TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 25
31 1st Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus
0708 Constantine begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1133 William the Conqueror orders 1st Domesday Survey of England
1306 Robert the Bruce crowned king of Scotland
1436 Florentine cathedral Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore with then the largest dome in the world by Filippo Brunelleschi, consecrated by Pope Eugene IV (begun 1296)
1634 Lord Baltimore founds the Catholic colony of Maryland.
1655 Puritans jail Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.
1655 Christian Huygens discovered Titan. Titan is Saturn’s largest satellite.
1776 The Continental Congress authorizes a medal for General George Washington.
1807 British Parliament abolishes slave trade throughout the British Empire; penalty of £120 per slave introduced for ship captains
1813 The frigate USS Essex flies the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.
1817 Tsar Alexander I recommends formation of Society of Israeli Christians
1894 Jacob Sechler Coxey and his “army” of unemployed men began their march from Ohio to Washington, DC.
1905 Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War are returned to the South.
1911 In New York City, 146 women were killed in fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The owners of the company were indicted on manslaughter charges because some of the employees had been behind locked doors in the factory. The owners were later acquitted and in 1914 they were ordered to pay damages to each of the twenty-three families that had sued.
1931 Fifty people are killed in riots that break out in India. Mahatma Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.
1939 Billboard Magazine introduces hillbilly (country) music chart
1953 The USS Missouri fires on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
1957 The European Common Market Treaty is signed in Rome. The goal is to create a common market for all products–especially coal and steel.
1965 The 25,000-person Alabama Freedom March to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks, led by Martin Luther King Jr., ended its journey from Selma on the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery, Ala.
1975 Hue is lost and Da Nang is endangered by North Vietnamese forces. The United States orders a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.
1975 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew. The nephew, with a history of mental illness, was beheaded the following June.
1981 The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador is damaged when gunmen attack, firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.
1986 President Ronald Reagan orders emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters take Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.
1986 Supreme Court rules Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes
1987 Supreme Court rules women/minorities may get jobs if less qualified
1988 Robert E. Chambers Jr. pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. The case was known as New York City’s “preppie murder case.”
1994 U.S. troops withdrew from Somalia.
1996 An 81-day standoff by the antigovernment Freemen began at a ranch near Jordan, MT.
2002 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dismissed complaints against Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network broadcast of a Victoria’s Secret fashion show in November 2001.
2004 The U.S. Senate voted (61-38) on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 1997) to make it a separate crime to harm a fetus during the commission of a violent federal crime.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
