February 19th
 

1743 ~ Birthday of Luigi Boccherini, Italian Composer.

1915 ~ The Battle of Gallipoli began.

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

1942 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt signed the order allowing the U.S. military to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps.

1945 ~ About 30,000 U.S. Marines land on Iwo Jima.

1964 ~ Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence”, the song which would take him and Art Garfunkel to stardom.

1971 ~ Birthday of Gil Shaham, Israeli-born American violinist.

1980 ~ Bon Scott, the lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, died after a night of heavy drinking.

1986 ~ The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1997 ~ Death of Deng Xiaoping, the last of China's major Communist revolutionaries.



Sorry about being a bit early, but I just found out that I will be off-line for the next 40 hours, so I thought I'd post this now. :)

1942 ~ Some 250 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin, Australia. The attack killed at least 243 people.

Cyclone Carlos broke the marquee erected for the memorial ceremony.

The destroyer USS Robert E Peary was destroyed during the attack.

The same battle fleet bombed Pearl Harbour, the Phillipines and Darwin.

February 20th
 

1792 ~ President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1904 ~ Birthday of Alexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

1927 ~ Birthday of Sidney Poitier, Actor.

1952 ~ The film The African Queen opened in New York City.

1958 ~ An announcement was made that the Sheerness Docks, established the in the 17th century by Samuel Pepys, were to close.

1961 ~ Death of Percy Grainger, Australian composer.

1962 ~ John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7.

1976 ~ Death of René Cassin, French judge, recipient of the 1968 Nobel Peace Prize.

2001 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 15 years.

February 21st
 

1875 ~ Birthday of Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years 164 days, the longest confirmed lifespan for any human being in history.

1893 ~ Birthday of Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist.

1903 ~ Birthday of Anaïs Nin, Writer.

1907 ~ Birthday of W. H. Auden, Poet.

1916 ~ The Battle of Verdun began. French casualties during the battle were estimated at 550,000 with German losses set at 434,000, half of the total being fatalities.

1947 ~ Edwin Land demonstrated the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule.

1958 ~ The Peace symbol was completed for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

1965 ~ Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

1988 ~ TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Reports linked Swaggart to a prostitute.

February 22nd
 

1732 ~ Birthday of George Washington, 1st U.S. President.

1857 ~ Birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.

1879 ~ Frank Woolworth opened a five-cent store in Utica, N.Y.

1935 ~ Airplanes were no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1946 ~ George Kennan, the American charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram - the "Long Telegram" - to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan's analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War policy of containment.

1980 ~ In the Olympic competition, the U.S. Ice Hockey team defeated the Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid, NY.

1982 ~ Birthday of Jenna Haze, Porn Actress.

1987 ~ Death of Andy Warhol, Celebrity

1994 ~ Double agent Aldrich Ames was arrested.

1997 ~ Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute announced that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

February 24th
 

1786 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, Philologist & Folklorist.

1803 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.

1856 ~ Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician.

1868 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson.

1903 ~ The U.S. signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

1942 ~ Birthday of Joseph Lieberman, U.S. Senator.

1949 ~ At White Sands NM, "Project Bumper” a WAC CORPORAL attached to a German built V-2 rocket, reached a height of 250 miles above sea level, the first rocket to reach outer space. The entire trip took 6-1/2 minutes from firing.

1955 ~ Birthday of Steve Jobs, Computer Pioneer.

1981 ~ Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

2001 ~ Death of Claude E. Shannon , "father of information theory".

2008 ~ Fidel Castro retired as the President of Cuba.

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.

1982 ~ Birthday of Jamie Lynn, Porn Actress.

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.

1999 ~ Death of Glenn T. Seaborg, Nuclear Chemist & Public Servant, awarded the 1951 Nobel Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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.

1852 ~ 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.

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.

1992 ~ Death of S. I. Hayakawa, Canadian-American linguist and politician.

2008 ~ Death of William F. Buckley, Jr., Conservative author and commentator.

February 28th
 

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

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred von Schlieffen, German field marshal.

1854 ~ The U.S. Republican Party was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery.

1916 ~ Death of Henry James, American writer (The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, The Ambassadors).

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

1935 ~ Wallace Carothers discovered Nylon.

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.

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.

2003 ~ Death of Roger Needham, British cryptographer.

March 1st
 

1810 ~ Birthday of Frédéric Chopin, Composer & Pianist.

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

1912 ~ Georg Ritter von Trapp, head of the singing family memorialized in the musical "The Sound of Music", married Agathe.

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.

1975 ~ Color television transmission began in Australia.

1981 ~ Bobby Sands began his hunger strike in HM Prison Maze.

2002 ~ The peseta is replaced by the euro (€) as Spain's official currency.

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.

1962 ~ Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks, an NBA record which still stands.

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.

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

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.

1992 ~ Death of Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

1996 ~ Death of George Burns, Actor.

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

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.

1982 ~ The U.S. placed an embargo on Libyan oil because of Libya’s support of terrorist groups.

1985 ~ Death of Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet leader.

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

March 11th
 

1941 ~ President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill.

1952 ~ Birthday of Douglas Adams, Science Fiction/Comedy novelist.

1959 ~ Birthday of Nina Hartley, American porn star.

1968 ~ Death of John Wyndham, Author.

1981 ~ Birthday of Heidi Cortez, Erotic Broadcaster.

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.

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.

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

1947 ~ The “Truman Doctrine” established.

1955 ~ Death of Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish scientist, Nobel laureate.

1971 ~ Birthday of Tony Eveready, 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.

1842 ~ Death of Henry Shrapnel, British soldier and inventor.

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

1879 ~ Death of Adolf Anderssen, German chess player.

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.

1997 ~ 16 children and 1 teacher were murdered in Dunblane, Scotland.

March 14th
 

1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

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.

1964 ~ A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

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

1985 ~ Birthday of Ariel Rebel, Canadian Porn actress.

1985 ~ Birthday of Eva Angelina, Porn Actress.

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.

1916 ~ Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote.

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

1975 ~ Birthday of Veselin Topalov, Bulgarian chess Grandmaster.

1985 ~ The computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc. registered the first 'dot com' domain name, symbolics.com

1990 ~ British journalist Farzad Bazoft was executed for spying.

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

"1916 ~ Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote."

jseal, surely 1965.

Maybe that's why the recording sounded like he was saying, "Bye, bye, car, car?" :D

March 16th
 

1736 ~ Death of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer.

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

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.

1978 ~ The 'Amoco Cadiz' split in two after running aground three miles off the coast of France.

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.

2000 ~ Death of Thomas Ferebee, Hiroshima bombardier.

March 17th
 

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.

1782 ~ Death of Daniel Bernoulli, Mathematician.

1834 ~ Birthday of Gottlieb Daimler, Engineer & Inventor.

1845 ~ The rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry.

1919 ~ Birthday of Nat King Cole, Singer. Oh! what a 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
 

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.

1979 ~ Birthday of Brandon Lee, Porn Actor.

1990 ~ 12 paintings, collectively worth as much as $300 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. This was the largest art theft in U.S. history.

1992 ~ Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1.

1992 ~ South Africa voted to end apartheid.

2003 ~ Death of Adam Osborne, British computer pioneer. Here is a very interesting interview.

March 19th
 

1687 ~ Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered.

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.

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

Feastdays & Holidays

The swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

March 20th
 

43 BC ~ Birthday of Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), Roman poet (Metamorphoses).

1727 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist.

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

1904 ~ Birthday of B. F. Skinner, Psychologist.

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.

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.

1981 ~ Birthday of Victoria Lanz, Venezuelan Porn Actress.

1993 ~ The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips.

2004 ~ Death (by Israeli Hellfire missile) 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.

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 "Miracle Mile"

1962 ~ NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, was launched.

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.

RIP Jules Verne

dicksbro, he's only been gone 106 years.

Maybe it's a bit too soon.

March 25th
 

1634 ~ The first settlers arrived in Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore).

1807 ~ The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing slavery in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1881 ~ Birthday of Béla Bartók, Composer.

1918 ~ Death of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Aretha Franklin, Singer.

1957 ~ The European Economic Community was established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).

1975 ~ King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness.

1978 ~ Birthday of Teanna Kai, Porn Actress.

1992 ~ Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth from the Mir space station after a 10-month stay, during which his native country, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist.

1998 ~ President Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that "we did not act quickly enough" to stop the slaughter of one million Rwandans four years earlier.

March 26th
 

1827 ~ Death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.

1874 ~ Birthday of Robert Frost, Poet.

1904 ~ Birthday of Joseph Campbell, Author & Mythologist.

1911 ~ Birthday of Tennessee Williams, Playwright.

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

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.

1986 ~ Birthday of Misty Stone, Porn actress and model.

1997 ~ The 39 Heaven's Gate cult suicides.

1999 ~ Dr. Jack Kevorkian was found guilty of second-degree murder.

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.

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.

2006 ~ Death of Stanisław Lem, Polish writer.

March 28th
 

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

1928 ~ Birthday of Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to President Carter.

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

1942 ~ Birthday of Neil Kinnock, British Labor politician.

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.

1985 ~ Death of Marc Chagall, Russian-born painter.

1987 ~ Death of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

2004 ~ Death of Peter Ustinov, Actor.

March 29th
 

1867 ~ Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act which established the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1899 ~ Birthday of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1912 ~ Death of Robert Falcon Scott, Explorer.

1973 ~ The last U.S. troops left South Vietnam, ending America's direct military involvement in the Vietnam War.

1981 ~ First running of the London Marathon.

1982 ~ Death of Carl Orff, German composer (Carmina Burana).

1982 ~ Queen Elizabeth gave Royal Assent to the Canada Act 1982, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1984 ~ The Baltimore Colts of the NFL moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.

2004 ~ Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cook, Journalist.

Carmina Burana is the best piece of music no-one understands the words to.

^^ Lol! ^^

March 30th
 

1135 ~ Birthday of Moses Maimonides, Medieval Jewish Philosopher.

1746 ~ Birthday of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter and engraver.

1842 ~ Anesthesia (ether) was used for the first time in an operation.

1853 ~ Birthday of Vincent van Gogh, Painter.

1870 ~ Texas was readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.

1951 ~ Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage.

1977 ~ Death of Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer.

1981 ~ President Reagan was shot and seriously injured.

1998 ~ German automaker BMW bought Rolls-Royce for $570 million.

2006 ~ The Terrorism Act 2006 becomes law in the UK.