Today in History

March 23 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 23:

1956 – Major-General Iskander Mirza sworn in as first provisional president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

1966 – The Archbishop of Canterbury met the Pope in Rome, the first meeting between the heads of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches for 400 years.

1996 – Lee Teng-hui was sworn in as Taiwan’s first democratically elected president.

1998 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his entire cabinet.

2001 – Remnants of Russia’s Mir space station plunged into the Pacific Ocean, after engineers ended the laboratory’s 15-year mission in space.

2002 – An Egyptian engineer was found guilty of spying for Israel and sentenced to 15 years in jail with hard labour after President Hosni Mubarak overturned a previous acquittal.

2004 – Mijailo Mijailovic, the self-confessed killer of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, was sentenced to life in prison.

2004 – Seventy suspected mercenaries made their first court appearance in Zimbabwe, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the leader of Equatorial Guinea.

2008 – Sophie Edington sets new world record in women’s 50m backstroke

2013 – Earth hour event in Shanghai attempts world record for blowing out most candles.

2014 – Spain’s former Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez dies.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

March 22 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 22:

1917 – The United States became the first country to recognise the provisional government of Russia after the fall of the monarchy.

1993 – Intel Corp. introduces the company’s long-awaited Pentium microchip, promising to revolutionise personal computers.

1996 – First woman in history to stand as sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in U.S. Arlington National Cemetery.

1997 – Tara Lipinski, aged 14, becomes youngest World Figure Skating Champion.

2001 – The United States expelled four diplomats and officials and said 46 more would have to leave by July 1, in a move to trim Russia’s spy network. The next day Russia told the U.S. to withdraw 50 diplomats.

2003 – Hong Kong researchers announce world’s first diagnostic test for killer pneumonia.

2004 – Top Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin killed in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza City.

2004 – Luc Robitaille becomes highest scoring left winger in NHL history.

2005 – Arab leaders agreed to relaunch a Middle East peace initiative offering Israel normal relations in return for withdrawal to its 1967 borders.

2008 – Cuban-born bassist, band leader and mambo pioneer Israel “Cachao” Lopez, who is credited with introducing the mambo musical genre to generations of adoring fans, died.

2009 – Longest toilet queue on record formed with 756 people to support United Nations initiative.

Image credit: Pixabay

March 18 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 18:

1913 – King George I of Greece was assassinated at Salonika.

1940 – The German and Italian leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agreed that Italy should enter World War Two within months alongside Nazi Germany.

1965 – Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first space walk.

1967 – The oil tanker Torrey Canyon was wrecked off England’s Cornish coast, spilling 919,000 barrels of oil.

1978 – Football legend Pele meets Pope John Paul II at Vatican.

2000 – Taiwan voters elected Chen Shui-bian, leader of a pro-independence party, as president, ending more than five decades of Nationalist Party rule.

2001 – John Phillips, songwriter and founder member of the Californian pop group The Mamas and the Papas, died.

2007 – Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer died after being found unconscious in his hotel room the morning after his side’s shock World Cup exit.

2008 – British film director Anthony Minghella, who won an Oscar for “The English Patient”, died.

2009 – Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson, a member of Britain’s Redgrave acting dynasty, died at age 45 after a suffering a severe brain injury in a skiing accident.

2011 – Bahrain tears down Pearl Square statue in Manama.

Image credit: Flickr

March 17 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 17:

1894 – First-ever Stanley Cup playoff ice hockey game.

1948 – Britain, France and the Benelux countries signed the Brussels Treaty providing for military cooperation in case of attack.

1963 – Mount Agung volcano on the island of Bali erupted, killing at least 11,000 people.

1998 – Zhu Rongji, China’s reformist economic supremo, was elected premier with a mandate to overhaul crumbling state industry and ailing banks.

1999 – Six International Olympic Committee members were expelled from the IOC in the Salt Lake City bribery scandal.

2003 – In a 13-minute White House speech President George W. Bush ordered Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq with his sons by 4.15 a.m. (0115 GMT) on March 20 or face the might of the U.S. military.

2006 – Oleg Cassini, who created a fashion powerhouse and helped make Jacqueline Kennedy America’s most glamorous first lady, died aged 92.

2011 – People in Hong Kong haul Cathay Pacific Boeing aircraft into record books.

2011 – Palaeontologists announce new dinosaur species.

2014 – Designer L’Wren Scott found dead in New York apartment.

2016 – Direct postal service between Cuba and U.S. begins.

March 15 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 15:

1917 – Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in Russia together with his son. On the same day, a provisional government succeeded under Prince Georgi Lvov and with Pavel Miliukov as foreign minister.

1939 – The German army crossed the Czech frontier and Adolf Hitler proclaimed the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

1964 – Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton in Montreal.

1996 – Historic ballroom moved in Berlin.

2003 – Kenyan government destroys illegal weapons.

2004 – Kobe Bryant sets NBA record for most points scored in a quarter.

2008 – Albania ammunition dump explosion.

2011 – Waxwork of singer Justin Bieber unveiled in London.

2012 – Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge plays hockey with Team GB Olympic hockey team in London.

2016 – Dallas Seavey completes Iditarod Sled Dog race in record time.

2017 – Dozens killed in Damascus double-suicide bombing.

Image credit: Pxhere

March 11 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 11:

1917 – British and Indian troops marched into Baghdad in World War One, capturing 9,000 Turkish prisoners.

1955 – Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, died.

1993 – Janet Reno confirmed as first female attorney-general of the United States.

1995 – Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams arrives in New York.

2001 – Zapatista Subcommander Marcos and 23 rebel leaders made a triumphant entry into Mexico City after a 12-state march from their jungle hideout in their campaign for Indian rights.

2004 – Simultaneous bomb blasts ripped through four packed commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people in one of Europe’s bloodiest guerrilla attacks.

2005 – Almost all Syrian troops left north Lebanon, ending an unbroken 29-year presence and underlining Syria’s diminishing role in its small neighbour.

2006 – Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell at The Hague, only months before a verdict was due in his war crimes trial. Serbian president from 1990 until his overthrow in 2000, he was 64.

2006 – Michelle Bachelet inaugurated as Chile’s first female president.

2011 – Magnitude 8.9 earthquake strikes Japan.

2016 – EU, Cuba sign pact in Havana establishing full ties.

Image credit: Commons Wikipedia

March 10 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 10:

1948 – Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk killed himself by jumping from a window at the foreign ministry in Prague, shortly after Soviet-backed Communists took power.

1952 – Former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government and began his dictatorship, which ended in 1959 when he was toppled by Fidel Castro.

1999 – A French court sentenced six Libyans, including Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, in absentia to life in prison for the bombing of a French airliner over Africa in 1989.

2000 – A Turkish court sentenced Islamist former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan to a year in jail for “provoking hatred” in a speech in 1994.

2004 – Libya signed a protocol giving the International Atomic Energy Agency the right to perform snap inspections of its atomic facilities.

2006 – NASA’s $450 million Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter slipped into orbit around the Red Planet, avoiding the fate of to 50 percent or so of Mars missions that fail.

2007 – Canadian scientists restore world’s largest dinosaur skeleton in Berlin.

2010 – German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder uses latest Samsung camera at 40th CeBit fair.

2012 – U.S. heptathlete Ashton Eaton breaks his own world record at Indoor Championships.

2015 – Heirs of soul singer Marvin Gaye win multimillion-dollar plagiarism lawsuit.

2017 – South Korean court impeaches President Park Geun-hye.

Image credit: Flickr

March 9 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 9:

1924 – Italy annexed the independent city of Fiume but abandoned claims to Yugoslavia’s Dalmatian coast.

1942 – Japanese troops took Java in World War Two after heavy fighting against Dutch colonial forces and their British, Australian and U.S. allies.

1956 – Archbishop Makarios III, leader of the Greek Cypriot movement for unification with Greece, was deported from Cyprus to the Seychelles by the British colonial authorities, who accused him of supporting terrorism.

1992 – Former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin died. He shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

1996 – George Burns, one of America’s best loved and most enduring entertainers, died weeks after his 100th birthday.

2002 – The Mont Blanc Alpine tunnel reopened to car traffic after a fire in 1999 that killed 39 people.

2004 – Scientists unveiled a picture of the universe taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that looked back up to 13 billion years to register galaxies formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

2006 – John Profumo, the government minister who in 1963 was at the centre of one of Britain’s biggest political scandals, featuring an explosive mix of high society sex and Cold War paranoia, died aged 91.

2009 – Barbie marks 50th birthday.

2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery ends 27-year flying career.

2011 – Kate Moss returns to catwalk seven years after retiring.

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March 8 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 8:

1921 – Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato was assassinated by anarchists near his home in Madrid.

1994 – Sixty-four people were killed and 370 injured when a train packed with mainly black commuters was derailed near Durban, South Africa.

1999 – The New York Yankees baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, briefly married to Marilyn Monroe, died aged 84.

2001 – A Chilean appeals court ruled 2-1 that former dictator Augusto Pinochet could be tried for human rights abuses that occurred after his 1973 coup.

2005 – The Chechen rebel leader and former elected president Aslan Maskhadov was killed by Russian troops fighting to quell a long rebellion in the mainly Muslim Caucasus region.

2007 – The Greek Cypriot government dismantled a key concrete barrier that divided the island’s capital Nicosia for decades, calling on Turkey to respond by withdrawing its troops from the area.

2007 – Cruz Hernandez, a Salvadoran woman believed to be 128 years old and possibly the world’s oldest person, died.

2011 – Actor Ben Affleck attends House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on Africa.

2012 – Female-only internet cafe opens in Kabul.

2012 – Modern Olympic memorabilia including torch from 1948 auctioned.

2017 – Storms destroy Azure Window, a natural arch on Maltese island Gozo.

Image credit: Flickr

March 7 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 7:

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent to invent the telephone.

1936 – Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by re-occupying the Rhineland demilitarised zone.

1945 – The U.S. 9th Armoured Division captured the key bridge over the Rhine at Remagen in Germany.

1989 – Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Britain over Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses”.

1998 – A military appeal court sentenced former SS captain Erich Priebke to life imprisonment for his role in Italy’s worst World War Two atrocity, the massacre at the Ardeatine Caves.

2004 – The Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson became the ninth bishop of New Hampshire, four months after his installation as the first openly gay bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church.

2005 – Homemaking maven Martha Stewart returns to work at Martha Stewart Omnimedia HQ after a five-month federal jail sentence.

2006 – Gordon Parks, the pioneering black photographer and filmmaker who explored the African-American experience in his work, including landmark movies “The Learning Tree” and “Shaft,” died aged 93.

2007 – Northern Ireland Assembly elections.

2010 – Iraqis vote in historic parliamentary elections.

2016 – Maria Sharapova announces she failed Australian Open drug test.

Image credit: Loc