March 141489 - Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, sold her kingdom to Venice. She was the last of the Lusignan dynasty. 1629 - A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1647 - During the Thirty Years War, France, Sweden, Bavaria and Cologne signed a Treaty of Neutrality. 1743 - First American town meeting was held at Boston's Faneuil Hall. 1757 - British Admiral John Byng was executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty. 1794 - Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin. 1864 - Samuel Baker discovered another source of the Nile in East Africa. He named it Lake Albert Nyanza. 1891 - The submarine Monarch laid telephone cable along the bottom of the English Channel to prepare for the first telephone links across the Channel. 1900 - U.S. currency went on the gold standard with the ratification of the Gold Standard Act. 1900 - In Holland, Botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovered Mendel's laws of heredity. 1901 - Utah Governor Heber M. Wells vetoed a bill that would have relaxed restrictions on polygamy. 1903 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty that guaranteed the U.S. the right to build a canal at Panama. The Columbian Senate rejected the treaty. A deal was signed on November 6, 1903 with the newly independent Panama. 1904 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the governments claim that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal merger between the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies. 1905 - French bankers refused to lend money to Russia until after their war. 1905 - The British House of Commons cited a need to compete with Germany in naval strength. 1906 - The island of Ustica was devastated by an earthquake. 1912 - An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempted to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome. 1914 - Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes. 1915 - The British Navy sank the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast. 1918 - An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified a peace treaty with the Central Powers. 1923 - President Harding became the first U.S. President to file an income tax report. 1932 - George Eastman, the founder of the Kodak company, committed suicide. 1936 - Adolf Hitler told a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself. 1939 - Hungary occupied the Carpatho-Ukraine. Slovakia declared its independence. 1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane while in office. 1945 - In Germany, a 22,000 pound "Grand Slam" bomb was dropped by the Royal Air Force Dumbuster Squad on the Beilefeld railway viaduct. It was the heaviest bomb used during World War II. 1947 - The U.S. signed a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines. 1947 - Moscow announced that 890,532 German POWs were held in the U.S.S.R. 1951 - U.N. forces recaptured Seoul for the second time during the Korean War. 1958 - The U.S. government suspended arms shipments to the Batista government of Cuba. 1964 - A Dallas jury found Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. 1967 - John F. Kennedy's body was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one. 1976 - Egypt formally abrogated the 1971 Treaty Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. 1978 - An Israeli force of 22,000 invaded south Lebanon. The PLO bases were hit. 1979 - The Census Bureau reported that 95% of all Americans were married or would get married. 1979 - Near Peking, China, at least 200 people died when a Trident aircraft crashed into a factory. 1980 - A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw. 87 people were killed. A 14-man U.S. boxing team was aboard the plane. 1981 - Three Pakistani airline hijackers surrendered in Syria after they had exchanged 100 passengers and crewmen for 54 Pakistani prisoners. 1983 - OPEC agreed to cut its oil prices by 15% for the first time in its 23-year history. 1989 - Imported assault guns were banned in the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush. 1991 - The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, were set free after a court agreed that the police fabricated evidence. 1991 - Bolivian interior minister Guillermo Capobianco resigned after U.S. officials accused him of receiving money from drug traffickers. 1995 - American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket. 1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton committed $100 million for an anti-terrorism pact with Israel to track down and root out Islamic militants. 1998 - An earthquake left 10,000 homeless in southeastern Iran. 2002 - A Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A five-judge court ruled unanimously that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was guilty of bringing down the plane over Lockerbie, Scotland. 2003 - Robert Blake was released from jail on $1.5 million bail. Blake had been jailed for the murder of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley. |