Events
Up to 1900
161 - Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius dies. 238 - Roman subjects in North Africa revolt against Maximus Thrax and elect Gordian I as Roman Emperor. 321 - Constantine announces that Sunday is a rest day in Europe. 1277 - Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, condemns 219 philosophical and theological theses. 1573 - A peace treaty is signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice, ending the Ottoman-Venetian War and leaving Cyprus under Ottoman control. 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops kill over 2,000 Albanian captives. 1850 - US Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech in support of the Compromise of 1850. 1862 - American Civil War: Union forces defeat Confederate troops at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. 1871 - Jose Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco becomes Prime Minister of the Empire of Brazil. With four years in office, he becomes its longest-serving Prime Minister. 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for the telephone. 1897 - Cornflakes are first served at a sanatorium in Michigan, having been invented by John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith Kellogg. 1900 - German liner SS Wilhelm der Grosse becomes the first ship to send wireless signals to shore.
1901 2000
1902 - Second Boer War: Battle of Tweebosch - A Boer commando led by Koos de la Rey inflicts a heavy defeat on British forces. 1912 - Roald Amundsen announces that his Norwegian expedition reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911. 1914 - Prince William of Wied arrives in Albania to begin his reign. 1927 - A magnitude 7.6 earthquake its Tango Province, Japan, killing 3,000 people. 1936 - Germany re-occupies the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and Locarno Pact. 1945 - World War II: American troops seize the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. 1950 - The Soviet Union issues a statement denying that Klaus Fuchs served as a Soviet spy. 1951 - Korean War: Operation Ripper - UN troops led by General Matthew Ridgeway begin an assault against Chinese forces. 1965 - A Civil rights march by 600 people in Selma, Alabama, is forcefully broken. 1968 - Vietnam War: US and South Vietnamese military forces begin Operation Truong Cong Dinh to root out Viet Cong forces from the area surrounding My Tho. 1971 - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founding leader of Bangladesh, delivers a historic speech at Suhrawardy Udyan. 1980 - Oil tanker "Tanio" breaks in two off Brittany. 1985 - The song "We are the World" receives its international release. 1986 - Divers from the USS Preserver discover the crew cabin of the Space Shuttle Challenger on the ocean floor. 1989 - Iran and the United Kingdom break off diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses". 1992 - Eduard Shevardnadze becomes Head of State in Georgia.
From 2001
2002 - The 2002 Winter Paralympics begin in Salt Lake City. 2004 - Kostas Karamanlis is elected Prime Minister of Greece. 2004 - The Samson ferry sinks in a cyclone between Madagascar and the Comoros. 2006 - Terror organization Lashkar-e-Taiba co-ordinates a series of bombings in Varanasi, India. 2007 - The UK House of Commons supports by a majority to have an elected House of Lords. 2009 - The Kepler space observatory is launched to find Earth-like planets orbiting around other stars. 2009 - The Real Irish Republican Army kills two British soldiers and two civilians outside a barracks in Northern Ireland. 2010 - Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director, for her movie The Hurt Locker. 2014 - The 2014 Winter Paralympics begin in Sochi, Southern Russia. 2015 - An attack by Boko Haram in Maiduguri, northern Nigeria, leaves an estimated 50 people dead. 2017 - North Korea and Malaysia ban each other's citizens from leaving their countries in a continued diplomatic row over the murder of Kim Jong-nam (half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un).