1996 – At Dunblane Primary School, Scotland, 16 children and 1 teacher are shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who then commits suicide. Results in handguns being banned in the UK.
0607 – The 12th recorded passage of Halley’s Comet occurred.
0624 – Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Muslim forces win significant victory over Meccan army
1519 – Cortez landed in Mexico.
1591 – Battle at Tondibi: Moroccan army under Judar [Jawdar] defeats Sultan Askia Ishaq II of Songhai
1639 – Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.
1656 – Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam
1660 – A statute was passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.
1677 – Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
1777 – The U.S. Congress ordered its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army.
1781 – Uranus is discovered, German-born British astronomer William Herschel is credited with the planet’s discovery. It is the third largest planet by radius in the solar system.
1852 – The New York “Lantern” newspaper published the first “Uncle Sam cartoon”. It was drawn by Frank Henry Bellew.
1865 – Jefferson Davis signed a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the Confederacy.
1868 – The U.S. Senate began the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.
1869 – Arkansas legislature passes anti-Ku Klux Klan law
1881 – Czar Alexander II is assassinated when a bomb is thrown at him near his palace.
1884 – Standard time was adopted throughout the U.S.
1900 – In France the length of the working day for women and children is limited by law to 11 hours.
1901 – Andrew Carnegie announced that he was retiring from business and that he would spend the rest of his days giving away his fortune. His net worth was estimated at $300 million.
1902 – In Poland, schools were shut down across the country when students refused to sing the Russian hymn “God Protect the Czar.”
1902 – Andrew Carnegie approved 40 applications from libraries for donations.
1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court approved corporate tax law.
1913 – Kansas legislature approved censorship of motion pictures
1915 – The Germans repelled a British expeditionary force attack in France.
1918 – Women were scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men due to wartime.
1925 – A law in Tennessee prohibited the teaching of evolution.
1930 – It was announced that the planet Pluto had been discovered by scientist Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory.
1933 – U.S. banks began to re-open after a “holiday” that had been declared by President Roosevelt.
1935 – Three-thousand-year-old archives were found in Jerusalem confirming some biblical history.
1941 – Adolf Hitler issued an edict calling for an invasion of the U.S.S.R.
1942 – Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps became the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.
1943 – German troops liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków, Thousands of men, women and children were murdered by the nazis or deported to extermination camps. The horrific event is portrayed in the film, Schindler’s List.
1946 – Reports from Iran indicated that Soviet tanks units were stationed 20 miles from Tehran.
1946 – Premier Tito seized wartime collaborator General Draja Mikhailovich in a cave in Yugoslavia.
1951 – Israel demanded $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees.
1957 – Jimmy Hoffa was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges.
1957 – Bloody battles in Cuba after the student led “Revolutionary Directorate” attacks the presidential palace in Havana in an unsuccessful attempt to depose dictator Fulgencio Batista
1962 – Yugoslavia grants 1,000 prisoners amnesty
1963 – China invited Soviet President Khrushchev to visit Peking.
1967 – Congo sentences ex-premier Moise Tsjombe to death
1968 – Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah, kills 6,000 sheep
1969 – The Apollo 9 astronauts returned to Earth after the conclusion of a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.
1970 – Cambodia ordered Hanoi and Viet Cong troops to leave.
1974 – The U.S. Senate voted 54-33 to restore the death penalty.
1974 – An embargo imposed by Arab oil-producing countries was lifted.
1980 – A jury in Winamac, IN, found Ford Motor Company innocent of reckless homicide in the deaths of three young women that had been riding in a Ford Pinto.
1981 – The United States plans to send 15 Green Berets to El Salvador as military advisors.
1985 – Upon the death of Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new leader of the Soviet Union.
1987 – John Gotti, boss of the Gambino crime family, is acquitted of racketeering
1990 – The U.S. lifted economic sanctions against Nicaragua.
1991 – Exxon paid $1 billion in fines and for the clean-up of the Alaskan oil spill.
1995 – The first United Nations World Summit on Social Development concluded in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1996 – At Dunblane Primary School, Scotland, 16 children and 1 teacher are shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who then commits suicide. Results in handguns being banned in the UK.
1997 – A series of unidentified lights appear over Phoenix, Arizona, The Phoenix Lights caused heated debate in the UFO community. It emerged later that some of the lights were caused by illumination flares dropped from a U.S. Air Force plane.
2003 – Japan sent a destroyer to the Sea of Japan amid reports that North Korea was planning to test an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
2003 – A report in the journal “Nature” reported that scientists had found 350,000-year-old human footprints in Italy. The 56 prints were made by three early, upright-walking humans that were descending the side of a volcano.
2005 – Terry Ratzmann shoots and kills six members of the Living Church of God and the minister at Sheraton Inn in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself.
2012 – After 244 years of publication, Encyclopædia Britannica announced it would discontinue its print edition.
2013 – 10 people are killed by a suicide bombing in Kunduz province, Afghanistan
2013 – Pope Francis succeeds Pope Benedict XVI, Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina became the 266th leader of the Catholic Church, which has 1.2 billion members around the world.
2018 – US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is fired via a tweet from President Donald Trump
2019 – California Governor Gavin Newsom announces an indefinite moratorium on the death sentence in the state, saying it discriminates against marginalized communities
2019 – Home of civil rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers established as a national monument in Jackson, Mississippi, by President Donald Trump
2019 – Shooting at school in Suzano, near São Paulo, Brazil, kills six including five children, before former student gunmen turn guns on themselves
2020 – US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency, freeing up $50 billion to fight COVID-19
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
