the mile in 3 minutes, 56.4 seconds.

~1967 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his plan to establish a draft lottery.

~1970 - Charles Manson released his album "Lies" to finance his defense against murder charges.

~1973 - U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed price controls on oil and gas.

~1975 - Iran and Iraq announced that they had settled their border dispute.

~1980 - Islamic militants in Tehran said that they would turn over American hostages to the Revolutionary Council.

~1981 - Walter Cronkite appeared on his last episode of "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite." He had been on the job 19 years.

~1981 - U.S. President Reagan announced a plan to cut 37,000 federal jobs.

~1982 - National Basketball Association history was made when San Antonio beat Milwaukee 171-166 in three overtime periods to set the record for most points by two teams in a game. The record was beaten on December 13, 1983 by the Pistons and the Nuggets when they played to a final score of 186-184

~1983 - The United States Football League began its first season of pro football competition.

~1985 - Yul Brynner played his 4,500th performance in the musical "The King and I."

~1987 - The British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the Channel off the coast of Belgium. 189 people died.

~1990 - In Afghanistan, an attempted coup to remove President Najibullah from office failed.

~1990 - The Russian Parliament passed a law that sanctioned the ownership of private property.

~1991 - In Paris, five men were jailed for plotting to smuggle Libyan arms to the Irish Republican Army.

~1992 - The last episode of "The Cosby Show" aired. The show had been on since September of 1984.

~1992 - The computer virus "Michelangelo" went into effect.

~1997 - A gunman stole "Tete de Femme," a million-dollar Picasso portrait, from a London gallery. The painting was recovered a week later.

~1997 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II launched the first official royal Web site.

~1998 - A Connecticut state lottery accountant gunned down three supervisors and the lottery chief before killing himself.

~2006 – South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed legislation banning most abortions in the state.

~2007 – Former White House aide I. Lewis Libby, Jr. was found guilty on 4 of 5 counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

~2008 – The Mercaz HaRav Shootings: A lone Palestinian gunman shot multiple students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, a religious school in Jerusalem, Israel. 8 students and the perpetrator were killed and 11 more were wounded, 5 of them in serious to critical condition.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 7th



~322 BC – Died this day: Aristotle, Greek philosopher (b. 384 BC).

~161 - Died this day: Roman emperor Antoninus Pius (b. 86).

~308 - Saint Eubulus was put to death at Caesarea Palestina. He had come from Magantia to visit the Christian congregation there. The judge who condemned him offered Eubulus the opportunity to go free if he sacrificed to an idol. Eubulus refused, and was executed.

~321 – Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire.

~1277 – Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, promulgated a Condemnation of 219 philosophical and theological propositions (or articles) that addressed ideas and concepts which were being discussed and disputed in the faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. (I suppose I should care about what a French critic from 733 years ago said, but...)

~1724 – Died this day: Pope Innocent XIII (b. 1655)

~1799 – The French army led by Napoleon Bonaparte captured Jaffa, ransacked it, and killed scores of local inhabitants.

~1814 – The Battle of Craonne was fought on the Chemin des Dames, in the département of Aisne. Napoleon's French army attacked a force more than twice its size consisting of Russian and Prussian troops under General Blücher. The result was yet another victory by Napoleon.

~1827 – During the Argentina-Brazil War (1825–1828), Brazilian troops attempted to take the naval base at Carmen de Patagones but they were repelled by the civilians. This date is still commemorated with a festival in the city.

~1827 – The Shrigley Abduction: 15 year old heiress Ellen Turner was abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the High Sheriff of Cheshire. (Yeah, he must have been HIGH on something to think he'd get away with it...)

~1850 – Senator Daniel Webster gave his Seventh of March speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850 which included the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; a law that required federal officials to recapture and return runaway slaves. Webster was bitterly attacked by abolitionists in New England who felt betrayed by his compromises. The Rev. Theodore Parker complained, "No living man has done so much to debauch the conscience of the nation." Horace Mann described him as being "a fallen star! Lucifer descending from Heaven!" James Russell Lowell called Webster "the most meanly and foolishly treacherous man I ever heard of." Webster never recovered the popularity he lost in the aftermath of the Seventh of March speech.

~1862 – The 2 day Battle of Pea Ridge began in northwest Arkansas, near Bentonville. Union forces led by Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate troops under Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. The outcome of the battle essentially cemented Union control of Missouri. One notable fact of this battle is that it was one of the few in which a Confederate army significantly outnumbered a Union army.

~1876 – Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for an invention he called the telephone, an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically" (patent # 174,465).

~1887 – The North Carolina General Assembly founded North Carolina State University, as a land grant college.

~1912 – When he arrived at Hobart, Australia, Roald Amundsen publicly announced that his expedition had reached the South Pole on December 14th, 1911.

~1913 - Died this day: (Emily) Pauline Johnson, famous Native Canadian notable for her poems and performances that celebrated her First Nations heritage (b. 1861).

~1914 – Prince William of Wied arrived in Albania to begin his reign. Only 6 months later he left for exile.

~1936 – In direct violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler ordered the reoccupying of the Rhineland by German forces. Neither France nor Britain made an effort to stop him.

~1945 – During Operation Lumberjack, troops of the U.S. Army's 9th Armored Division reached the bridge at Remagen. It was one of the 2 damaged but intact bridges over the Rhine (a railway bridge in Wesel was the other one). This after German defenders failed to demolish it, despite several attempts. The fuses of the German explosives were cut by 2 Polish engineers from Silesia that had been forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht. US Army Sergeant Alexander A. Drabik of Holland, Ohio was the first American soldier to cross the bridge. In doing so he became the first American soldier to cross the Rhine River into Germany. Combat Command B of the 9th Armored was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for capturing the bridge.r at Remagen.

~1951 – During the Korean War, Operation Ripper (which had begun the day before) gained momentum and made significant progress as United Nations troops led by General Matthew Ridgeway assaulted Chinese forces in the area around Soeul.

~1965 – Died this day: Louise Mountbatten, Consort queen of Sweden, wife of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (b. 1889)

~1965 – Bloody Sunday (1 of at least 14 incidents that have had this stupid tag hung on them): In Selma, Alabama a march by 600 civil rights protesters was forcefully broken up. A wall of Alabama state troopers began shoving the peaceful demonstrators after they had crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many were knocked to the ground and then beaten with nightsticks. Another detachment of troopers fired tear gas as mounted troopers charged the crowd on horseback. Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the U.S. civil rights movement. Amelia Boynton was beaten and gassed nearly to death; her photo appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world. In all, 17 marchers were hospitalized.

~1968 - During the Tet Offensive, the First Battle of Saigon ended with an American/South Vietnamese victory.

~1971 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman delivered his historic "This time the struggle is for our freedom" speech at Ramna Race Course, calling upon the Bengali people to prepare for the freedom struggle ahead against the powerful political and military establishment of West Pakistan.

~1973 - Comet Kohoutek, formally designated C/1973 E1, was first sighted by Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek. It attained perihelion on December 28 that same year. Comet Kohoutek is a long period comet; its previous apparition was about 150,000 years ago, and its next apparition will be in about 75,000 years. Before its close approach, Kohoutek was hyped by the media as the "comet of the century". But because Comet Kohoutek fell far short of expectations, its name has become synonymous with spectacular duds. However, it was fairly bright as comets go and put on a respectable show in the evenings shortly after perihelion.

~1983 - The Nashville Network (TNN) began broadcasting. In 2000, after an attempt to attract younger viewers failed, TNN's country music format was changed and the network was renamed The National Network, eventually becoming Spike in 2003.

~1984 - US backed forces attacked San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua.

~1986 – The Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver located the crew cabin of the doomed Space Shuttle Challenger on the ocean floor off Florida. The ship later received a Navy Unit Commendation for the operation.

~1989 – Iran and Britain broke off diplomatic relations over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.

~1994 – Copyright Law: In the case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use. (And I smiled...)

~2001 - The SpongeBob SquarePants "You Wish" special aired on Nickelodeon TV. (Preschoolers still make note of this date!)

~2007 – British House of Commons voted in favor of making to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected. (It hasn't happened yet...but they're working on it.)

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 8th



~161 - Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus became co-Emperors of Rome following the death of Emperor Antonius Pius. This was an unprecedented political arrangement in the Roman Empire.

~1126 – Died this day: Queen Urraca of León (b. 1082).

~1126 – Alfonso VII ascended the throne of Castile and León upon the death of his mother Queen Urraca.

~1144 – Died this day: Pope Celestine II (b. circa 1082).

~1655 – John Casor became the first legally recognized slave in Britain's North American colonies. (Sorry about that, John...)

~1702 - Died this day: King William III of England and Ireland (b. 1650).

~1702 – Anne Stuart, sister of Mary II, Ascended the throne as Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland upon the death of her cousin King William III. She was extremely popular with the English people during her short 12 year reign. (Of course, it didn't hurt that she was smokin' hot, either...)

~1722 – The Battle of Gulnabad was fought between Afghani military forces the army of the Persian Safavid Empire. The battle resulted in Afghanistan troops, under the Shah Mahmud, crushing the Persian force (more than 2 1/2 times its size and much better equipped) and controlling much of Persia. Persian Shah Hussain was taken captive during the battle causing the once wealthy and powerful Persia to fall into anarchy. Their cities were looted, their women of prominent families married off to powerful men from Afghanistan and the Persian bloodlines became blurred. This battle further cemented the eventual fall of the Persian Empire.

~1777 – Regiments from Ansbach and Bayreuth, sent to support Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, mutinied in the town of Ochsenfurt.

~1782 – The Gnadenhütten Massacre: At the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhütten, Ohio, 96 Indians who had converted to Christianity were tied, stunned with a mallet blow, and killed with a fatal scalping cut by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians. In all, 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children were murdered and scalped. Their bodies were piled in the mission buildings and the town was burned to the ground. Other abandoned Moravian towns were burned as well. 2 boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre. Although the identity of the perpetrators was known no criminal charges were ever filed.

~1817 – The New York Stock Exchange was created. The first central location of the Exchange was a room, rented in 1817 for $200 a month, located at 40 Wall Street.

~1827 - The Commonwealth of Virginia chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company. It was tasked with building a railroad from the port of Baltimore, Maryland west to a suitable point on the Ohio River. The railroad (formally incorporated on April 24th of that year) was intended to provide not only an alternative to, but also a faster route for Midwestern goods to reach the East Coast than the 7 year old hugely successful, but slow Erie Canal across upstate New York.

~1844 - Died this day: King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway (b. 1763).

~1844 – King Oscar I ascended the the thrones of Sweden and Norway upon the death of his father King Karl XIV Johan.

~1862 – American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (built using the remains of the scuttled USS Merrimack) was launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

~1862 - The Battle of Hampton Roads: The newly launched iron-clad, CSS Virginia, took on the blockading wooden hulled Union fleet Off Sewell's Point, near the mouth of Hampton Roads, Virginia. While proving invulnerable to the Union cannonfire she sank the sloop-of-war USS Cumberland and frigate USS Congress before attacking the USS Minnesota, which had run aground. Due to her deep draft and the falling tide, however, Virginia was unable to get close enough to be effective. Virginia retired with the expectation of returning the next day and completing the task. During the night, though, the iron-clad USS Monitor arrived and day 2 of the battle would be very different indeed. 241 Union seamen died as a result of Virginia's attack while she only lost 2 Confederate sailors.

~1917 - The February Revolution broke out in Russia (February 23rd Old Style calendar).

~1917 – The U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting "cloture" in the form of Rule 22.

~1917 - The SS Storstad, made famous by her 1912 ramming of the RMS Empress of Ireland on the Saint Lawrence River, was torpedoed and sunk by U-62 off the southern coast of Ireland.

~1917 – Died this day: Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German aircraft manufacturer (b. 1838) (A busy day back in 1917...!)

~1921 – Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier was assassinated as he exited the parliament building in Madrid.

~1924 – The Castle Gate Mine Disaster:. In Utah, all of the 171 men working in the Castle Gate coal mine were killed in a series of 3 violent explosions deep within the mine. One worker, the leader of the rescue crew, died from carbon monoxide inhalation while attempting to reach the victims shortly after the explosion. Recovery of the bodies took 9 days and identification of the victims was only possible, in some cases, by recognizing familiar articles of clothing.

~1936 – Daytona Beach Road Course held the first sanctioned stock car race in its history, a precursor to the "Daytona 500". Daytona Beach officials enlisted local racer Sig Haugdahl to organize and promote the auto race along the 3.2-mile (5.1 km) course. Haugdahl is credited for designing the track.

~1942 – The Allied forces in Indonesia surrendered to the invading Japanese. The colonial army was consigned to detention camps but Indonesian soldiers were released. Most of European civilians were interned once Japanese or Indonesian replacements could be found for senior and technical positions.

~1942 - Rangoon, Burma fell to the invading Imperial Japanese Army.

~1943 - World War II: Japanese troops counter-attacked American forces on "Hill 700" in Bougainville in a battle that lasted for 5 days.

~1957 – The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitioned the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th & 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, was adopted by the state of Georgia. The Memorial, part of Georgia's "continuing battle for segregation," followed the Supreme Court's ruling, in Brown v. Board of Education, that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from discriminating against racial minorities in public schools.

~1959 - The Marx Brothers appeared in "The Incredible Jewel Robbery", an episode of General Electric Theater, broadcast by CBS. It was the first appearance of all three Marx Brothers together (minus the retired Zeppo) since the film "Love Happy" in 1949, and it would prove to be their last joint TV appearance.

~1960 - The Saab 35 Draken supersonic fighter entered into service with the Swedish Air Force. It would fly for 39 years before finally being retired.

~1963 – The Ba'ath Party came to power in Syria in a Coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers. A National Revolutionary Command Council took control and assigned itself legislative power; it appointed Salah al-Din al-Bitar as head of a "national front" government. The Ba'ath participated in this government along with the Arab Nationalist Movement, the United Arab Front and the Socialist Unity Movement.

~1965 - Vietnam War: 3,500 United States Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war in that country. U.S. public opinion at the time was overwhelmingly in support of the deployment.

~1966 – The 158 year old "Nelson's Pillar" in Dublin was blown up. A group of former Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers planted a bomb that destroyed the upper half of the pillar, throwing the statue of Nelson into the street and causing large chunks of stone to be thrown around. Fortunately there were no injuries.

~1973 - The Whiskey Au Go Go Fire: A firebombing occurred at 02:10 a.m. in the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Australia. It resulted in the deaths of 15 patrons and staff making it one of the worst mass murders in modern Australia. The fire began with the ignition of two 23 litre (6 gal.) drums of diesel fuel in the building's foyer. The drums were thrown into the foyer and then ignited by a lit torch thrown through the open door. Once ignited the burning diesel sent carbon monoxide up to the club's main room on the first floor. Large quantities of grease had been smeared over the stairs of the building's rear fire escape and the door of the fire escape had also been greased. The 15 people killed had died of asphyxiation as they struggled to open the greased fire escape doors. However, police believed that had they been able to open the doors they would have slipped and fallen down the steel stairs. 2 men were later convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison.

~1974 – Charles de Gaulle Airport opened in Paris, France. The planning and construction phase of what was known then as Aéroport de Paris Nord (Paris North Airport) had begun in 1966.

~1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Despite a low key launch of the series (the first episode was broadcast at 10:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night) it received generally good reviews and a tremendous audience reaction for radio.

~1979 – Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference called "Philips Introduce Compact Disc" in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

~1983 – US President Ronald Reagan first called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" during a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida.

~1985 – The 1985 Beirut Car Bombing: A car bomb exploded in a failed assassination attempt on Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon. The blast killed at least 80 and injured more than 200 others.

~1999 – The Supreme Court of the United States denied the appeal for the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh's request for a nationally televised execution was also denied.

~2004 – A new constitution was signed by Iraq's Governing Council. (That and $1.35 will get you a stale coffee down at the Exxon gas bar.)

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 9th



~141 BC – Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumed the throne over the Han Dynasty of China. Emperor Wu is best remembered for the vast territorial expansion that occurred under his reign, as well as the strong and centralized Confucian state he organized. He is cited in Chinese history as the greatest emperor of the Han dynasty and one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history.

~1202 – Died this day: King Sverre of Norway (b. circa 1148).

~1230 – A Bulgarian force of only 25,000, led by Tsar Ivan Asen II, fought the 85,000 man army of Theodore of Epirus at the Battle of Klokotnitsa. Completely outclassed by the tactical moves of Ivan, the Epirotians were completely defeated. Only a small force under the despot's brother Manuel managed to escape the battlefield. The rest were killed in the battle or captured, including the royal court of Epirus and Theodore himself.

~1276 - Augsburg, Bavaria was decreed an "Imperial Free City".

~1440 - Died this day: Saint Frances of Rome (b.1384).

~1500 – The 13 ship fleet of Pedro Alvares Cabral left Lisbon for the Indies. The fleet discovered Brazil which laid within the boundaries granted to Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas.

~1566 – David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered in the queen's presence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland.

~1765 - After a public campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerated Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge (largely due to his being a Protestant) although his son had actually committed suicide.

~1796 – Napoléon Bonaparte married his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.

~1841 - The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the Amistad case concerning captive Africans who, in 1839, had seized control of the slave-trading ship Amistad carrying them. The court ruled that they had been taken into slavery illegally.

~1842 – Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, premièred at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Its success established Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera writers.

~1847 – The first large scale amphibious assault in U.S. history was launched in the Siege of Veracruz during the Mexican-American War.

~1862 – The USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw on the 2nd day of the Battle of Hampton Roads. It was history's first battle between two ironclad warships.

~1888 – Died this day: William I, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany (b. 1797).

~1896 – Prime Minister Francesco Crispi resigned following the Italian loss (read: humiliating defeat) at the Battle of Adowa.

~1905 - The Battle of Mukden

~1910 – The Westmoreland County Coal Strike began. At its height, the strike encompassed 65 mines and 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers. 16 people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families. The strike ended on July 1st, 1911 as a defeat for the union.

~1916 – Pancho Villa led 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, which was garrisoned by a detachment of the U.S. 13th Cavalry Regiment. Villa's force burned a part of the town and killed 7 or 8 soldiers and 10 residents before retreating back into Mexico. United States President Woodrow Wilson responded to the Columbus raid by sending 10,000 troops under Brigadier General John J. Pershing to Mexico to pursue Villa. This was known as the Punitive Mexican Expedition or Pancho Villa Expedition. The expedition was eventually called off after failing to find Villa, who had successfully escaped.

~1925 – Pink's War: An air to ground bombardment and strafing carried out by the Royal Air Force, under the command of Wing Commander Richard Charles Montagu Pink, began against the mountain strongholds of Mahsud tribesmen in South Waziristan.

~1933 – The Emergency Banking Act was passed. Submitted to Congress by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it wa the first of his New Deal policies.

~1934 – Born this day: Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first human in space (d. 1968)

~1945 - Operation Meetinghouse: A B-29 Superfortress task force consisting of 335 planes took off to raid Tokyo, leading to 279 of them dropping over 1,700 tons of incendiary bombs on the Japanese capital. 14 B-29s were lost in the attack but approximately 25% (16 sq mi - 41 km²) of the city was destroyed and some 100,000 people are believed to have died in the resulting firestorm, more than the immediate deaths of either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombs.

~1954 – McCarthyism: CBS television broadcast the See It Now episode, "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy", produced by Fred Friendly & Edward R. Murrow (who hosted) This show has often been referred to as television's finest hour.

~1956 – The Soviet military suppressed mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. (These Georgian morons were against dismantlantling Stalin's authoritarian state.)

~1957 – A magnitude 8.3 earthquake in the Andreanof Islands, Alaska triggered a Pacific wide tsunami causing extensive damage to Hawaii and Oahu. No deaths resulted from either the quake or the tsunami.

~1959 – The Barbie doll made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

~1964 - The very first Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.

~1967 – Trans World Airlines Flt. 553, a Douglas DC-9, crashed into a field in Concord Township, Ohio following a mid-air collision with a Beechcraft Baron 55 that was not under air traffic control.All 25 aboard the airliner died, as did the pilot of the Beechcraft.

~1975 - Construction began on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

~1976 – 42 people died in the Cavalese Cable Car Disaster, the world's worst cable car accident to date. In the subsequent inquest it was found that two steel cables crossed and one severed the other. The automatic safety system which could have prevented disaster had been switched off.

~1977 – The Hanafi Muslim Siege: In a 39 hour standoff, armed Hanafi Muslims seized 3 Washington, D.C., buildings, taking 149 others hostage. 2 people were killed in the incident. That the toll was not higher was due to the courageous intervention of three Muslim ambassadors, Egypt's Ashraf Ghorbal, Pakistan's Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan and Iran's Ardeshir Zahedi.

~1981 - Dan Rather anchored the CBS Evening News for the first time.

~1987 - The Irish rock band U2 released their milestone album "The Joshua Tree".

~1989 – As a result of a strike, weakened airline structure, inability to compete after deregulation and other financial problems, Eastern Air Lines filed for bankruptcy protection.

~1993 - Rodney King testified at the federal trial of 4 Los Angeles, California police officers accused of violating King's civil rights when they beat him during an arrest. 2 of the 4 were subsequently convicted and sentenced to 30 months imprisonment.

~1996 - Died this day: George Burns, American actor, singer and husband of Gracie (b. 1896).

~1997 – Comet Hale-Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia were treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permitted Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day.

~1999 - Nicole died.

~2005 - Dan Rather anchored the CBS Evening News for the last time.

.....................................
Not in the mood for a sig today.

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 10th



~241 BC – The Battle of the Aegates Islands was fought off the western coast of the island of Sicily. It was the final naval battle fought between the fleets of Carthage and the Roman Republic during the First Punic War. The result was a decisive Roman victory that saw over half the opposing fleet destroyed. Upon achieving this success over the Carthaginian fleet, Roman commander Catulus renewed his siege and captured Lilybaeum, isolating Barca and his army in Sicily, scattered among the few strongholds that Carthage still retained. Without the resources to build another fleet or to reinforce its land troops, Carthage admitted defeat and signed a peace treaty with Rome, bringing the First Punic War to a conclusion.

~483 - Died this day: Pope Simplicius (b. circa 415).

~1391 – Died this day: Tvrtko I, first king of Bosnia (b. 1338).

~1735 – An agreement between Nadir Shah and Russia was signed near Ganja that saw Russian troops withdrawn from Baku.

~1762 – French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, was executed by "breaking on the wheel" by authorities. This case inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform in France.

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

~1814 – The French army under Napoleon I was defeated by Blücher's Prussian army at the Battle of Laon in France.

~1830 – The KNIL (also known as the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army) was formed by royal decree. It was not part of the Royal Netherlands Army, but a separate military arm specifically formed for service in the Netherlands East Indies. Its establishment coincided with the Dutch drive to expand colonial rule from the 17th century boundaries to the far larger final boundaries of the Dutch East Indies, established 70 years later, which remain the present boundaries of Indonesia.

~1831 – The French Foreign Legion was established by King Louis-Philippe. The direct reason was that foreigners were forbidden to serve in the French Army after the July 1830 Revolution, so the Legion was created to allow the government a way around this restriction. The purpose of the Legion was to remove disruptive elements from society and put them to use fighting the enemies of France. Recruits included failed revolutionaries from the rest of Europe, soldiers from the disbanded foreign regiments, and troublemakers in general, both foreign and French. Algeria was designated as the Legion's home.

~1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War, was ratified in the United States Senate by a vote of 38 to 14.

~1861 – Forces under El Hadj Umar Tall seized the city of Segou, on their way to destroying the Bambara Empire of Mali.

~1864 – The Red River Campaign, a series of battles fought along the Red River in Louisiana during the American Civil War, began. The operation lasted until May 22nd of that year. The campaign was a Union initiative, fought between the 30,000 Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, and Confederate troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, whose strength varied from 6,000 to 12,000. In the end the expedition would prove to be a failure.

~1864 - Montana vigilantes hung the notorious Jack Slade for disturbing the peace.

~1876 – Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful transmission of clear speech using a liquid transmitter when Bell spoke into his device, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." and Watson heard each word distinctly.

~1880 - Members of the Salvation Army landed in the United States and began operations.

~1891 – Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patented the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching. (It must have been a slow day in the funeral home...)

~1905 – A group of rebels, including Eleftherios Venizelos, called for Crete's union with Greece and began what would become known as the Theriso revolt.

~1906 – The Courrières Mine Disaster, Europe's worst ever to date, killed 1099 miners (including many children) in Northern France when a dust explosion devastated a coal mine operated by the Compagnie des mines de houille de Courrières. The cause of the blast was never determined.

~1917 – Batangas was formally founded as one of the Philippines's earliest encomiendas.

~1922 – Mahatma Gandhi was arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to 6 years in prison. He was released after nearly 2 years to undergo an appendicitis operation.

~1933 – The Long Beach Earthquake took place with a magnitude of 6.4, causing widespread damage to buildings throughout Southern California. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach on the Newport-Inglewood Fault. $40 million dollars in property damage resulted, and 115 lives were lost. Many of these fatalities occurred as people ran out of buildings and were hit by falling debris.

~1947 - Born this day: Kim Campbell, the first (and to date the only) female Prime Minister of Canada, the first baby boomer to hold Canada's highest office and the first to have been born in British Columbia.

~1952 – Fulgencio Batista led a successful coup in Cuba and appointed himself as the "provisional president". (Since the SOB could never get his sorry ass elected again it was the only way for him to get back onto easy street...)

~1959 – The Tibetan Uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama's palace to prevent his removal.

~1966 - Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands married the German aristocrat Claus von Amsberg, a diplomat working for the German Foreign Office. Their marriage caused a massive protest on the wedding day in Amsterdam. As time went on, however, Prince Claus became one of the most popular members of the Dutch monarchy and his 2002 death was widely mourned throughout the country.

~1969 – In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray plead guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. He would later retract his guilty plea.

~1977 – The rings of Uranus were discovered by James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham, and Douglas J. Mink. More than 200 years ago, William Herschel also reported observing rings, but modern astronomers are skeptical that he could have actually seen them, as they are very dark and faint. 2 additional rings were discovered in 1986 in images taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, and 2 more outer rings were found in 2003–2005 utilizing Hubble Space Telescope photos.

~1980 – Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shot and killed Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower. (What, the diet didn't work for her?)

~1982 - Syzygy: all 9 planets aligned on the same side of the sun. (YES, that includes Pluto...)

~1987 - The Holy See, the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, condemned the practice of surrogate motherhood, along with test-tube babies and artificial insemination. (No...what a surprise there!!!)

~1990 – Hérard Abraham became acting President of Haïti after street protests forced President Prosper Avril into exile. He gave up power 3 days later, becoming the only military leader in Haïti during the twentieth century to give up power voluntarily.

~2000 – The NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaked at 5132.52, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom.

~2004 - Six Flags sold its European parks, with the exception of the Movie World park in Madrid, Spain, to Star Parks Group. The Madrid park was sold back to Time Warner and renamed "Parque Warner Madrid. All this to infuse much needed capital into the financially troubled firm.

~2005 – Died this day: Dave Allen, Irish comedian and master of political & religious humor (b. 1936).

~2006 – The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit, arrived at the Red Planet.

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 11th



~1425 BC – Died this day: Thutmose III, Egyptian pharaoh (b. circa 1509 BC).

~222 - Died this day: Roman Emperor Elagabalus (b. 203).

~1387 – Battle of Castagnaro: English condottiero Sir John Hawkwood led a Paduan army to victory in a factional clash with the forces of Verona led by Giovanni Ordelaffi. Castagnaro is hailed as Sir John Hawkwood's greatest victory. Following a Fabian like strategy, Hawkwood goaded the Veronese into attacking him on a field of his own choosing, by laying waste to the Veronese lands nearby.

~1513 - Leo X was proclaimed Pope. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope and is known primarily for the sale of indulgences to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 theses. He was the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, the most famous ruler of the Florentine Republic, and Clarice Orsini. His cousin, Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, would later succeed him as Pope Clement VII (1523–34).

~1649 – The Peace of Rueil was signed. It signalled an end to the opening episodes of the Fronde, France's civil war, after little blood had been shed. The articles ended all hostilities and declared all avenues of trade reopened. The settlement was promulgated in the name of the child king Louis XIV through his mother Anne of Austria, the Queen Regent. Cardinal Mazarin, the true power of the court party, was not mentioned in the text, although he was a signatory, as was the Grand Condé, who had been recruited by the court party to overcome the resistance of Paris.
The Frondeurs and the France sign the Peace of Rueil.

~1702 – The Daily Courant, the first regular daily newspaper to be published in England, made its debut. It was published by Elizabeth Mallet from rooms above the White Hart pub in Fleet Street, which she described as being "against the Ditch at Fleet Bridge". The paper lasted until 1735 when it merged with the Daily Gazetteer.

~1708 – Queen Anne withheld Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill on the advice of her ministers, for fear that the proposed militia created would be disloyal. It the last time a British monarch vetoed legislation.

~1824 – The United States War Department created the Office of Indian Affairs, today's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

~1845 – The Flagstaff War: Chiefs Hone Heke, Kawiti and Māori warriors attacked the British guardhouse killing all the defenders and cutting down the flag pole for the 4th time. At the same time, possibly as a diversion, Kawiti and his men attacked the town of Kororareka. The garrison, of about 100 men, managed to hold the perimeter while the town was evacuated to the ships moored in the bay. Most buildings in the town were burned, but the missionaries' homes and the church were not touched. The next morning, all surviving inhabitants of Russell set sail for Auckland in HMS Hazard (whose sailors had taken part in the fighting ashore), the 21-gun United States corvette USS St. Louis, the Government brigantine Victoria and the schooner Dolphin. 19 Europeans had been killed and 27 wounded. Hone Heke and Kawiti were victorious and the Pākehā (Europeans), symbolised by their flag pole, had been humbled.

~1848 – Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin became the first Premiers of the Province of Canada to be democratically elected under a system of responsible government.

~1851 – The opera Rigoletto, by Giuseppe Verdi, was first performed at La Fenice in Venice. Today it is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career.

~1861 – The Constitution of the Confederate States of America was adopted and remained in effect through the conclusion of the American Civil War. (Once again...that and $1.35 will get you a stale cup of coffee down at the Exxon gas bar.)

~1864 – The Great Sheffield Flood: A flood devastated parts of Sheffield, England when the Dale Dyke Dam at Low Bradfield on the River Loxley broke while it was being filled for the first time. An estimated 3 million m³ (700 million imperial gallons) of water swept down the Loxley Valley, through Loxley village and on to Malin Bridge and Hillsborough, where the River Loxley joins the River Don. The flood continued south down the Don into Sheffield centre, around the eastward bend of the Don at Lady's Bridge, then to Attercliffe, past the sites of today's Don Valley Stadium, Sheffield Arena and Meadowhall Shopping Centre and on to Rotherham. The subsequent enquiry found that the flood had wrecked nearly every bridge as far as Lady’s Bridge, destroyed 800 houses, and killed 270 people. The bodies were later found as far down the Don as Mexborough. The conclusion was that the dam construction was defective, and that a small leak in the wall grew rapidly until the dam failed completely. The claims for damages formed one of the largest insurance claims of the Victorian period.

~1867 – The opera Don Carlos, by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered at the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra in Paris.

~1872 – Construction of the Seven Sisters Colliery in South Wales began. it is located on what was once the richest coal field in Britain. David Evans of the Evans-Bevan coal mining partnership had wanted to call the colliery after his daughter, Isabella Bevan, who cut the first sod on the land at Bryn Dulais farm with a silver spade. However, in light of superstition, and the fact that his own 6 sisters attended the ceremony, Evans agreed to call the mine Severn Sisters.

~1888 – The Great Blizzard of '88 (March 11 – March 14, 1888) One of the most severe blizzards in United States' recorded history struck the Eastern Seaboard. Snowfalls of 40-50 inches (102-127 cm) fell in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and sustained winds of over 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet (15.2 m). Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their houses for up to a week. More than 400 deaths were attributed to the storm.

~1897 - A meteorite entered the earth's atmosphere and exploded over New Martinsville, West Virginia. The debris caused widespread damage but no human injuries were reported.

~1917 – Baghdad fell to the Anglo-Indian forces commanded by British General Stanley Maude. From Baghdad, Maude launched the Samarrah Offensive and extended his operations to the Euphrates and Diyala rivers.

~1927 – Samuel Roxy Rothafel opened the Roxy Theatre in New York City, a 5,920 seat movie theater at 153 West 50th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. It opened with the silent film The Love of Sunya, produced by and starring Gloria Swanson. The huge movie palace was a leading Broadway film showcase through the 1950s and was also noted for its lavish stage shows. It closed and was demolished in 1960.

~1931 – Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR (abbreviated as GTO) was introduced in the Soviet Union. It was a complement to the Unified Sports Classification System of the USSR. While the latter provided Soviet physical education system requirements only for athletes, GTO was a programme for all Soviet people of almost all ages.

~1941 – US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.

~1945 – Operation Tan No. 2: A long-range Kamikaze was mission directed at the main Allied naval fleet anchorage at Ulithi atoll in the western Pacific. The Japanese hoped to take the U.S. Pacific fleet by surprise and sink or damage a significant number of the fleet's aircraft carriers or other large ships. In the attack, 24 "Frances" twin engined bombers took off from Japan to conduct suicide attacks on the U.S. fleet at Ulithi atoll. Only 2 of the aircraft reached Ulithi, arriving after nightfall. One aircraft hit the U.S. aircraft carrier Randolph on the starboard side aft just below the flight deck, killing 27 men and injuring a further 105. The 2nd attack plane crashed onto an access road on Sorlen islet.

~1958 – Died this day: Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish inventor of Lego (b. 1891)

~1966 - President Sukarno of Indonesia was forced to give up his executive power and rule through Major General Suharto.

~1977 – The Hanafi Muslim Siege: Nearly 150 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were set free after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined negotiations and reached an agreement.

~1978 – The Coastal Road Massacre: At least 37 israeli citizens were killed (13 of them children) and more than 70 others wounded when Al Fatah gunmen hijacked a bus outside of Tel Aviv. This attack prompted Israel's retaliatory Operation Litani, 3 days later.

~1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by the Politburo, only 3 hours after the death of Konstantin Chernenko.

~1990 – Lithuania declared itself independent from the USSR. It was the first time that a soviet socialist republic declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union.

~1990 – Patricio Aylwin was sworn in as the first democratically elected Chilean president since 1970.

~1993 – Janet Reno was confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States.

~2004 – The Madrid Train Bombings: 3 days before Spain's general elections, simultaneous explosions occurred on morning rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain. 191 people died and a further 1,800+ were injured. The official investigation by the Spanish Judiciary determined the attacks were directed by an al-Qaeda inspired terrorist cell.

~2005 – A headcase went on a shooting rampage at Fulton County courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia. He was on trial for rape when he escaped from custody and murdered the judge presiding over his trial, a court reporter, a Sheriff's Deputy, and later a Federal agent. A large scale manhunt was launched in metro-Atlanta and the perpetrator was taken into custody 26 hours later. The prosecution charged him with committing 54 crimes during the escape and he was found guilty on all counts on November 7, 2008.

~2006 – Michelle Bachelet was inaugurated as first female president of Chile. (You show'em, Michelle!)

~2009 – The Winnenden School Shooting: A shooting occurred at a secondary school in Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany, followed by a shootout at a car dealership in nearby Wendlingen. The shooting spree resulted in 16 deaths, including the suicide of the perpetrator, a 17 year old boy who had graduated from the school one year earlier. Several people were also injured during the incident.

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 12th



~538 – Ostrogoth forces under King Witiges, ended their siege of Rome and retreated to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of the victorious Roman army under General, Belisarius.

~604 - Died this day: Pope Gregory I (b. circa 540).

~1289 – Died this day: (Saint) King Demetre II of Georgia (b. 1259)

~1374 – Died this day: Emperor Go-Kogon of Japan (b. 1336)

~1447 – Died this day: Shah Rukh, Shah of Persia and Transoxonia (b. 1377)

~1507 - Cesare Borgia died while fighting alongside his brother King John III of Navarre, during the Siege of Viana in Spain. (Yet another bad day in history for royalty.)

~1622 – Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Jesuits, were canonized as saints by by Pope Gregory XV.

~1689 – The Williamite war in Ireland, a conflict between Catholic King James II and Protestant William of Orange over who would be King of England, Scotland and Ireland, began. The cause of the war was the deposition of James II as King of the Three Kingdoms by William. James was supported by Catholic "Jacobites" in Ireland and hoped to use the country as a base to regain his Three Kingdoms. He was given military support by France to this end. For this reason, the War became part of a wider European conflict known as the Nine Years War.

~1832 – The ballet La Sylphide, by Filippo Taglioni, premièred at the Paris Opéra. Taglioni designed the work as a showcase for his daughter Marie.

~1857 - The opera "Simon Boccanegra", by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered in Venice. at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

~1863 - CSA President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address. (Wal, boyz...things ain't a goin' too good fer us right now, but ah'z thinkz tha' a'soonas we whup them Union fellers up thar in Gettysburg a bit later on this yar...mebbe thin's will be a whole lot better...!)

~1868 – An attempt to assassinate Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh was made in Clontarf, New South Wales. The gunman who shot the prince (in the back) was an alcoholic, and had been released from a lunatic asylum immediately before the attempted assassination.

~1884 - The Mississippi University for Women became the first public women's college in the United States. Then known as the Industrial Institute and College, the institution was created by an act of the Mississippi Legislature for the dual purposes of providing a liberal arts education for women and preparing them for employment. The first session began on October 22nd, 1885 with an enrollment of approximately 250 students. The campus was formerly occupied by the Columbus Female Institute, a private college founded in 1847.

~1894 – In Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA, Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time. (2 out of 5 sources dispute this date.)

~1906 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations must yield incriminating evidence in anti-trust suits. (Things are looking up...only 1 out of 5 sources disputes this date!)

~1909 - In a blatant case of gunboat diplomacy, US President William H. Taft ordered 3 U.S. warships to Nicaragua to stem the conflict with El Salvador.

~1912 – The Girl Scouts of the USA was founded by Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low when she organized the first Girl Scout troop meeting of 18 girls in Savannah, Georgia.

~1913 – Canberra Day: The future capital of Australia was officially named Canberra by Lady Denman, the wife of the then Governor General Lord Denman. Melbourne remained the temporary capital until 1927 while the new capital was still under construction.

~1918 – Moscow became the capital of Russia again after Saint-Petersburg had held the status for 215 years.

~1928 – In California, the St. Francis Dam failed. The dam was located 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Los Angeles, California, near the present city of Santa Clarita. It was built between 1924 and 1926 under the supervision of William Mulholland, chief engineer and general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (then called the Bureau of Water Works and Supply). 3 minutes before midnight on March 12th the dam catastrophically failed and the resulting flood killed more than 600 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam was one of the worst American civil engineering failures of the 20th century and remains the second greatest loss of life in California's history after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fire. The demise of the St. Francis Dam marked the end of Mulholland's career.

~1930 – Died this day: Lt. William George Barker, decorated Canadian World War I fighter ace and recipient of the Victoria Cross - died while doing what he loved best; flying (b. 1894).

~1930 – The Dandi March to the sea began. The 200 mile march was led by Mahatma Gandhi to protest the British monopoly on salt in India.

~1933 – Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This "On the Bank Crisis" talk was also the first of his "fireside chats".

~1934 – In order to head off the seizure of power in Estonia by the proto-fascist Vaps Movement, head of the transitional administration Konstantin Päts declared a state of emergency in the entire country. He disbanded the Vaps movement and arrested its leading figures.

~1938 – Anschluss: The de facto annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime took place.

~1940 – The Winter War: Finland signeds the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia. However, it preserved Finland's independence, ending the Soviet attempt to annex the country. Finnish troops and the remaining population in Karelia were immediately evacuated.

~1966 - Bobby Hull, of the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks, became the first player to score more than 50 goals in a season, surpassing Maurice "The Rocket" Richard and Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion's hallowed mark of 50 goals. His 51st goal against the New York Rangers earned him a 7 minute standing ovation from the Chicago Stadium faithful. Hull would eventually score 54 goals that season, the highest single season total of the "Original Six" era. He led the league in goal scoring seven times during the 1960's.

~1967 – Suharto took over from the overthrown Sukarno to become President of Indonesia.

~1968 – Mauritius was granted its independence from Britain.

~1971 – The March 12 Memorandum: The Turkish Chief of the General Staff, Memduh Tağmaç, handed the prime minister of the Demirel government of Turkey a memorandum, really amounting to an ultimatum by the armed forces. Known as the "coup by memorandum", which the military delivered in lieu of sending out tanks as it had done previously, it came amid worsening domestic strife. Ultimately the coup did little to halt this problem.

~1985 - Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced that he planned to drop Secret Service protection and hire his own bodyguards in an effort to lower the deficit by $3 million. (Nope...I can't comment on this one without getting downright NASTY!!!)

~1987 - "Les Miserables" had its Broadway debut at the Broadway Theatre. Colm Wilkinson and Frances Ruffelle reprised their roles from the London production. With record advance ticket sales, the New York production had recouped its entire 4.5 million dollar investment before giving a single performance.

~1989 - More than 2,500 veterans and supporters marched at the Art Institute of Chicago to demand that officials remove an American flag placed on the floor as part of an exhibit. (How about we put the institute's directors on the floor and walk all over them...?)

~1992 – Mauritius became a republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

~1993 – The 1993 Bombay Bombings: A series of 13 bomb explosions took place in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. The coordinated attacks were the most destructive bomb explosions in Indian history. The single day bombings resulted in up to 250 civilian fatalities and another 700 injuries. The attacks are believed to have been coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim, don of the organized crime syndicate "D-Company", which had operated as a terrorist organization. It is believed that the attacks were carried out in retaliation for widespread Hindu-Muslim riots in Mumbai during December and January, in the fall out of the demolition of the Babri Mosque.

~1993 – North Korea stated that it planned to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and would refuse to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

~1993 – The Blizzard of 1993 – Snow begins to fall across the eastern portion of the US due to a large cyclonic storm packing tornadoes, thunder snow storms, high winds and record low temperatures. The storm, which lasted for more than 30 hours, dumped up to 60 inches of snow in some areas and left over 300 dead.

~1994 - A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell of the Loch Ness monster was confirmed to be a hoax. The photo was taken of a toy submarine with a head and neck attached.

~1997 - Police in Los Angeles arrested a suspect in the shooting death of Bill Cosby's 27-year-old son, Ennis. He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 10 years after Bill Cosby spoke out against giving him the death penalty.

~1998 - Astronomers cancelled a warning that an asteroid 1 mile in diameter would probably collide with Earth, saying that original calculations had been off by over 600,000 miles. (Well, I'm glad they figured that out before we all went and maxed-out our Visa cards just for the hell of it!)

~1999 – The former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO.

~2002 - A Houston, Texas woman was convicted of murdering her 5 children in the family bathtub. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole in 40 years. Later, the convictions were overturned and she was sent to the nut-house.

~2003 – On the order of former commander of the Special Operations Unit of Yugoslavia's secret police, Milorad "Legija" Ulemek, Zoran Đinđić, the Prime Minister of Serbia, was assassinated in Belgrade.

~2003 – Missing teenager Elizabeth Smart was found in Sandy, Utah, about 18 miles from her home. She was in the company of a man and woman who were indicted for her kidnapping but ruled unfit to stand trial. Her abduction and recovery was widely reported and was the subject of both a made for TV movie and a nonfiction book.

~2004 – The President of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, was impeached by its national assembly on charges of illegal electioneering and incompetence. It was the first such impeachment in the nation's history.

~2005 – Tung Chee Hwa, the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong, stepped down from his post after his resignation was approved by the Chinese central
government. He had supposedly tendered his resignation due to health problems.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 13th



~483 - Felix III became Pope, succeeding Simplicius.

~874 - The remains of Saint Nicephorus were interred in the Church of the Apostles, Constantinople.

~1516 – Died this day: King Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary (b. 1456).

~1639 – Harvard College was named for John Harvard, a minister from nearby Charlestown who (in his will) had bequeathed to the college his entire library and a sum of money equal to half his estate.

~1781 – William Herschel discovered Uranus. (Oh, dear Lord - I could run with this one until the cows came home...)

~1808 – Died this day: King Christian VII of Denmark (b. 1749).

~1809 – Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden is deposed in a coup d'état. He and his family were imprisoned in Gripsholm castle. The king's uncle, Duke Charles (Karl), was then persuaded to accept the leadership of a provisional government which was proclaimed the same day. A diet, hastily summoned, solemnly approved of the revolution. (Sounds like blatant opportunism abounded in that social circle.)

~1845 – After 6 years of work, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto premièred performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist. Mendelssohn was unable to conduct due to illness so the premiere was conducted by the Danish composer Niels Gade instead.

~1862 – The U.S. federal government forbade all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

~1865 – The Confederate Congress passed General Order 14, and President Davis signed the order into law. It was a bill to recruit black slaves and freemen into the armed forces of the Confederacy. (Amazingly, as it turned out not many blacks wanted to fight for the Confederates...go figure!)

~1881 – Tsar Alexander II of Russia was killed near his palace when a young member of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) movement threw a bomb at him. (That'll usually do it 10 times out of 10...)

~1884 – The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan began. Khartoum was besieged by the Mahdists and defended by a garrison of 7,000 Egyptian and loyal Sudanese troops led by British General Charles George Gordon. After a 10 month siege, the Mahdists finally broke into the city and the entire defending garrison was killed.

~1897 – San Diego State University was founded (originally) as the San Diego Normal School, intended to produce local future female elementary school teachers. (Not to be confused with the San Diego Abnormal School that produced politicians and bureaucrats...)

~1900 – Second Boer War: Following the Battle of Paardeberg, British forces captured the city of Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State and set about building an internment (concentration) camp nearby to house Boer women and children. Today, the National Women's Memorial, on the outskirts of the city, pays homage to the 26,370 women and children as well as 1,421 old men who died in these camps in various parts of the country.

~1920 – The Kapp Putsch (briefly) ousted the Weimar Republic government from Berlin.

~1925 – The Butler Act: A law was passed in the Tennessee Senate prohibiting the teaching of the "evolution of man" or any other theory of life except the Biblical account. The law would come to national and international attention just months later with The Scopes Monkey Trial.

~1933 – Banks across the U.S. began to reopen following the federally mandated "bank holiday". Much to the relief of Washington, there was not a nationwide run on the banks.

~1938 – The World News Roundup aired for the first time on CBS Radio at 8 p.m. (EST). It was supposed to be a one time special in response to growing tensions in Europe; specifically the Anschluss, where Nazi Germany annexed Austria.

~1940 – Following the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty the previous day, the Russo-Finnish Winter War ended when a ceasefire took effect at 11:00 a.m. Helsinki time.

~1943 – Nazi SS troops liquidated the last of the Jewish ghetto in Kraków. Some 8,000 Jews deemed able to work were transported to the Plaszow labor camp while those deemed unfit for work (approximately 2,000 Jews) were killed in the streets of the ghetto. 964 other prisoners were sent to Auschwitz where 473 were put to death in the gas chambers and the other 491 were assigned to slave labor.

~1944 – In Bougainville, Japanese troops ended their (unsuccessful) assault on American forces at Hill 700.

~1954 – Battle of Điện Biên Phủ: Viet Minh troops attacked the occupying/colonial French forces. The battle raged until May 7th and resulted in a decisive Viet Minh victory.

~1957 – Cuban student leader Jose Antonio Echeverría was killed by police outside a radio station he had taken over to make broadcasts, in concert with an attack on the Presidential Palace where student revolutionaries failed in an attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.

~1962 – All around idiot Lyman Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a proposal called Operation Northwoods to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It was in regard to performing terrorist attacks upon Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The proposal was scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removed Lemnitzer from his position.

~1964 - In Queens, New York, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of multiple witnesses who all failed to help her. It was an incident which shocked the world and prompted investigation into the "Bystander Effect".

~1969 – The Apollo Program: Apollo 9 returned safely to Earth after successfully testing the Lunar Module.

~1979 – While Grenada's Prime Minister, Eric Gairy, was at the UN, the New Jewel Movement led by Maurice Bishop launched an armed revolution and overthrew the government. Bishop suspended the constitution and the New Jewel Movement ruled the country by decree until 1983.

~1986 – Microsoft had its initial public offering of stocks. The stock price was (US) $21.00 but by the close of the first trading day the stock had closed at over $28.00.

~1992 – An earthquake registering 6.7 on the Richter scale struck the city of Erzincan in eastern Turkey. 497 people died and over 2,000 more were injured due to collapsing buildings.

~1996 – The Dunblane Massacre: At the Dunblane Primary School in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 kindergarten children and 1 teacher were shot dead by a spree killer who then committed suicide. To date this remains the deadliest single targeted mass murder of children in the history of the United Kingdom.

~1997 – In India, Sister Mary Nirmala Joshi was selected the new Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity, succeeding Mother Teresa.

~1997 – The Phoenix Lights: Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 (MST) in a space of about 300 miles from the Nevada line, through Phoenix and to the edge of Tucson. There were 2 distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft which were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona. Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter's square-shaped UFO, containing lights or possibly light emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor at the time, was one witness to this incident. A repeat of the lights occurred on February 6th, 2007 and was filmed by the local Fox News TV station.

~2003 – The journal "Nature" reported that 350,000 year old footprints of an upright walking human had been found in Italy.

~2005 – A gunman shot and killed 7 members, including the minister, of the Living Church of God at the Sheraton Inn in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself. 4 others were wounded, one critically.

~2008 – Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange reached $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

...

This post has been edited at member's request.Ron,

March 13th


2005- Oakland University, Rochester Michigan, made it to the NCAA Basketball tournament.

This post has been edited at member's request.La Juliette,