1852 – The New York “Lantern” newspaper published the first “Uncle Sam cartoon”. It was drawn by Frank Henry Bellew.
0624 – Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Muslim forces win significant victory over Meccan army
1138 – Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected anti-pope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II
1519 – Cortez landed in Mexico.
1639 – Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.
1660 – A statute was passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.
1677 – Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
1735 – The first US Moravian bishop, David Nitschmann, consecrated in Germany
1777 – The U.S. Congress ordered its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army.
1778 – France informs Great Britain of their Treaty of Alliance with the US; Great Britain responds with a declaration of war against France four days later
1781 – Sir William Herschel sees what he thinks is a comet but he really discovers the planet Uranus
1808 – Denmark’s demented Christian VII has died March 13 at age 59 after a 32-year reign
1809 – Seven Swedish army officers break into the royal apartments March 13, seize the insane Gustav IV in a coup d’etat, and conduct him to the chateau of Gripsholm
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-Klan law
1881 – Alexander II of Russia is assassinated by members of far-left terror group ‘People’s Will’ who throw a bomb at him in the city of St. Petersburg
1884 – Standard time was adopted throughout the U.S.
1885 – In Victoria British Columbia, the Legislature passes Chinese Restriction; bans entry of Chinese immigrants, later ruled unconstitutional
1900 – In France, length of a workday for women and children is limited to 11 hours by law.
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.”
1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court approved corporate tax law.
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.
1920 – After the German government is forced to cut its army to 10,000 men, military groups plot an unsuccessful coup – a revolt ended by a general strike
1921 – Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China
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 – Joseph Goebbels becomes Nazi Germany’s Minister of Information and Propaganda
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
1950 – General Motors reports net earnings of $656,434,232 (record)
1951 – Israel demanded $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees.
1957 – Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.
1962 – Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the USA, proposes a document, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks in Guantanamo Bay, to Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.
1963 – China invited Soviet President Khrushchev to visit Peking.
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.
1970 – Digital Equipment Corp. introduced the PDP-11 minicomputer.
1974 – The U.S. Senate voted 54-33 to restore the death penalty.
1979 – The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d’etat in Grenada.
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.
1987 – John Gotti, boss of the Gambino crime family, is acquitted of racketeering
1989 – FDA orders recall of all Chilean fruit in US
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.
1994 – President Mangope of Bophuthaswana deposed
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.
2002 – Fox aired “Celebrity Boxing.” Tonya Harding beat Paula Jones, Danny Banaduce beat Barry Williams and Todd Bridges defeated Vanilla Ice.
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.
2006 – In New York, the official start of construction of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum began.
2012 – After 244 years of publication, Encyclopædia Britannica announced it would discontinue its print edition.
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.
2014 – After protests earlier this month, the Israeli parliament votes 65 to 1 for legislation that ends exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students
2018 – National Geographic magazine admits its past coverage was racist in issue to mark 50 years since death of Martin Luther King Jr.
2019 – California Governor Gavin Newsom announces an indefinite moratorium on the death sentence in the state, saying it discriminates against marginalized communities
2020 – African American Breonna Taylor shot and killed by police officers executing a no-knock warrant on her flat with a battering ram in Louisville, Kentucky
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
