TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 15
44 BC Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome
1341 During the Hundred Years War, an alliance was signed between Roman Emperor Louis IV and France’s Philip VI.
1493 Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first voyage to the New World.
1778 In command of two frigates, the Frenchman la Perouse sails east from Botany Bay for the last lap of his voyage around the world.
1783 In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d’etat never takes place.
1820 Maine is admitted as the 23rd state.
1855 Louisiana establishes 1st health board to regulate quarantine
1867 Michigan becomes 1st state to tax property to support a university
1892 New York State unveils the new automatic ballot voting machine.
1892 Jesse W. Reno patented the Reno Inclined Elevator. It was the first escalator.
1895 Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, appears before a judge for altering cattle brands.
1906 Brits Rolls, Royce & Johnson form Rolls Royce Ltd
1907 Finland is 1st European country to give women the right to vote
1916 General John Pershing and his 15,000 troops chase Pancho Villa into Mexico.
1917 The last emperor of Russia abdicates. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated following the February Revolution. He was later executed together with his family and some of his servants.
1928 Mussolini modifies Italy electoral system (abolishes right to choose)
1934 Henry Ford restores the $5-a-day wage.
1937 The first hospital blood bank in the United States was established, in Chicago, at Cook County Hospital.
1938 Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia.
1948 Sir Laurence Olivier on the cover of LIFE magazine
1949 Almost four years after the end of World War II, clothes rationing in Great Britain ends.
1951 The Persian parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry.
1962 Five research groups announce the discovery of anti-matter
1968 The U.S. mint halts the practice of buying and selling gold.
1972 Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is premiered. The gangster movie based on Mario Puzo’s novel is one of the most popular films of all time.
1977 The U.S. House of Representatives began a 90-day test to determine the feasibility of showing its sessions on television.
1979 Pope John Paul II published his first encyclical “Redemptor Hominis.” In the work he warned of the growing gap between the rich and poor.
1985 The world’s first internet domain name is registered. symbolics.com was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corporation of Massachusetts. There are over 1 billion domains today.
1989 The U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs became the 14th Department in the President’s Cabinet.
1990 The Soviet parliament ruled that Lithuania’s declaration of independence was invalid and that Soviet law was still in force in the Baltic republic.
1991 Four Los Angeles police are charged in the beating of Rodney King.
2002 Libyan Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi began his life sentence in a Scottish jail for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988.
2002 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Associated Press that the U.S. would stand by a 24-year pledge not to use nuclear arms against states that don’t have them.
2004 Scientists reported the discovery of Sedna, the most distant object in the solar system.
2019 Climate change strikes held by school children take place around the world inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
