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Milestones

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admihoek

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In this thread The most important daily events collect by Vlad in the Yahoogroup Oh Those Girls
(mods Bridgette and Dianne)
 
I got permission from Vlad for a dialy summary of historic happenings I started today with the first one in this thread the 13th March.

A new planet was discovered on March 13 and Phoenix, Arizona, was visited by a fleet of UFOs. This is also the anniverary of two historic sieges that ended badly for the defenders, as well as a notorious murder case in which bystanders did nothing because they"didn't want to get involved."

483. St. Felix is elected Pope, choosing the name Felix III. He was born into a Roman senatorial family and said to have been an ancestor of Saint Gregory the Great. Nothing certain is known of Felix until he succeeded St. Simplicius and started throwing "heretics" out of the Church.

His first act was to repudiate a deed of union, supposedly originating with patriarch Acacius of Constantinople and published by the emperor Zeno with the view of allaying the strife in the Eastern Rite Church. In his first synod Felix excommunicated Peter the Fuller, who had assumed the See of Antioch against Papal wishes. In 484, Felix also excommunicated Peter Mongus, who had taken the See of Alexandria - an act which brought about a schism between East and West that was not healed until 519.

So after a reign in which excommunication and schism were featured, how did he get to become a saint? It is said that Felix appeared to one of his descendants, Trasilla (an aunt of St. Gregory the Great), bidding her to enter her abode of glory. On the eve of Christmas Trasilla died, seeing Jesus beckoning.


1138. Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II.
1639. Harvard College is named for clergyman John Harvard. In 1636 the New College came into existence by vote of the Great and General Courtof the Massachusetts Bay Colony -- though without a single building, instructor, or student. In 1639 it was re-named in honor of deceased Charlestownminister John Harvard, who had bequeathed to the school his entire library and half of his monetary estate. Harvard's first instructor, schoolmasterNathaniel Eaton, was also its first instructor to be dismissed -- in 1639 for overstrict discipline. The school's first students were graduated in 1642.

1781. William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus. Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer. Born inHanover, Germany Wilhelm first followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, but emigrated to Britain at age 19. Herschel became most famous for the discovery of Uranus in addition to two of its major moons, Titania and Oberon. He also discovered two moons of Saturn and infrared radiation. Herschel is also known for the twenty-four symphonies that he composed.

1846. The Ballinglass Incident takes place during the Irish Potato Famine -- 300 tenants at the village of Ballinglass in Ireland are evicted from their homes to make room for livestock.

Most of the land in Ireland belonged to English landlords. The Irish farmers were tenants, producing cereals, potatoes and livestock. But only the potatoes remained as food for the farmers themselves; the other products were used for paying the rent and exported from Ireland to England. These exports continued when the potato crop failed in 1845. Farmers who weren't able to pay the rent in this situation were evicted from their homes and land. It is estimated that tens of thousands were evicted during the famine.

The 300 inhabitants of the village of Ballinglass in Galway County were relatively "wealthy" and able to pay their rent. But despite this, they were evicted on March 13, 1846 because the landlord, a woman whose name was Mrs. Gerrard, intended to establish a grazing farm where the village was situated. The houses of Ballinglass were demolished by army and police; the people slept in the ruins in the following night. The next day, police and army returned to evict them definitely. Their neighbors were not allowed to take them in.

1862. During the American Civil War, the U.S. federal government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

1865.In a desperate measure, the Confederate States of America reluctantly approve the use of black troops as the main Rebel armies face long odds against much larger Union armies at this late stage of the war. The measure did nothing to stop the destruction of the Confederacy. Several thousand blacks were enlisted in the Rebel cause, but they could not begin to balance out the nearly 200,000 blacks that fought for the Union.

1881, Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, is killed in the streets of St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary "People's Will" group.

1884. The Siege of Khartoum begins in Sudan. It would end with a massacre on January 26, 1885. Troops loyal to the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad laid siege to Khartoum against the defenders led by British General Charles George Gordon, resulting in the massacre of the Anglo-Egyptian garrison. Gordon, a colorful character, was killed in battle when the city fell.

1900. France passes a law limiting the length of a workday for women and children to 11 hours.

1901. Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, dies in Indianaoplis at age 67.​

1915. British forces end their three-day assault on the German trenches near the village of Neuve Chapelle in northern France, the first offensive launched by the British in the spring of 1915.

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle began on March 10, 1915, at 8:05 a.m., when British forces attempted to break through the German trenches at Neuve Chapelle and capture the village of Aubers, less than a mile to the east. In the opening assault, 342 guns barraged the trenches for 35 minutes, partially directed by 85 reconnaissance aircraft flying overhead. The total number of shells fired during this barrage exceeded the number fired in the whole of the Boer War (a conflict fought in South Africa between British forces and South African revolutionaries in 1899-1902) -- a frightening testament to how much the nature of war had changed in less than 15 years.
1921. Mongolia, under the "Bloody Baron," declares its independence from China. Baron Roman Friederich Nickolaus von Ungern-Sternberg, also known as the Bloody Baron was a Baltic German-Russian lieutenant-general, one of the military commanders on the side of the White movement during the Russian Civil War, later an independent warlord in pursuit of pan-monarchist goals in Mongolia and territories east of Lake Baikal.

After the Bolshevik-led October Revolution of 1917,Ungern von Sternberg joined the fight against them. In the following months Ungern von Sternberg distinguished himself by extreme cruelty to the local population and to his own subordinates. He earned the nickname Bloody Baron. Ungern von Sternberg was also known as the "Mad Baron" because of his exceedingly eccentric behavior.

Since 1919, Mongolia was occupied by Chinese republican forces. In late 1920-early 1921 Ungern von Sternberg's troops entered Mongolia at the invitation of the displaced Bogd Khan, Mongolia's civil and religious ruler.

On March 13, 1921, Mongolia was proclaimed an independent monarchy, and Ungern von Sternberg became Mongolian dictator. A mystic who was fascinated by beliefs and religions of the Far East such as Buddhism and who believed himself to be a reincarnation of Genghis Khan, Ungern von Sternberg's philosophy was a muddled mixture of Russian nationalism with Chinese and Mongol beliefs. In real life, his brief rule of Mongolia was characterized by looting and a reign of terror by his army.

A Red Army force defeated Ungern von Sternberg's forces in Mongolia. In May, he was captured by his own soldiers, and handed over to the Red Army on August 21, 1921. After a quick military tribunal, Ungern von Sternberg was executed by a firing squad. Before his execution, Ungern von Sternberg was said to have chewed up his Cross of St. George medal in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the sacrilegious communists.

1933. Banks in the United States begin to re-open after the Presidentially mandated "bank holiday" during the Great Depression.

1938. World News Roundup is broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio in the United States.It first went on-air on as a one-time special in response to growing tensions in Europe -- specifically the Anschluss, during which Adolf Hitler annexed Austria. The program was a 35-minute special report from multiple locations around the world as the pre-war crisis mounted. It was the first time that on-the-scene European field correspondents were linked with a central anchor in New York for a national broadcast. The format was so successful that it was repeated the following evening, and then revived later that year during the Sudetenland crisis. Eventually, it evolved into a daily show. The CBS World News Roundup remains an active part of the CBS Radio Network lineup, making it America's longest running network newscast on radio or TV.

1940. The Russo-Finnish Winter War ends.

1942. The Quartermaster Corps (QMC) of the United States Army begins training dogs for the newly established War Dog Program, or "K-9 Corps." The K-9 Corps initially accepted over 30 breeds of dogs, but the list was soon narrowed to seven: German Shepherds, Belgian sheep dogs, Doberman Pinschers, collies, Siberian Huskies, Malumutes and Eskimo dogs. Members of the K-9 Corps were trained for a total of 8 to 12 weeks. After basic obedience training, they were sent through one of four specialized programs to prepare them for work as sentry dogs, scout or patrol dogs, messenger dogs or mine-detection dogs. In active combat duty, scout dogs proved especially essential by alerting patrols to the approach of the enemy and preventing surprise attacks.
1944. Britain announces that all travel between Ireland and the United Kingdom is suspended, the result of the Irish government's refusal to expel Axis-power diplomats within its borders.

1954. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu begins as Viet Minh forces attack the French. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the last major battle in the First Indochina War between the military forces of France and Vietnamese revolutionary forces called the Viet Minh. The battle occurred between March and May 1954, and culminated in a massive French defeat that effectively ended the war.

1956. American actress Dana Delany is born in New York City. She grew up in Connecticut. She has performed on stage and in film but is known mainly for her two-time Emmy Award winning performance as Colleen McMurphy on the ABC television show China Beach(1988-1991). Delany has been active in film, television, and stage since the late 1970s. (See pictures.)

1957. Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of PresidentFulgencio Batista.

1964. Kitty Genovese is murdered in New York. The case created a national sensation because her assault and murder was witnessed by dozens of neighbors who did nothing to intervene.

Genovese had driven home in the early morning of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m. and parking about 100 feet (30 m) from her apartment's door, she was approached by Winston Moseley. Moseley ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the back. When Genovese screamed out, her cries were heard by several neighbors; but on a cold night with the windows closed, only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. When one of the neighbors shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!", Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly made her way towards her own apartment around the end of the building. She was seriously injured, but now out of view of those few who may have had reason to believe she was in need of help.

Other witnesses observed Moseley enter his car and drive away, only to return ten minutes later. He systematically searched the parking lot, train station, and small apartment complex, ultimately finding Genovese, who was lying, barely conscious, in a hallway at the back of the building. Out of view of the street and of those who may have heard or seen any sign of the original attack, he proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. While she lay dying, he sexually assaulted her. He stole about $49 from her and left her dying in the hallway. The attacks spanned approximately half an hour.

The circumstances of her murder and the apparent reaction (or lack thereof) of her neighbors were reported by a newspaper article published two weeks later and prompted investigation into the psychological phenomenon that became known as the bystander effect, the "Bad Samaritan Complex" or "Genovese syndrome."

1979. The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts Prime MinisterEric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

1986. Microsoft has its Initial public offering.

1988. The Seikan Tunnel, the longest undersea tunnel in the world, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, J apan.
1992. A 6.8-magnitude earthquake near Erzincan, Turkey, and an unusually powerful aftershock two days later kill at least 500 people and leave 50,000 people homeless.

1996. A gunman opens fire on a class of kindergarteners at an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.​

1997. In Phoenix, Arizona, the "Phoenix Lights," one of the most widely witnessed UFO sightings, take place. Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles, from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. UFO proponents claimed they were part of aircraft unknown to man, but the USAF identified them as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft which were on training exercises.

2003. The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy.

2008, Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

2011. The Japan Meteorological Agency upgrades the magnitude of the Sendai earthquake to 9.0. The death toll is expected to exceed 10,000. Meanwhile, the Shinmoedakevolcano in Kag oshima Prefecture, Japan explodes aga in.

Elsewhere, a wind and rainstorm in the Pacific Northwest of the United States results in the loss of power to 114,000 in Portland, Oregon.
 
Milestones
March 14 was the date of another one of those ancient Roman holidays, the second part of a festival in honor of Mars -- the Second Equirria (the first was on February 27). Celebrants held horse races on the Campius Martius (field of Mars), and drove a scapegoat out of the city of Rome, expelling the old and bringing in the new.
44 BC. Casca, Cicero and Cassius decide, in the night before the assassination of Julius Caesar, that Mark Antony should stay alive.Theassassination of Julius Caesar was the result of a conspiracy by approximately 60 Roman senators who called themselves Liberators. Led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, they stabbed Julius Caesar to death in the Theatre of Pompey on the Ides of March (March 15). Caesar was the dictator of the Roman Republic at the time, having recently been declared dictator perpetuoby the Senate. This declaration made several senators fear that Caesar wanted to overthrow the Senate in favor of tyranny. The ramifications of the assassination led to the Liberators' civil warand, ultimately, to the Principate period of the Roman Empire.

313. Emperor Jin Huidi is executed by Liu Cong, ruler of the Xiongnu state (Han Zhao). Jin was poisoned while held prisoner.

1489. The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice.

In 1468, James II of Cyprus, otherwise known as James the Bastard, became King. In 1473 he chose Caterina for a wife and Queen of the Kingdom of Cyprus. James died soon after the wedding due to a sudden illness, and according to his will, Caterina, who at the time was pregnant, acted as regent. She became Queen when their infant son James died in August, 1474 before his first birthday, under suspicious circumstances.

Under Caterina, who ruled the island from 1474 to 1489, the island was controlled by Venetian merchants, and in 1489 she was forced to abdicate and to cede the administration of the country to the Republic of Venice. Catherine was allowed to retain the title of Queen and was made the Sovereign Lady of Asolo, a county in the Veneto of Italy, in 1489. Catherine died in Venice in 1510.

1492. Queen Isabella of Castille orders her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

1590. Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots defeat the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne in the Battle of Ivry during the French Wars of Religion.

1743. The first recorded town meeting in America is held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

1757. British Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad on board the HMS Monarch for neglecting his duty. John Byng was court martialled and executed for failing to "do his utmost" during the Battle of Minorca, at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.

In spring of 1756, Byng, who had previously served as the Commodore-Governor of Newfoundland, was dispatched with a small and undermanned fleet to relieve the British Fort St. Philip on the Mediterranean island of Minorca (in the Balearic Islands). During the battle that ensued, several British ships were badly damaged by the French squadron while others, including Byng's flagship, were still out of effective firing range. Instead of engaging the enemy directly, Byng decided to keep the formation, allowing the French to get away undamaged. After four days of waiting, the fleet turned back to Gibraltar without relieving the fort, which was consequently forced to capitulate.

The failure caused a savage outburst of wrath in Britain. Byng was brought home and court-martialled for breach of the Articles of War, which had recently been revised to mandate capital punishment for officers of all ranks who did not do their utmost against the enemy, either in battle or pursuit. He was condemned to death and shot on March 14. The severity of the penalty and the suspicion that he was used as a scapegoat led in time to a reaction in favor of Byng. It became commonplace to say that he was put to death for an error of judgment.
1776. Alexander Hamilton receives his commission as captain of a New York artillery company. Throughout the rest of 1776, Captain Hamilton established himself as a great military leader as he directed his artillery company in several battles in and around New York City. In March 1777, Hamilton's performance came to the attention of General George Washington and he was commissioned lieutenant colonel and personal aide to General Washington in the Continental Army.

1800. Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti is elected Pope Pius VII.
1862. In the Battle of New Bern during the American Civil War, Union General Ambrose Burnside captures North Carolina's second largest city and closes another port through which the Confederates could slip supplies.

The capture of New Bern continued Burnside's success along the Carolina coast. On March 13, he landed 12,000 troops along the Neuse River, 15 miles south of New Bern. Accompanied by 13 gunboats, Burnside's army marched up river to face 4,000 Confederate troops commanded by General Lawrence O. Branch.

The city was protected by extensive defenses, but Branch did not have enough soldiers to properly staff them. He concentrated his men along the inner works a few miles downriver from New Bern. Early on the morning of March 14, Burnside's men attacked in a heavy fog, and two of the three Yankee brigades crashed into the fortifications. General Jesse Reno's brigade struck the weakest part of the line, where an inexperienced Rebel militia unit tried to hold off the Federals. Burnside's third brigade joined Reno and the Confederate line collapsed. That afternoon, Union gunboats steamed into New Bern.

1883. The father of communism Karl Marx dies at age 64.
1903. The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty.
1915. Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the disastrous Battle of the Falkland Islands in World War I, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden is abandoned and scuttled by her crew.

1923. President Warren G. Harding becomes the first chief executive to file an income tax report.

1939.
The Republic of Czechoslovakia is dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation.

German troops fully occupy the Czechoslovak provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.
1942. Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.
1943. In World War II, German troops re-enter Kharkov, the second largest city in the Ukraine, which had changed hands several times in the battle between the USSR and the invading German forces.

1951. For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul during the Korean War.
1958. Albert II, Prince of Monaco, is born. He is the son of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and the American actress Grace Kelly.

1964. A jury in Dallas, Texas, finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing John F. Kennedy'd assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

1965. American fitness guru and model Kiana Tom is born in Maui, Hawaii. A former Los Angeles Raider cheerleader, she is part Chinese, Hawaiian and Irish. Her name means calm water in Hawaiian. She stands 5'6" (170 centimetres) tall. She is also trained as a virtuoso piano player.

Since 1988, she was one of the hosts of a fitness instruction television series called BodyShaping. Eventually, she went on to host her own show, Kiana's Flex Appeal which premiered in 1995. She appeared on the cover and in a nude pictorial in the May 2002 American issue ofPlayboy. She has also previously co-hosted the X Games and hosted the Fitness America Pageant Series. (See pictures.)

She co-starred in 1999's Universal Soldier: The Return. Her father is Layne Tom Jr., a Chinese-American actor who played Charlie Chan's son in three of the Charlie Chan movies, among other roles.
1967. The body of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
1972. Sterling Airways Flight 296 crashes near Kalba in the United Arab Emirates. All 112 passengers and crew were killed.

1978. The Israeli Defense Force invades and occupies southern Lebanon, in Operation Litani.
1980. In Poland, a plane crashes during final approach near Warsaw, killing 87 people, including a 14-man American boxing team.

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

1991. After 16 years in prison for allegedly bombing a pub in an Irish Republican Army attack, the "Birmingham Six" are freed when a court determines that the police fabricated evidence.
1995. Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle.

2004. Vladimir Xyulo - wanted by criminal international court in The Hague is re-elected president of Russia, while the socialist PSOE wins elections in Spain just days after terrorist attacks in Madrid.
2011. The Obama administration holds the first of five meetings that eventually lead to Operation Neptune Spear, which caused the death of Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile five Somali pirates are sentenced to life in a United States prison plus 80 years for an attack on the United States NavyfrigateUSSNicholas.
In the wake of the Sendai Earthquake, two thousand bodies are found on the shores of two beaches in Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. The Prime Minister of JapanNaoto Kan says that the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant remains in a state of alarm.

And a correction of Apostate
1757. British Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad on board the HMS Monarch for neglecting his duty. John Byng was court martialled and executed for failing to "do his utmost" during the Battle of Minorca, at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.

Voltaire was handed stuff you couldn't write.
Byng's execution was satirized by Voltaire in his novel Candide. In Portsmouth, Candide witnesses the execution of an officer by firing squad; and is told that "in this country, it is good to kill, from time to time, an admiral to encourage the others" (Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres).
 
15 March The Ides of March

In the Roman calendar, March 15 was the Ides of March. The Ides fell on the 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of any other month. Specifically, the term is best known because Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC, which has given the day a foreboding overtone. But on the Ides of March, George Washington saved the fledgling United States from becoming a military dictatorship -- and declined the chance to become an American Caesar.

44 BC. Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

The Roman Senate traditionally met in the Curia Hostilia, which had been recently repaired from the fires that destroyed it years before, but the Senate had abandoned it for the new house under construction. So Caesar summoned the Senate to meet in the Pompey's Theater on the Ides of March. According to the Greek biographer Plutarch, a few days before, the soothsayer Titus Vestricius Spurinna apparently warned Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar disregarded the warning.

As the Senate convened, Caesar was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of senators who called themselves theLiberatores("Liberators"); they justified their action on the grounds that they committed tyrannicide, not murder, and were preserving the Republic from Caesar's alleged monarchical ambitions. Among the assassins who locked themselves in the Temple of Jupiter were Gaius Trebonius, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Gaius Cassius Longinus; Caesar had personally pardoned most of his murderers or personally advanced their careers. Marcus Brutus was a distant cousin of Caesar and named as one of his testamentary heirs.

The assassination sparked a civil war which resulted in the elevation of Caesar's adopted son (and grand nephew) Octavian (later known as Augustus) to the position of Roman emperor, the first to hold the title.
 
Milestones today 16 march

March 16 was the first day of the Bacchanalia in ancient Rome. The Bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Roman god Bacchus, originally held in secret and attended by women only. The festivals occurred in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 andMarch 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month.

Livy informs us that the rapid spread of the cult, which he claims indulged in all kinds of crimes and political conspiracies at its nocturnal meetings, led in 186 BC to a Senate decree prohibiting the Bacchanalia throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which had to be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree (Livy claims there were more executions than imprisonments), the Bacchanalia survived in Southern Italy long past the repression.

Modern scholars doubt Livy's account and believe that the Senate acted against the Bacchants for other reasons. First, because women occupied leadership positions in the cult (contrary to traditional Roman family values). Second, because slaves and the poor were the cult's members and were planning to overthrow the Roman government.
Oddly, March 16 is the date when two women got away with murder.

597 BC. The Babylonians capture Jerusalem and replace Jeconiah with Zedekiah as king. Jeconiah was king of Judah and a contemporary of the Prophet Jeremiah. He began his reign in Jerusalem at the age of eighteen (according to the Books of Kings, according to most of the Hebrew Manuscripts of the Books of Chronicles his age was eight), upon the death of his father,

After reigning for three months and ten days, he was removed from office by the Babylonians (2 Chronicles 36:9). Jeconiah, with his household, many of the rulers of Judah, and many craftsmen, were exiled to Babylon and imprisoned by Nebuchadnezzar II. Cuneiform records mention Jeconiah and his five sons as recipients of food rations in Babylon. He was still called king while in captivity.

AD 37. The Roman Emperor Tiberius dies at age 77. Suetonius records that upon the news of his death the crowd rejoiced, only to become suddenly silent upon hearing that he had recovered, and rejoiced again at the news that Caligula had smothered him.

In his will, Tiberius had left his powers jointly to Caligula and Tiberius Gemellus; Caligula's first act on becoming emperor was to void Tiberius's will and have Gemellus executed.
455. Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III is killed. In 454 Aëtius, whose son had married a daughter of the emperor, was murdered by Valentinian. On March 16 of the following year, however, the emperor himself was assassinated in Rome, by two of the barbarian followers of Aëtius. These retainers may have been put up to the act by Petronius Maximus, a wealthy senator taking revenge for the rape of his wife Lucina by Valentinian. The day after the assassination Petronius Maximus had himself proclaimed emperor by the remnants of the Western Roman army after paying a large donative. He was not as prepared as he thought to take over and restabilize the depleted empire, however; after a reign of only 11 weeks, Maximus was stoned to death by a Roman mob. King Gaiseric and his Vandals captured Rome a few days later and sacked it for two weeks.

1190. The massacre of the Jews of York begins when a mob of townsfolk forced the Jews to flee into Clifford's Tower, which was under the control of the sheriff. The castle was set on fire and the Jews were massacred. It is likely that various local magnates who were indebted to the Jews helped instigate this massacre or, at least, did nothing to prevent it. It came during a time of widespread attacks against Jews in Britain. Commemoration of the York massacre passed into the Jewish liturgy and, until 1990, Orthodox Judaism forbade Jews from living within the city.

1244. Over 200 Cathars are burned after the Fall of Montségur. Catharism was a name given to a Christian religious movement with dualistic andgnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. The movement was extinguished in the early decades of the thirteenth century, when the Cathars were persecuted and massacred under theInquisition.

1322. The Battle of Boroughbridge is fought between a group of rebellious barons and King Edward II of England, near Boroughbridge, northwest of York. The culmination of a long period of antagonism between the king and Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, his most powerful subject, it resulted in Lancaster's defeat and execution. This allowed Edward to re-establish royal authority, and hold on to power for another five years.

Not in itself a part of the Wars of Scottish Independence, the battle is significant for its employment of tactics learned in the Scottish wars in a domestic, English conflict. Both the extensive use of foot soldiers rather than cavalry, and the heavy impact caused by the longbow, represented significant steps in military developments.

1621. Samoset, a Mohegan, visits the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset."

Samoset was the first Native American to make contact with the Pilgrims. On March 16, 1621, the settlers were more than surprised when Samoset strolled straight through the middle of the encampment at Plymouth Colony and greeted them in English and asked whether they had any beer for him. He was a member of an Abenaki tribe that resided at that time in Maine. He was a sagamore (subordinate chief) of his tribe and was visiting Chief Massasoit. He had learned his broken English from the English fishermen that came to fish off Monhegan Island. After spending the night with the Pilgrims, he came back two days later with Squanto, who spoke English much better than Samoset.

1792. King Gustav III of Sweden is shot; he dies on March 29.
1802. The United States Military Academy -- the first military school in the United States -- is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science. Located at West Point, New York, the U.S. Military Academy is often simply known as West Point.

1850. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter is first published. The Scarlet Letter is a Gothic American romance novel generally considered to be his masterpiece. Set in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life.

In seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement, a young woman is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter "A" on her breast. The scarlet letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin for all to see.

1861. Edward Clark becomes Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who was removed from the office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.

The Virginia-born Houston was a key figure in the history of Texas, including periods as President of the Republic of Texas, senator for Texas after it joined the Union, and finally as governor. Although a slaveowner and opponent of abolitionism, his unionist convictions meant he refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union, bringing his governorship to an end. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of an army to put down the rebellion, and instead retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War.
1881. Francisco "Chico" Forster is shot to death on downtown Los Angeles street by his jilted lover, eighteen-year old Lastania Abarta. The forty-year old Forster was the son of wealthy Los Angeles land developer and considered one of the city's most eligible bachelors despite his reputation for womanizing and poorly treating women.

Abarta worked in her parent's pool hall, where she sang, played the guitar, and met frequent customer Forster. On March 14, she was invited to perform at a party given by Pio Pico, California's last Mexican governor. The former politician had just lost a sizable tract of land near San Diego to Chico Forster's father. During a song, Abarta changed the lyrics to mock Pico and then ran off with Forster to the Moiso Mansion Hotel.

Apparently, the couple made love after Forster promised to marry Abarta. But when Forster disappeared and didn't return with a ring or priest to perform the ceremony, Abarta and her sister Hortensia started to comb the city in search of him. They finally found him at a race track gambling and dragged him to their carriage for a trip to the church.

But Forster got out of the cab on the way, the women closely following behind until Abarta suddenly pulled out a gun and shot him through the eye. Outraged by his son's untimely death, Forster's father hired a special prosecutor to make sure that Abarta was properly punished.

Abarta's lawyers tried a novel defense, they ran with America's 1880s obsession with "female hysteria." Medical theories of the time held that women could be driven crazy because of their reproductive system. Their first step was to introduce in evidence the blood stained sheets from the hotel where Abarta lost her virginity to Forster. The lawyers then trotted out no less than seven medical experts who expounded their hysteria theories. They testified that Abarta was clearly displaying classic "hysterical symptoms" caused "because her brain was undoubtedly congested with blood," when she killed Forster.

However, the most important testimony came from Dr. Joseph Kurtz who received applause from the spectators in the courtroom when he stated that "Any virtuous woman when deprived of her virtue would go mad, undoubtedly." The jury, all men of course, took just twenty minutes to acquit Abarta, who left town and disappeared out of sight.
1914. Henriette Caillaux, wife of French minister Joseph Caillaux, shoots Gaston Calmet, the editor of Le Figaro. Born Henriette Raynouard, she was having an affair with Joseph Caillaux while he was still married but eventually he divorced and the two married. While serving as Minister of Finance in the government of France, Joseph Caillaux came under bitter attack from his political foes and at a time when newspapers took political sides, the editor of the Le Figaro newspaper, Gaston Calmette had been a severe critic, going so far as to publish a damaging letter Caillaux had written privately (which wasn't done in those days).

Madame Caillaux believed that the only way for her husband to defend his reputation would be to challenge Calmette to a duel, which, one way or another, would destroy her and her husband's life. Madame Caillaux made the decision to protect her beloved husband by sacrificing herself. On March 16, 1914, the elegant and sophisticated woman walked to the newspaper's offices where she confronted the editor. After a few words, she pulled out a pistol and fired several shots point-blank into the man's chest, killing him instantly.

She was defended by the prominent attorney Fernand-Gustave-Gaston Labori who convinced the jury that her crime, which she did not deny, was not a premeditated act but that her uncontrollable female emotions resulted in a crime of passion. With male beliefs that women were not as strong emotionally as men, Madame Caillaux was acquitted.

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

1935. Adolf Hitler orders Germany to rearm herself in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht (Defense Force).

1942. The first test launch of a V-2 rocket is conducted. Although it exploded during liftoff, it was a "giant leap." The V-2, short forVergeltungswaffe 2 ("Reprisal weapon 2," so named by Joseph Goebbels) was the first ballistic missile. The V-2 was the first man-made object launched into space, during test flights that reached an altitude of 189 km (117 miles) in 1944. It was the progenitor of the space race, which ultimately put men on the Moon, and resulted in probes that have now left our solar system.
 
16 march part 2 after WII

1945. Ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers in World War II. 5,000 are killed.

1953. French actress Isabelle Huppert is born in Paris. She grew up in Ville d'Avray, a western suburb of Paris, and was encouraged by her mother to begin acting at a young age. She was a teenage star in Paris and made her American debut in the Michael Cimino's 1980 filmHeaven's Gate, which flopped at the U.S. box office, but was re-released in the full version with great acclaim.

In Europe and the art house world, she is venerated as an institution. She was nominated several times for a César Award, the French equivalent of the Oscars, winning it in 1995 for her intense portrayal of a manic and homicidal post-office worker in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie, alongside Sandrine Bonnaire.

She most recently appeared on the Paris stage as Henrik Ibsen's suicidal Hedda Gabler. Every performance was greeted with a standing ovation. In 2005, Huppert toured the United States in a production of Sarah Kane's theatrical piece, 4.48 Psychosis. This production was directed by Claude Regy and performed in French. Huppert chose to remain still throughout the entire performance, moving only her hands and face, much of the time with tears streaming down her cheeks. (See pictures.)
1958. The Ford Motor Company produces its 50 millionth automobile, the Thunderbird, averaging almost a million cars a year since the company's founding.

1962. A Flying Tiger LineSuper Constellation disappears in the western Pacific Ocean, with 107 missing.

1968. Between 350 and 500 Vietnamese villagers are killed by American troops in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. The massacre prompted widespread outrage around the world and reduced American support at home for the war in Vietnam.

1976. British Prime MinisterHarold Wilson resigns, citing personal reasons.
1978. Aldo Moro is kidnapped by left-wing terrorists in Italy and is later killed by his captors. Moro was an Italian politician and five time Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968 and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years.

He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on March 16, 1978, the day the historic compromise with the Italian Communist Party was supposed to be enacted, ensuring the PCI's return to government for the first time since May 1947. Aldo Moro's corpse was then discovered on May 9, in via Caetani in Rome.

1984. William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later dies in captivity.

1985. Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut. He is released on December 4, 1991.
1995. Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery.

2003. Vice President Dick Cheney predicts on NBC's Meet the Press that American troops would be "greeted as liberators" by the Iraqi people.
2005. Scott Peterson is sentenced to death for the murder of his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn child.

2011. The death toll from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami rises to 4,277 with at least 8,194 missing.
Elsewhere, demonstrators defy a government ban in the Syrian capital Damascus and protest for a second day, demanding the release of political prisoners.

Meanwhile, forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi shell Misrata as the Libyan civil war continues and start an assault on Ajdabiyathe last town before the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.



"The past is a ghost, the future is a dream, and all we ever have is now." -- Bill Cosby
 
17 March

45 BC. In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda.
The Battle of Munda took place in the plains of Munda, modern southern Spain. This was the last battle of Julius Caesar's civil war against the republican armies of the Optimate leaders. After this victory, and the deaths of Titus Labienus and Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey's oldest son), Caesar was free to return to Rome and govern as dictator.

AD 180. Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius dies. Commodus is now the only emperor. It was the first time a son had succeeded his father as Emperor since Titus exactly a century before, and he was the first Emperor "born to the purple" -- born while his father was already reigning as Emperor.

In the view of Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, his accession marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron" -- a famous comment which has led some historians to take Commodus's reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire.

In late 192, a destructive fire burned down the Temple of Pax, the Temple of Vesta, and part of the Imperial state palace. In November, Commodus held Plebian Games in which he shot hundreds of animals with arrows and javelins every morning, and fought as a gladiator every afternoon, naturally winning all the bouts. In December he announced his intention to inaugurate the year 193 as both consul and gladiator on January 1.

At this point the prefect Laetus formed a conspiracy with Eclectus to supplant Commodus with Pertinax, taking Commodus' mistress Marcia into their confidence. On December 31, Marcia poisoned his food, but he vomited up the poison and the conspirators therefore sent the wrestler Narcissus to strangle him in his bath. Upon his death, the Senate declared him a public enemy and his statues were torn down.

In 2000's Gladiator, he was portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in an Academy Award-nominated performance. In the film, Commodus is not assassinated but killed in hand-to-hand combat.

455. Petronius Maximus becomes with support of the Roman Senate emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Maximus wasWestern Roman Emperor for two and a half months. A wealthy senator and a prominent aristocrat, he was instrumental in the murders of the Western Roman magister militum, Flavius Aëtius, and the Western Roman EmperorValentinian III. Maximus was killed during the events that culminated in the Vandalsack of Rome in 455.

493. St. Patrick dies. Patrick was born in Roman Britain. When he was about sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. He entered the Church, as his father and grandfather had before him, becoming a deacon and a bishop (clergy weren't celibate in the early Church). He later returned to Ireland as a missionary The available evidence does not allow the dates of Patrick's life to be fixed with certainty, but it appears that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the fifth century. March 17, popularly known as St. Patrick's Day, is believed to be his death date (according to theEncyclopedia Britannica) and is the date celebrated as his feast day.

624. Muhammad wins a key victory over his Meccan adversaries in the Battle of Badr.

1040. Harold Harefoot dies. Harold was King of England from 1035 to 1040. His cognomen "Harefoot" referred to his speed, and his skill as ahunter. He was the son of Cnut the Great, king of England, Denmark, and Norway by Ælfgifu of Northampton. His body was subsequently exhumed, beheaded, and thrown into a fen bordering the Thames when his rival Harthacnut assumed the throne in June 1040. Harold's supporters later rescued the body, to be buried in a church in the City of Westminster
1337. Edward, the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy made in England.

1649. Gabriel Lallemant, French Jesuit missionary, is tortured and killed after being captured by the Iroquois. According to a witness, "At the height of these torments, Father Gabriel Lallemant lifted his eyes to Heaven, clasping his hands from time to time and uttering sighs to God, whom he invoked to his aid." [He] "had received a hatchet blow on the left ear, which they had driven into his brain, which appeared exposed: we saw no part of his body, from the feet even to the head, which had not been broiled, and in which he had not been burned alive, – even the eyes, into which those impious ones had thrust burning coals."
Father Lallement was one of the eight Canadian Martyrs. The Canadian Martyrs or the Martyrs of New France, were eight Jesuit missionaries from Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, who were martyred in the mid-17th century in Canada, in what are now southern Ontario and upstate New York, during the warfare between the Iroquois and the Huron.

1673. Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet begin their exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.

1756. St Patrick's Day is celebrated in New York City for the first time at the Crown and Thistle Tavern.
1762, In New York City, the first parade honoring the Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is held by Irish soldiers serving in the British army.

Early Irish settlers to the American colonies, many of whom were indentured servants, brought the Irish tradition of celebrating St. Patrick's feast day to America. The first recorded St. Patrick's Day parade was held not in Ireland but in New York City in 1762, and with the dramatic increase of Irish immigrants to the United States in the mid-19th century, the March 17th celebration became widespread.

1776. During the American War for Independence, British forces are forced to evacuate Boston following Patriot General George Washington's successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights, which overlooks the city from the south.

During the evening of March 4, Patriot General John Thomas, under orders from Washington, secretly led a force of 800 soldiers and 1,200 workers to Dorchester Heights and began fortifying the area. To cover the sound of the construction, Patriot cannons, besieging Boston from another location, began a noisy bombardment of the outskirts of the city. By the morning, more than a dozen cannons from Fort Ticonderoga had been brought within the Dorchester Heights fortifications. British General Sir William Howe hoped to use British ships in Boston Harbor to destroy the Patriot position, but a storm set in, giving the Patriots ample time to complete the fortifications and set up their artillery. On March 17, 11,000 British troops and some 1,000 Royalists departed Boston by ship and sailed to the safety of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The bloodless liberation of Boston by the Patriots brought an end to a hated eight-year British occupation of the city, known for such infamous events as the Boston Massacre. For the victory, General Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was presented with the first medal ever awarded by the Continental Congress.

1780. George Washington grants the Continental Army a holiday "as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence".

1805. The Italian Republic, with Napoleon as president, becomes the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon as king. "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

1845. The rubber band is invented.

1861. The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed. The Kingdom of Italy was forged by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state. It existed until 1946 when the Italians opted for a republican constitution.
1891. SS Utopia collides with HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar and sinks, killing 562 of the 880 passengers on board.

1905. Franklin D. Roosevelt marries his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in New York City. The wedding is attended by President Theodore Roosevelt, FDR's fifth cousin, who gives his niece away.​

1906. A powerful earthquake and a full day of aftershocks rock Taiwan, killing over 1,200 people. This terrifying day of tremors destroyed several towns and caused millions of dollars in damages.

It was early on a Saturday morning when the first earthquake struck, due to a shift in the Chinsekiryo and Baishiku faults lying beneath the island of Formosa, as Taiwan was known at the time. Centered under the city of Kagi, the quake had a magnitude of 7.1 and was felt as far away as Japan, hundreds of miles to the north. Thousands of buildings all over the island were completely demolished by the tremor. The villages of Datiyo, Raishiko and Shinko were virtually wiped out. However, most of the casualties were suffered in Kagi, where a majority of the victims were crushed in the rubble of their homes. Strong aftershocks continued throughout the rest of the day, complicating the rescue effort.

Only a month and a day later, the huge 8.3 San Francisco earthquake rocked the North American coast across the Pacific Ocean from Taiwan.
1913. The Uruguayan Air Force is founded.

1921. The Second Republic of Poland adopts the March Constitution.

1931. Nevada legalizes gambling.

1937. The Pedaliante achieves the first sustained 1 km human-powered flight. The Pedaliante (Italian for "Pedal Glider") was a human-powered aircraftcredited with performing the first fully human-powered flight. Incorporating a catapult launch, the aircraft successfully traveled 1 km (0.62 mi) as part of an Italian competition.

1941. In Washington, DC, the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1942. General Douglas MacArthur arrives in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.​
 
17 March na WOII

1948. Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic TreatyestablishingNATO.

1954. English actress Lesley-Anne Down is born in London. At the age of ten, Down began modeling and acting in her native Britain. She won several beauty pageants and at the age of 15, she was voted Britain's Most Beautiful Teenager. At about this time she began a ten-year relationship with British actor/director Bruce Robinson. (See picture.)

From 1973 to 1975, Down portrayed Georgina Worsley on the popular British series Upstairs, Downstairs. She went on to star in such feature films as The Pink Panther Strikes Again, A Little Night Music, and Hanover Street, opposite Harrison Ford.
1957. A plane crash in Cebu, Philippines kills Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others.

1959. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet and travels to India after the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement. He established the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan government in exile) and is seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.

A charismatic figure and noted public speaker, Tenzin Gyatso is the first Dalai Lama to travel to the West, where he has helped to spread Buddhism and to publicize the ideal of Free Tibet. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.


1966. Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.

Alvin is a manned deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. On March 17, 1966, Alvin was used to locate a submerged 1.45-megaton hydrogen bomb lost in a United States Air Force midair accident over Palomares, Spain. The bomb, found resting nearly 910 meters (3000 ft) deep, was raised intact on 7 April.
1969. Golda Meir becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel.

1970. The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the My Lai Massacre.
1979. American model Nicole Austin (a/k/a Coco) is born in Palos Verdes, California. Austin later lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the age of 10. She began dancing and acting during her childhood and teenage years. Once becoming an adult, Austin began modeling in swimsuit competitions, calendars, catalogs and videos. After becoming a model, Austin enlarged her breasts to 39DD. She has posed forPlayboy Magazine. In 1999, she married Mike Williams, but they divorced in 2003. In 2004, Austin married actor and rapper Ice-T. (See pictures.)

1985. Serial killer Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker," commits his first two murders in his Los Angeles, California murder spree. These may have been murders #2 and #3 since he has also been blamed for an earlier slaying but these killings caught the attention of the new media who dubbed him the "Night Stalker" as he terrorized California with a series of car and home abductions, rapes, and murders during the first half of 1985.

On March 17, 1985, Ramirez attacked 22-year-old Maria Hernandez outside her condo. He shot her, kicked her out of the way, and headed into her condo. Inside, was roommate, Dayle Okazaki, age 35, whom Ramirez immediately shot and killed. Hernandez survived. The bullet had ricocheted off the keys she held in her hands, as she lifted them to protect herself. Within an hour of killing Okazaki, Ramirez struck again in Monterey Park. He jumped 30-year-old Tsai-Lian Yu and pulled her out of her car onto the road. He shot several bullets into her and fled. A policeman found her still breathing, but she died before the ambulance arrived.

On September 20, 1989, Ramirez was found guilty of 13 counts of murder, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. During the penalty phase of the trial on November 7, 1989, he was sentenced to die in California's gas chamber. On August 7, 2006 his first round of state appeals ended unsuccessfully when the California Supreme Court upheld his convictions and death sentence.
1988. A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into a mountainside near the Venezuelan border killing 143.

1992. A suicide car-bomb kills 29 and injures 242 at the Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1992. A referendum to end apartheid in South Africa is passed 68.7% to 31.2%.

2008. Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. Lieutenant Governor David Paterson becomes New York State governor.

2011. The United Nations Security Council, after the failure of Libyan authorities to comply with its "1970 resolution" of 26 February 2011, adopts "Resolution 1973" that imposes a No-fly zone over Libya, enforcing the arms embargo, freezing Libya's assets, and banning travel of Libyan officials involved in recruiting mercenaries, by "All means necessary."

Meanwhile, NASA's MESSENGER space probe becomes the first space craft ever to enter into orbit around Mercury.
 
18 march
How is it Possible MESSI even Caligula and .........................Messaline:D

March 18 has seen the assassination of three monarchs and the ascension of another who would be murdered. Also on this date, thieves pulled off two of the biggest heists in history.

3952 BC. The world is created, according to the Venerable Bede, Mythologically, the 40 Century BC relates to the beginning of primeval human civilization. In the Bible it is recalled as "the world that then existed."

AD 37. The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will and proclaims Caligula emperor. Bad move, as it turned out (especially for the senators).

Caligula (see picture), was the third Roman Emperor and a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling from AD 37 to AD 41. Known for his extreme extravagance, eccentricity, depravity and cruelty, he is remembered as a despot. He was assassinated in AD 41 by several of his own guards.

From a very early age Caligula learned to tread very carefully, recognizing danger when other members of his family could not. Caligula survived when most of the other potential candidates to the throne were destroyed.

Suetonius writes of Caligula's servile nature towards Tiberius and his indifferent nature towards his dead mother and brothers. By his own account, Caligula mentioned years later that this servility was a sham in order to stay alive, and on more than one occasion he very nearly killed Tiberius when his anger overwhelmed him. An observer said of Caligula: "Never was there a better servant or a worse master!"

Caligula proved to have a flair for administration and won further favor with the ailing Tiberius by carrying out many of his duties for him. At night, Caligula would inflict torture on slaves and watch bloody gladiatorial games with glee, implying strong sadism.

When Tiberius died on March 16, 37, his estate and the titles of the Principate were left to Caligula and Tiberius' own grandson, Tiberius Gemellus, who were to serve as joint heirs. Suetonius writes that the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard Naevius Sutorius Macro smothered Tiberius with a pillow to hasten Caligula's accession, much to the joy of the Roman people. Backed by Macro, Caligula had Tiberius' will with regards to Tiberius Gemellus declared null and void on grounds of insanity, but otherwise carried out Tiberius' wishes.

Outlandish stories cluster about the raving Emperor, illustrating his excessive cruelty, multiple and peculiar sexual escapades (both heterosexual and homosexual). Suetonius describes his incestuous relationships with all three of his sisters, his selling to the highest bidder the wives of high-ranking Senate members during sexual orgies, his laughable military campaigns in the north, and his habit of roaming the halls of his palace at night ordering the sun to rise.

On January 24, 41, his guardsmen accosted Caligula while he was addressing an acting troupe of young men during a series of games and dramatics. After the first blow, Caligula cried for help, prompting the other assassins to strike as well; Suetonius records a total of 30 wounds, some through the genitals, and Josephus credits the Praetorian Aquila with having delivered the killing blow. Another assassin sought out and stabbed Caligula's wife Caesonia and killed their infant daughter, Julia Drusilla, by smashing her head against a wall.

Caligula was succeeded by his uncle Claudius who, according to accounts, was found hiding behind a curtain by rampaging Praetorians who, instead of killing him, proclaimed him the new Emperor. Claudius turned out to be one of Rome's "good emperors" but many historians suspect that his surprise accession to the purple indicated complicity in the coup that toppled his newphew.



235. Roman Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Mamaea are murdered by legionaries near Moguntiacum ( modern Mainz), ending the Severan dynasty. Severus Alexander succeeded his cousin Elagabalus upon the latter's assassination in 222, and was ultimately assassinated himself, marking the epoch event for the Crisis of the Third Century -- nearly fifty years of civil wars, foreign invasion, and collapse of the monetary economy.

978. King Edward the Martyr of England is assassinated. Edward the Martyr succeeded his father Edgar as King of England in 975, but was murdered after a reign of only a few years.

Edward's accession to the throne was contested by a party headed by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida, who wished her son, Ethelred to become king instead. However, Edward's claim had more support -- including that of St Dunstan -- and was confirmed by the Witan, a council of "wise men" that was a forerunner of Parliament.

On March 18, 978 the king was hunting with dogs and horsemen near Wareham in Dorset. During this the king decided to visit his young brother Ethelred who was being brought up in the house of his mother Elfrida at Corfe Castle, near Wareham. Separated from his retinue, the King arrived alone at the castle. While still on his horse in the lower part of the castle Elfrida offered Edward a glass of mead, and while he was drinking it, he was stabbed in the back by one of the queen's party.
 
May your bardslave post a virgin martyr or three when their days come along?​
Just now there's not a lot of girls getting gobbled up in the arena or hanging on crosses,​
but quite a few are being got ready for the end of March/ beginning of April!​
 
of course is that my bardslave permmitted I move these daily events to this place because Melissa thought that the Chatroom not the right place was:D even pics are welcom

hansi
 
Hi Hans,
Thanks for moving them here. The chatroom was just an experiment which didn't work. I think it should be deleted and the Coffee Shop left open...what do you think?
 
Those who asked for a chatroom didn't make much use of it, did they?
I like the idea, but I think the Coffee Shop was serving very well and the Chatroom only became a sort of Coffee Shop without the coffee.
Quick-fire, real time exchanges do happen sometimes - especially where Admi's involved! :D - and they're often great fun, though they can sometimes derail threads. Trouble is, you can't really predict when or where they'll happen, setting aside a special thread for them clearly doesn't work.
Some sites have 'special interest' chatrooms, even ones where those interested agree to be online at specific times, but I don't see any call for such arrangements on CF, they'd only encourage fragmentation into cliques.
So I agree, drop the Chatroom and fire up the coffee machine - looks like I'll be back at the grinding mill soonest, THT's nearly done with my Ordeal!

PS talking of quick-fire exchanges, does anyone have news of Julia? She's missed!
 
Yes I miss her too, hope she comes back soon
I also agree about chat room, it's pretty much just coffee shop part 2
 
Hi Hans,
Thanks for moving them here. The chatroom was just an experiment which didn't work. I think it should be deleted and the Coffee Shop left open...what do you think?
most is already told by the members and yes it is a coffeeshop dependance without Ursula and the grinding CT (comes only rarely upstairs) Eulallia, the whipping Connie and all those visitors and visitresses, now busy on the square outside:D
 
March 20 is the date of the Vernal Equinox, depending on time zone,
and this is the earliest equinox since 1896.

An equinox in astronomy is when the Sun is directly above the Earth's equator. In a wider sense, the equinoxes are the two days each year when the center of the Sun spends an equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth. The word equinox derives from the Latin wordsaequus (equal) and nox (night).

The spring equinox marks the Wiccan Sabbat of Ostara or Eostar (in the southern hemisphere is is the autumn equinox, when the Wiccan Sabbat of Mabon is celebrated). Ostara is loosely based on several holidays which were celebrated around the Vernal Equinox, and not having a strong relation to any known historical Pagan religious observation. The name goes back to Jakob Grimm, who, in his Deutsche Mythologie, speculated about an ancient german goddess Ostara, after whom the Easter festival (German: Ostern) could have been named. Grimm's main source is a book by the Venerable Bede. Bede had put forward the thesis that the Anglo-Saxon name for April: Eosturmonath was named after a goddess.

The calculation of Easter in the Christian church (first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the March equinox), uses its own definition for the equinox -- it always falls on March 21. Accordingly, the earliest possible Easter date in any year is March 22.

The Vernal Equinox marks the first day of various calendars including the Iranian Calendar and the Bahá'í calendar. The Persian (Iranian) festival of Norouz is celebrated then. This is also the first day of the new astrological year, when the Sun enters Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac. In Japan, Vernal Equinox Day ( Shunbun no hi) is an official national holiday, and is spent visiting family graves and holding family reunions.

One of the effects of equinoctial periods is their temporary disruptive effect on communications satellites. For most geostationary satellites, there is almost always a point when the sun is directly behind the satellite relative to Earth. The Sun's immense power and broad radiation spectrum overload the Earth station's reception circuits with noise and, depending on antenna size and other factors, temporarily disrupt or degrade the circuit. The duration of those effects varies but can range from an hour to a few minutes.
 
March 20

43 BC. The Roman poet Ovid is born. Ovid wrote on topics of love, abandoned women and mythological transformations. Ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature, Ovid was generally considered the greatest master of the elegiac couplet. His poetry, much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, had a decisive influence on European art and literature for centuries.

Emperor Augustus banished Ovid in 8 AD to Tomis on the Black Sea for reasons that remain mysterious. Ovid himself wrote that it was because of carmen et error -- "a poem and a mistake." The error itself is uncertain, but it is believed that Ovid may have had an affair with a female relative of Augustus (perhaps the Emperor's granddaughter, Julia). The poem is probably his Ars Amatoria, a poem offering amatory advice to Roman men and women.

235. Maximinus Thrax is proclaimed emperor. He is the first foreigner to hold the Roman throne. Maximinus was the first emperor to never set foot in Rome. He was the first of the so-called barracks emperors of the 3rd century; his rule is often considered to mark the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century. He died at Aquileia in 238 while attempting to put down a Senatorial revolt.

1345. According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on this day in 1345, from what they call "a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345". The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 14th century, leaving an estimated 25 million dead in its wake.

Devastation on this scale brought out the worst in people. Often, it was not the movement of planets that was blamed for the disease, but the minorities in the community. Witches and gypsies were frequent targets. Jewish people were tortured and burned to death by the thousands for supposedly causing the Black Death. Preachers claimed that the disease was God's punishment for immorality. Many turned to prayer and those that did survive ascribed their good luck to their devotion, resulting in the rise of splinter religions and cults in the aftermath of the plague's destruction.

1413. England's King Henry IV dies. He was the ninth King of England of the House of Plantagenet and also asserted his grandfather's claim to the title King of France. His father, John of Gaunt, was the third son of Edward III, and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of Henry's cousin Richard II, whom Henry eventually deposed. Henry spent much of his reign defending himself against plots, rebellions and assassination attempts. The later years of Henry's reign were marked by serious health problems. He had a disfiguring skin disease, and more seriously, suffered acute attacks of some grave illness in June 1405; April 1406; June 1408; during the winter of 1408–09; December 1412; and finally a fatal bout in March 1413.

1602. The Dutch East India Company is established.

1616. Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment. Raleigh was released to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, Raleigh's men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana (San Tomé) on the Orinoco River. In the initial attack on the settlement, Raleigh's son Walter was killed by a bullet. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, successfully demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence.

Raleigh was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster on 29 October, 1618. "Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear." After he was allowed to see the axe that would behead him, he mused: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries." According to many biographers, Sir Walter's final words (as he lay ready for the axe to fall) were: "Strike, man, strike!"

1739. Nadir Shah occupies Delhi in India and sacks the city, stealing the jewels of the Peacock Throne. The name comes from the shape of a throne, having the figures of two peacocks standing behind it, their tails being expanded and the whole so inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls and other precious stones of appropriate colors as to represent life, created for the Mughal Badshah Shah Jahan of India in the 17th century, which was in his imperial capital Delhi's Public audience hall, the Diwan-i-Am. Shah Jahan had the famous Koh-i-noor diamond placed in this throne.

1760. The "Great Fire" of Boston destroys 349 buildings.

1815. Napoleon enters Paris after escaping from Elba with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his Hundred Days rule.

1852. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century (and the second best-selling book of the century after the Bible) and is credited with helping to fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States alone. The book's impact was so great that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the American Civil War, Lincoln is often quoted as having declared, "So this is the little lady who made this big war."

The book also created and spread several common stereotypes about blacks, many of which endure to this day. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned mammy; the Pickaninny stereotype of black children; and the Uncle Tom, or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have to a large degree overshadowed the historical impact of the book.

1861. An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, Argentina.

1899. Martha M. Place is sentenced to become the first woman executed in an electric chair. She would be the first of 26 women (including one juvenile) to die in the electric chair when she was executed on April 8, 1899 at Sing Sing prison in New York.

Martha married widower William Place in 1893. Place had a daughter named Ida from a previous marriage. William married Martha to help him raise his daughter, although it was later rumored that Martha was jealous of Ida. William called the police at least once to arrest his wife for threatening to kill Ida.

On February 7, 1899, William Place arrived at his Brooklyn, New York home and was attacked by Martha who was wielding an axe. Place called for help and when the police arrived, the bloodied body of 17 year old Ida was discovered under a bed, her mouth burned from having acid forced into it. The evidence indicated Ida was smothered to death.

Martha Place was found guilty of the murder of her stepdaughter Ida and sentenced to death on March 20, 1899. Her husband was a key witness against her. She did the crime in February, stood trial in March, and was executed in April. Justice was swift in those days.

1913. Sung Chiao-jen, a founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party, is wounded in an assassination attempt and dies two days later.

1916. Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity.

1922. The USS Langley is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier.

1923. The Arts Club of Chicago hosts the opening of Pablo Picasso's first United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso, becoming an early proponent of modern "art" in the United States.

1933. Giuseppe Zangara is executed in Florida's electric chair for fatally shooting Anton Cermak in an assassination attempt against Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

1942. During World War II, American General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: "I came out of Bataan and I shall return."

1948. With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.

1952. The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan, bringing an official end to the state of war between the two countries.

1956. Tunisia gains independence from France.

1965. President Lyndon B. Johnson sends a telegram to Governor George Wallace of Alabama in which he agrees to send federal troops to supervise a planned African-American civil-rights march in Wallace's home state.

Later that day, from his ranch in Texas, LBJ read the telegram to reporters at a news conference. He told the press that he supported the constitutional rights of the marchers to walk peaceably and safely without injury or loss of life from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and expressed dismay at the governor's refusal to provide them the protection of the Alabama police.

1969. Rock musician John Lennon of the Beatles marries Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1974. A failed kidnap attempt is made on Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips in The Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, London.

1976. Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup.

1985. Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is an annual long-distance sled dog race run in early March from Anchorage to Nome. Musher s and a team of 12-16 dogs, of which at least 6 must be on the towline at the finish line, cover the distance in 9–15 days. The Iditarod began in 1973 as an event to test the best sled dog mushers and teams but evolved into today's highly competitive race. Teams frequently race through blizzards causing whiteout conditions, sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds which can cause the wind chill to reach −100 °F (−73 °C).

1987. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the anti-AIDS drug, AZT.

1993. An IRA bomb explodes, killing two children in Warrington, Northwest England.

1995. Religious fantatics unlreash a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. The attack was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

In five coordinated attacks, the conspirators released sarin gas on several lines of the Tokyo Metro, killing twelve people and injuring nearly a thousand others. The attack was directed against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagatacho, home to the Japanese government. This is the most serious attack that has occurred in Japan since the end of the Second World War.

2003. In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational force officially began on March 20. U.S. President George W. Bush stated that the objective of the invasion was "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people." Of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction and no credible evidence linking Saddam to Islamic terrorists; and Iraqis now freely slaughter each other with everything from car bombs to decapitations.

2006. Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country's banana crop.

2011. Thousands of people demonstrate for a third consecutive day in Daraa, Syria, with crowds setting fire to the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party while one protester is killed by security forces.

The death and missing toll from the Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami approaches 21,000.
 
March 21 is the anniversary of the first rock concert. Authorities shut it down after the first act but the geni was out of the bottle, and "rock and roll was here to stay." This is also the date of notable battles and the closing of "America's Devils Island."

717. The Battle of Vincy is fought betweem Charles Martel and Ragenfrid. It was a contest between Charles and the Austrasians on one side and the king of the Franks, Chilperic II, and his mayor of the palace, Ragenfrid, on the other.

"Mayor of the Palace" was an early medieval title and office,used most notably in the Frankish kingdoms in the 7th and 8th centuries. During the 7th century, the office of Mayor of the Palace developed into the true power behind the throne in Austrasia, the northeastern portion of the Kingdom of the Franks under the Merovingian dynasty. The mayor had the real decision power, while their kings had only a ceremonial function, not unlike the relationship between the shogun and emperor in Japan.

Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) was proclaimed Mayor of the Palace, ruling the Franks in the name of a titular King, and proclaimed himself Duke of the Franks (the last four years of his reign he did not even bother with the facade of a King) and by any name was de facto ruler of the Frankish Realms.

Apart from his victory at Vincy, he is best remembered for winning the Battle of Tours in 732, which has traditionally been characterized as an action saving Europe from the Muslim expansionism that had conquered Iberia. Charles's victory was a turning point in world history because it preserved western Europe from Muslim conquest and Islamization.

1152. The marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine is annulled. In the same year he was crowned King of France, Louis VII was married on 25 July 1137 to Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, heiress of William X of Aquitaine. The pairing of the monkish Louis VII and the high-spirited Eleanor was doomed to failure; she once reportedly declared that she had thought to marry a King, only to find she'd married a monk. They had only two daughters, Marie and Alix.

The pretext of kinship was the basis for annulment; in fact, it owed more to the state of hostility between the two, and the decreasing odds that their marriage would produce a male heir to the throne of France. Eleanor subsequently married Henry, Count of Anjou, the future Henry II of England, in the following May giving him the duchy of Aquitaine, three daughters, and five sons. Louis VII led an ineffective war against Henry for having married without the authorization of his suzerain; the result was a humiliation for Henry and Eleanor's enemies, who saw their troops routed, their lands ravaged, and their property stolen. Louis reacted by coming down with a fever, and returned to the Ile-de France.

1413. Henry V becomes King of England; he would become one of the great warrior kings of the Middle Ages. By the time Henry died, he had not only consolidated power as the King of England but had also effectively accomplished what generations of his ancestors had failed to achieve through decades of war: unification of the crowns of England and France in a single person. In 2002 he was ranked 72nd in the 100 Greatest Britons poll.

1556. In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake for heresy and treason on the orders of Queen Mary I, aka "Bloody Mary," a staunch Roman Catholic who was determined to purge England of Protestantism. Cranmere is regarded as a martyr by the Anglican Church.

1685. German composer Johann Sebastian Bach is born. Bach was a composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist of the Baroque Period. He enriched many established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organization, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach wrote much music, which was revered for its intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty. Many of his works are still known today, such as the Brandenburg Concertos, the Mass in B minor, the Well-Tempered Clavier, and his passions, cantatas, partit as, and organ works.

1778. Just three days after British Loyalists and Hessian mercenary forces assault the local New Jersey militia at Quinton's Bridge, three miles from Salem, New Jersey, the same contingent surprises the colonial militia at Hancock's Bridge, five miles from Salem. During the battle, the Loyalists not only kill several members of the Salem militia, but also two known Loyalists.

In what became known as the Massacre at Hancock's Bridge, at least 20 members of the Salem militia lost their lives, some after attempting to surrender. The Loyalists reputedly exclaimed, "Spare no one! Give no quarter!" as they stormed the house of Judge William Hancock, a Loyalist whose house the Patriots had commandeered, while the Patriot militia slept. Judge Hancock and his brother were bayoneted in the melee, although both were known to be staunch supporters of the crown and were themselves non-violent Quakers.
1788. The Great New Orleans fire destroys 856 buildings and leaves most of the town in ruins. The Good Friday fire started about 1:30 p.m. at the home of Army Treasurer Don Vincente Jose Nunez, 619 Chartres Street at Toulouse Street, less than a block from Jackson Square (Plaza de Armas), and within five hours consumed almost the entire city fed by a strong wind from the southeast. The fire destroyed the original Cabildo and virtually all major buildings in the French Quarter including the city's main church, the municipal building, the army barracks, armory, and jail. Only two fire engines were operational and they were destroyed by the fire. Louisiana Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró set up tents for the homeless.
The Spanish would replace the wooden buildings with structures with courtyards, thick brick walls, arcades, and wrought iron balconies. Among the new buildings were the signature New Orleans buildings of St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo and the Presbytere. After just six years of rebuilding, on December 8, 1794, another 212 buildings were destroyed in the Great New Orleans Fire of 1794. Still a colony of Spain, rebuilding continued in Spanish style, and most French architecture was eliminated from the French Quarter.
1790. Thomas Jefferson takes office as America's first secretary of state.
1800. With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché. The original had been seized by the French.
1814. During the Napoleonic Wars, Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube.
1844. This is the original date predicted by William Miller for the return of Christ.

1857. An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan, kills over 100,000 people.

1871. Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire. As Minister-President of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, he engineered the Unification of Germany. From 1867 on, he was Chancellor of the North German Confederation. When the German Empire was declared in 1871, he served as its first Chancellor.

From 1862 to 1888 Bismarck served at the pleasure of King (later Emperor) Wilhelm I, with whom he shared a similar outlook and enjoyed a cordial relationship. The accession of Wilhelm's grandson, Wilhelm II, who was more than 40 years younger than Bismarck, marked the decline of Bismarck's influence, and he was eventually forced to resign and retire into private life in 1890.

1913. Over 360 are killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio. It ranks as the greatest natural disaster in Ohio's history.

The flood was created by a series of three winter storms that hit the region in March 1913. Within three days, 8-11 inches of rain fell throughout the Great Miami River watershed on frozen ground, resulting in more than 90% runoff that caused the river and its tributaries to overflow. The existing series of levees failed, and downtown Dayton experienced flooding up to 20 feet (6.1 m) deep. This flood is still the flood of record for the Great Miami River watershed, and the amount of water that passed through the river channel during this storm equals the flow over Niagara Falls each month.

1918. The Second Battle of the Somme begins in World War I.

1925. Syngman Rhee is removed from office after being impeached as the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.

1928. Charles Lindbergh is presented the Medal of Honor for his first trans-Atlantic flight.

1932. A storm system arising in the Gulf of Mexico spawns a devastating series of tornadoes that kills more than 350 people across the Southeast U.S. over two days. Thousands were seriously injured and many were left homeless by this deadly rash of twisters.

1935. Shah Reza Pahlavi formally asked the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, which means "Land of the Aryans."

1945. British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma, in World War II.

1946. The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in the American football since 1933.

1952. The first rock and roll concert in history takes place when Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland, Ohio. Freed, a disc jockey, is credited with coining the term "Rock and Roll," which at the time was African-American slang for sexual intercourse.

For the first ever rock concert, more tickets were printed than the arena's actual capacity, in part due to counterfeiting. With an estimated 20,000 individuals trying to crowd into an arena that held slightly more than half that -- and worries that a riot might break out as people tried to crowd in -- the fire authorities shut down the concert after the first song by Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams ended.

1963. Alcatraz prison closes. Alcatraz was a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay.

During the 29 years it was in use, the prison held such notable criminals as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), James "Whitey" Bulger and Alvin Karpis, who served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate.

During its years of operation the penitentiary logged no officially successful escape. Thirty-four prisoners were involved in fourteen attempts, two men trying twice; seven were shot and killed, two drowned, five were unaccounted for, and the rest were recaptured. Two prisoners made it off the island but were returned, one in 1945 and one in 1962.

1965. Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1970. Vinko Bogataj crashes during a ski-jumping championship in Germany; his image becomes the "agony of defeat guy" in the opening credits of ABC's Wide World of Sports.

1976. French porn actress Liza Harper is born She began performing in 1994, when she turned 18 years old. Her first movie was Perversity in Paris. Harper then moved to the United States in 1995 and began performing in the pro-am video industry. She moved to professional productions in 1996. She disappeared from the scene in the early 2000s, but in 2004-2005 began appearing again, primarily in Internet-based productions. (See pictures.)

1980. U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1989. Sports Illustrated reports allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling.

1997. In a Tel Aviv, Israel coffee shop, a suicide bomber kills 3 and injures 49.

1999. Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

2005. Ten people are killed in a school shooting In Red Lake, Minnesota -- the worst since the Columbine High School massacre.

Jeffrey Weise, a student at Red Lake High School, killed seven people including a teacher and a security guard. He had previously killed his grandfather (a police officer) and his grandfather's girlfriend/partner at home before going to school to commit the massacre. Seven others were wounded. When police cornered Weise inside the school, he shot and killed himself.

Another student believed to be involved in planning the event was arrested one week after the shootings. He was charged with conspiracy to commit murder based on several email messages he exchanged with Jeff Weise which involved plans for the Red Lake High School massacre. The conspiracy charge was eventually dropped, though he pled guilty to transmitting threatening messages through the Internet.

2011. The Tripoli compound of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is targeted for more bombing raids in the third night of the international intervention in Libya. Rebel forces go on the offensive following Western-led airstrikes with clashes near Ajdabiya and in Misrata.

Elsewhere, surgeons at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, perform the first full face transplant in the United States.
 
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