February 25th
 

1723 ~ Death of Sir Christopher Wren, Architect.

1870 ~ Hiram R. Revels, R-Miss., became the first black member of the U.S. Senate.

1901 ~ Incorporation of the United States Steel Corporation.

1943 ~ Birthday of George Harrison, Beatle.

1970 ~ Death of Mark Rothko, American painter.

1981 ~ Birthday of Jamie Lynn, Porn actress.

1983 ~ Death of Tennessee Williams, playwright.

1986 ~ Corazon Aquino assumed the Philippine presidency after Ferdinand E. Marcos fled.

1994 ~ Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank, killing 29 Muslims before he was beaten to death.

2004 ~ Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was released in the U.S., and became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made.

February 26th
 

1797 ~ The Bank of England issued the first one pound note.

1802 ~ Birthday of Victor Hugo, Poet.

1848 ~ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” in London.

1918 ~ Birthday of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1935 ~ Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of RADAR.

1987 ~ Birthday of Julia Bond, Porn actress.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee introduced WorldWideWeb, the first web browser.

1991 ~ On Baghdad Radio, Saddam Hussein announced that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.

1993 ~ A van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City exploded, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.

2001 ~ The Taliban destroyed two giant Buddha statues in Bamyan, Afghanistan.

February 27th
 

1807 ~ Birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet (The Song of Hiawatha, The Village Blacksmith, Paul Revere's Ride).

1827 ~ The first Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans.

1873 ~ Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor.

1887 ~ Death of Alexander Borodin, composer.

1900 ~ The British Labour Party was formed.

1902 ~ Birthday of John Steinbeck, Writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1962.

1912 ~ Birthday of Lawrence Durrell, Writer.

1933 ~ Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming the Communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.

1951 ~ In a victory for freedom lovers, the Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified.

1991 ~ President Bush declared "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated", and announced a Gulf War ceasefire.

February 28th
 

1827 ~ The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated. It was the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1887 ~ Death of Alexander Borodin, Russian composer and chemist.

1901 ~ Birthday of Linus Pauling, double Nobel Prize winner: Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962.

1953 ~ James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement followed in the April 25 publication of Nature. For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development. In Crick’s own words.

1967 ~ Death of Henry Luce, Publisher (Time, Fortune, Life, Sports Illustrated).

1979 ~ Death of "Mr. Ed", the talking horse.

1983 ~ The final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast in the U.S.

1986 ~ Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death in central Stockholm.

1993 ~ Four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents and six Branch Davidians were killed when the agents tried to serve warrants on the Davidians.

2013 ~ Pope Benedict XVI formally retired from the papacy.

March 1st
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Frédéric Chopin, Composer & Pianist.

1872 ~ U.S. Congress authorized creation of Yellowstone National Park.

1910 ~ Birthday of David Niven, English actor.

1927 ~ Birthday of Harry Belafonte, Musician & Actor.

1932 ~ The infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was kidnapped.

1950 ~ Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

1954 ~ The Castle Bravo 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It produced the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the U.S.

1961 ~ The Peace Corps was established.

1975 ~ Birthday of Kami Andrews, Porn actress.

2003 ~ The International Criminal Court held its initial session in The Hague.

March 2nd
 

1836 ~ The Republic of Texas declared its independence from Mexico.

1877 ~ Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.

1904 ~ Birthday of Dr. Seuss, Author.

1931 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

1939 ~ Death of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1963 ~ Release of Please Please Me in the U.K., the first LP from The Beatles.

1969 ~ The maiden flight of the Concorde.

1980 ~ Birthday of Sunny Lane, Porn actress.

1982 ~ Death of Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction author.

2004 ~ Al Qaeda carried out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

March 3rd
 

1706 ~ Death of Johann Pachelbel, Composer.

1847 ~ Birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor.

1923 ~ Birthday of James Doohan, Actor.

1931 ~ ”The Star-Spangled Banner” officially became the national anthem of the U.S.

1939 ~ In Bombay, Mahatma Gandhi begins a fast to protest the British rule in India.

1983 ~ Death of Hergé, Belgian comics creator.

1985 ~ England’s coal miners accept defeat and vote to return to work after a year long strike.

1991 ~ An amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

2002 ~ Switzerland voted to become a member of the United Nations.

2005 ~ Steve Fossett became the first man to fly an airplane non-stop around the world solo without refueling.

March 4th
 

1678 ~ Birthday of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Baroque Composer.

1804 ~ The Battle of Vinegar Hill, New South Wales.

1861 ~ The "Stars and Bars" was adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

1877 ~ Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet “Swan Lake” first performed.

1936 ~ First flight of airship Hindenburg (LZ-129), in Germany.

1973 ~ Birthday of Summer Cummings, Porn actress.

1975 ~ Charlie Chaplin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

1994 ~ Four terrorists were convicted for their roles in the World Trade Center bombing which killed six and injured more than a thousand.

1997 ~ U.S. President Clinton prohibited federal funding for any research on human cloning.

2005 ~ Death of Nicola Calipari, Italian secret service agent.

March 5th
 

1512 ~ Birthday of Gerardus Mercator, Flemish Geographer & Cartographer.

1658 ~ Birthday of Antoine Cadillac, founder of Detroit.

1908 ~ Birthday of Rex Harrison, English actor.

1946 ~ Winston Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent…”.

1953 ~ Death of Josef Stalin, Soviet dictator.

1970 ~ The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into effect.

1993 ~ Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was banned from athletics for life after failing a drug test for a second time.

1953 ~ North and South Korean representatives met for the first time in 25 years for peace talks.

2000 ~ Death of Lolo Ferrari, French Porn actress.

2004 ~ Martha Stewart was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to the government about why she dumped her Imclone Systems Inc. stock just before the price dropped.

1953 ~ North and South Korean representatives met for the first time in 25 years for peace talks.

1997 perhaps?

Yup! Sorry 'bout the date!

March 6th
 

1475 ~ Birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian artist.

1806 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet.

1836 ~ After a 13 day seige, the Mexican army commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna captured the Alamo.

1857 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.

1869 ~ Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

1926 ~ Birthday of Alan Greenspan, American economist.

1957 ~ The former UK colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

1982 ~ Death of Ayn Rand, Author.

1987 ~ 197 people died when a car ferry capsized just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

1992 ~ Michelangelo computer virus began to affect computers.

March 7th
 

1274 ~ Death of Thomas Aquinas, Philosopher.

1850 ~ U.S. Senator Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1875 ~ Birthday of Maurice Ravel, Composer.

1867 ~ Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone (patent # 174,464).

1965 ~ In Selma, Alabama, State troopers and local law enforcement forcefully broke up a group of 600 civil rights marchers.

1967 ~ Death of Alice B. Toklas, inspiration for a million brownies.

1969 ~ Golda Meir elected Prime Minister of Israel.

1999 ~ Death of Stanley Kubrick, Film Director.

2004 ~ An investiture ceremony was held for V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop.

2006 ~ Apple was granted the patent to the iPod.

March 8th
 

1714 ~ Birthday of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Composer. Not to be confused with his father Johann Sebastian Bach.

1862 ~ The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) was launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

1869 ~ Birthday of Hector Berlioz, Composer.

1917 ~ Death of Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German aircraft manufacturer.

1917 ~ The first stage of the Russian Revolution, the February Revolution started in St. Petersburg.

1942 ~ Death of José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player.

1950 ~ The Soviet Union claimed to have an atomic bomb.

1959 ~ George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia.

1983 ~ President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire.

2001 ~ The wreck of Bluebird, Donald Campbell's speedboat, was recovered.

And, together with the Monitor, made most of the navies of the world obsolete. :yikes: Amazing.

Not nearly, DB. Neither vessel was capable of surviving real deep-sea storms. The HMS Warrior and the French ship "Gloire" were purpose built iron ocean-going ships, well armoured, with steam and sail. CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor were built later than the European ships.

March 9th
 

1934 ~ Birthday of Yuri Gagarin, Cosmonaut, first human in space.

1943 ~ Birthday of Bobby Fischer, chess player.

1945 ~ A fire storm in Tokyo, caused by incendiary bombs from American bombers killed over 100,000 people.

1954 ~ CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow critically reviewed Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign on "See It Now”.

1959 ~ The debut of the Barbie doll.

1967 ~ Stalin's daughter defected to the West.

1990 ~ Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Clyde Wells confirmed he would rescind Newfoundland's approval of the Meech Lake Accord, effectively killing the Accord.

1996 ~ Death of George Burns, Actor.

2005 ~ The final broadcast by Dan Rather on CBS Evening News.

2006 ~ Death of John Profumo, British cabinet minister.

Good point, OF!

March 10th
 

1913 ~ Death of Harriet Tubman, American abolitionist.

1949 ~ Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as “Axis Sally”, was convicted in Washington, D.C., of treason.

1957 ~ Birthday of Osama bin Laden, Terrorist.

1965 ~ Neil Simon's play ''The Odd Couple'' opened on Broadway.

1969 ~ James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tenn., to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1977 ~ Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus.

1977 ~ Death of E. Power Biggs, English-born organist.

1985 ~ Death of Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet leader.

1993 ~ Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic.

2008 ~ The New York Times revealed that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had patronized a prostitution service.

March 11th
 

1941 ~ President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill.

1955 ~ Death of Alexander Fleming, Biologist.

1959 ~ Birthday of Nina Hartley, American porn star.

1968 ~ Death of John Wyndham, Author.

1985 ~ Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader.

1993 ~ Janet Reno was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, becoming the first female U.S. Attorney General.

1996 ~ John Howard became the twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia.

1997 ~ Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

2004 ~ Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain, killed 191 people and wounded at least 1,800 in an attack linked to al-Qaida.

2006 ~ Death of Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia.

Nina Hartley, the grown man's pornstar.

March 12th
 

1912 ~ The Girl Scouts (née Girl Guides) were started in the U.S.

1913 ~ Canberra officially named.

1922 ~ Birthday of Jack Kerouac, Writer.

1925 ~ Birthday of Harry Harrison, Science Fiction author.

1938 ~ Anschluss: German troops occupied Austria; annexation declared the following day.

1947 ~ The “Truman Doctrine” established.

1953 ~ Birthday of Ron Jeremy, Porn actor.

1987 ~ ”Les Misérables” opened on Broadway.

1994 ~ The Church of England ordained its first female priests.

1999 ~ Death of Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

March 13th
 

1781 ~ The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel.

1855 ~ Birthday of Percival Lowell, Astronomer.

1868 ~ The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began in the U.S. Senate.

1906 ~ Death of Susan B. Anthony, civil rights and women's suffrage activist.

1925 ~ A law in Tennessee, the Butler Act, was passed, prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

1938 ~ Death of Clarence Darrow, Attorney.

1947 ~ The musical “Brigadoon” opened on Broadway.

1954 ~ Viet Minh forces begin the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ against the French.

1964 ~ Kitty Genovese was murdered in an incident which shocked the world and prompted investigation into the Bystander effect.

1979 ~ The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

March 14th
 

1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss Sr.

1879 ~ Birthday of Albert Einstein, physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1921.

1883 ~ Death of Karl Marx, political theorist.

1900 ~ The Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.

1942 ~ First successful use of penicillin to treat a patient.

1943 ~ The SS under the command Sturmbannführer Amon Goth began the 'liquidation' of the Kraków Ghetto.

1984 ~ Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

1985 ~ Birthday of Eva Angelina, Porn actress.

1994 ~ Linux kernel version 1.0.0 was released.

Some penicillin stuff.

A mouldy cantaloupe in a Peoria, Illinois, market in 1943 was found to contain the best and highest-quality penicillin after a worldwide search. DB?

In 1930, Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield, attempted to use penicillin to treat sycosis barbae, eruptions in beard follicles, but was unsuccessful, probably because the drug did not penetrate the skin deeply enough. Moving on to ophthalmia neonatorum, a gonococcal infection in infants, he achieved the first recorded cure with penicillin, on November 25, 1930. He then cured four additional patients (one adult and three infants) of eye infections, and failed to cure a fifth.

Speaking of..

That was a relatively shocking joke, Scotz.

March 15th
 

44 B.C. ~ Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators.

1877 ~ The first Test cricket match, between England and Australia.

1898 ~ Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist.

1906 ~ Rolls-Royce Ltd. was registered.

1937 ~ Death of H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer.

1966 ~ Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote.

1975 ~ Birthday of Veselin Topalov, Bulgarian chess player, FIDE World Chess Champion 2005 - 2006.

1990 ~ British journalist Farzad Bazoft was executed for spying.

1991 ~ Germany formally regained complete independence after World War II.

2004 ~ Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest "planet" in the Solar system so far observed.

March 16th
 

1521 ~ Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines, where he was killed by natives the following month.

1736 ~ Death of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer.

1789 ~ Birthday of Georg Ohm, German physicist and developer of Ohm's Law.

1850 ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter" was first published.

1898 ~ Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British Artist.

1926 ~ Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

1968 ~ The My Lai Massacre was carried out by U.S. troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley.

1978 ~ Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas in Italy and was later killed by his captors.

1984 ~ William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists; he died in captivity.

1988 ~ The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq was attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5,000.

March 17th
 

180 ~ Death of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.

461 ~ Death of Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.

1673 ~ Jacques Marquette & Louis Jolliet began their exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river.

1834 ~ Birthday of Gottlieb Daimler, Engineer & Inventor.

1845 ~ The rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry.

1919 ~ Birthday of Nat King Cole, Singer.

1942 ~ Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.

1959 ~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled Tibet and traveled to India.

1973 ~ The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy was taken.

1979 ~ Birthday of Stormy Daniels, Porn actress.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St Patrick: a public holiday in Ireland and Montserrat, widely celebrated in North America.

March 18th
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Composer.

1850 ~ American Express was founded by Henry Wells & William Fargo.

1869 ~ Birthday of Neville Chamberlain, UK PM.

1962 ~ France and Algeria signed an agreement ending the Algerian War.

1965 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov became the first man to walk in space.

1978 ~ Death of Leigh Brackett, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ In the largest art theft in U.S. history, 12 paintings, collectively worth more than $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

1992 ~ Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1. A blast from the past!

1992 ~ South Africa voted to end apartheid.

2003 ~ Death of Adam Osborne, British born computer pioneer.

March 19th
 

1813 ~ Birthday of David Livingstone, Missionary & Explorer.

1906 ~ Birthday of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi official.

1915 ~ The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time.

1932 ~ Sydney Harbor Bridge opened.

1950 ~ Death of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Author.

1953 ~ The Academy Awards were first televised.

1982 ~ Argentines landed on South Georgia Island, precipitating the Falklands War.

1987 ~ Death of Louis-Victor de Broglie, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1929.

2003 ~ President Bush ordered the start of war against Iraq.

2008 ~ Death of Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction author.

Feastdays & Holidays

The swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

March 20th
 

43 B.C. ~ Birthday of Ovid, Roman poet.

1727 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist.

1815 ~ Napoleon returned to Paris after escaping from Elba, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.

1852 ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published.

1916 ~ Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity.

1928 ~ Birthday of Fred Rogers, children's television host.

1969 ~ John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1995 ~ A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 12 and wounded 1,300 people.

2000 ~ Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H. Rap Brown, was captured following a shootout in Atlanta.

2003 ~ U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait.

March 21st
 

1685 ~ Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1867 ~ Birthday of Florenz Ziegfeld, Broadway Impresario.

1945 ~ UK Troops liberated Mandalay, Burma.

1960 ~ Police fired on demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing 69 and wounding 180.

1963 ~ The federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, was closed.

1965 ~ Rev. King led 3,200 people on the start of a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1980 ~ President Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1998 ~ Good Friday Agreement signed in Northern Ireland.

2000 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government lacked authority to regulate tobacco as an addictive drug.

2010 ~ Death Wolfgang Wagner, German opera director, grandson of Richard Wagner, and the great-grandson of Franz Liszt.

March 22nd
 

1683 ~ Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

1687 ~ Death of Jean Baptiste Lully, French Composer.

1832 ~ Death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Writer & Poet.

1882 ~ U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy.

1923 ~ Birthday of Marcel Marceau, Mime.

1963 ~ The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denied improper involvement with the model Christine Keeler.

1963 ~ The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, was released in the UK.

1972 ~ The Equal Rights Amendment To The U.S. Constitution was sent to the states for ratification.

1993 ~ The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips.

2004 ~ Death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

March 23rd
 

1749 ~ Birthday of Pierre Simon de Laplace, Mathematician & Astronomer.

1775 ~ Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech - "give me liberty or give me death" in Williamsburg, Virginia.

1857 ~ Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway, New York City.

1882 ~ Birthday of Emmy Noether, Mathematician. Now there's a lady who had a tough row to hoe!

1912 ~ Birthday of Wernher von Braun, Engineer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Roger Bannister, athlete, first man to run the "Miracle Mile"

1983 ~ President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept missiles.

1989 ~ Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced cold fusion at the University of Utah.

1989 ~ A 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid (4581 Asclepius) missed the Earth by 400,000 miles.

2001 ~ The Russian space station Mir was de-orbited, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

March 24th
 

1874 ~ Birthday of Harry Houdini, Magician.

1882 ~ Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.

1882 ~ Death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet.

1893 ~ Birthday of Walter Baade, Astronomer.

1905 ~ Death of Jules Verne, Author.

1944 ~ In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that killed 32 German soldiers.

1965 ~ Ranger 9 broadcast live TV as it crashed-landed onto the Moon.

1980 ~ Archbishop Óscar Romero was killed by gunmen while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.

1989 ~ The Exxon Valdez spilled 270,000 barrels of oil after running aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

1999 ~ NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. This marked the first time NATO attacked a sovereign nation.

March 26th
 

1827 ~ Death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.

1892 ~ Death of Walt Whitman, Poet.

1904 ~ Birthday of Joseph Campbell, Author & Mythologist.

1964 ~ The musical “Funny Girl”, starring Barbra Streisand, opened on Broadway.

1973 ~ Birthday of Larry Page, Computer Scientist, Co-Founder of Google.

1979 ~ Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in Washington, DC.

1981 ~ The "Gang of Four", Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams, founded the Social Democratic Party.

1984 ~ Birthday of Annette Schwarz, Porn Actress.

1997 ~ The 39 Heaven's Gate cult suicides.

1999 ~ The Melissa worm infected e-mail systems around the world.

March 27th
 

1836 ~ Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.

1845 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, physicist, awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics.

1863 ~ Birthday of Sir Henry Royce, automobile pioneer.

1871 ~ First international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.

1886 ~ Birthday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect.

1958 ~ Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the USSR.

1968 ~ Death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

1972 ~ Death of M. C. Escher, Dutch artist.

1977 ~ A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife, killing 582 people.

2002 ~ Passover Massacre: A suicide bomber killed 28 people in Netanya, Israel.

March 28th
 

1881 ~ Death of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1910 ~ Henri Fabre becomes the first man to fly a seaplane after taking off from a water runway near Martigues, France.

1939 ~ Generalissimo Franco entered Madrid, essentially ending the Spanish Civil War.

1943 ~ Death of Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and pianist.

1947 ~ The last episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century played on radio.

1965 ~ Conclusion of the 'Selma to Montgomey' Civil Rights march.

1979 ~ One of the nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island was severely damaged in what remains as the largest nuclear incident in U.S. history.

1980 ~ Birthday of Birthday of Minori Aoi (葵みのり), Japanese Porn actress.

1987 ~ Death of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

2004 ~ Death of Peter Ustinov, Actor.