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.