March

March 01:
1781: The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress.
1790: First US census authorized by Congress.
1815: First US obscenity trial held in Philadelphia. Jess Sharpless was found guilty of displaying an obscene painting in his home!
1836: Thirty-two men from Gonzales, lead by George Kimball, (and calling themselves the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers), arrive at the Alamo at 3 am.

Even though ammo is low, Travis authorizes the firing of one of the 12 pounders to celebrate the arrival of the men from Gonzales. Two shots are fired. One strikes the building used as the headquarters of Santa Anna. He is elsewhere at the time.
1864: Rebecca Lee became the first black woman to receive a medical degree (from the New England Female Medical College in Boston).
1872: Congress authorized the creation of Yellowstone National Park.
1932: Charles Lindberg's son was kidnapped near Hopewell, New Jersey.
1954: Ron Howard, actor and director, born.
1961: President Kennedy established the Peace Corps.

March 02

1793: Sam Houston born.
1836: Texas Independence is declared at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
1836: Sam Houston issues a broadside:
"War is raging on the frontiers. Bejar is besieged by two thousand of the enemy, under the command of general Siezma. Reinforcements are on their march, to unite with the besieging army. By the last report, our force in Bejar was only one hundred and fifty men strong. The citizens of Texas must rally to the aid of our army, or it will perish. Let the citizens of the East march to the combat. The enemy must be driven from our soil, or desolution will accompany their march upon us. Independence is declared, it must be maintained. Immediate action, united with valor, alone can achieve the great work. The services of all are forthwith required in the field.
SAM HOUSTON,
Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
P.S.
It is rumored that the enemy are on their march to Gonzales, and that they have entered the colonies. The fate of Bejar is unknown. The country must and shall be defended. The patriots of Texas are appealed to, in behalf of their bleeding country.
S.H.
1904: Ted Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) born.
1917: Puerto Ricans were granted US citizenship.
1923: Time Magazine made its debut.
1926: Murray Rothbard born.
1929: Tom Wolfe born.
1930: DH Lawrence died in Venee, France.
1933: King Kong premiered at the Radio City Music Hall and at RKO's Roxy in New York City.

March 03

1836: Jim Bonham, having failed to convince Fannin to come to the aid of the Alamo defenders, rides through the Mexican lines and enters the Alamo at 11 am.
1836: Just before midnight John W. Smith leaves the Alamo with a dispatch from William Barret Travis and letters from the men, including Travis. In a letter to David Ayers, who was taking care of Travis' son, Travis writes:
"Take care of my little boy. If the country should be saved, I may make him a splendid fortune; but if the country should be lost and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country."
1847: Alexander Graham Bell born in Edinburg, Scotland.
1879: Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood became the first woman to be admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court.
1887: Anne Namsfield Sullivan arrived at the home of Captain and Mrs. Arthur H Keller to teach Helen Keller, age six at the time.
1895: George Bizet's opera Carmen premiered in Paris.
1931: The Star Spangled Banner became the US national anthem.

March 04

1678: Antonio Vivaldi born.
1789: First meeting of Congress held in New York City. Members adjourned for lack of a quorum. It's been down hill since.
1801: Thomas Jefferson inaugurated.
1836: In the early evening Santa Anna calls a meeting of his officers to discuss whether the time has come to take the Alamo by force.
1861: Abraham Lincoln inaugurated.
1933: In his inaugural address, President Franklin Roosevelt declared, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

March 05

1770: The Boston Massacre takes place.
1836: By 2 pm Santa Anna completes his plan to attack the Alamo at 4 am on March 6.
Mexican fire breaks off about 5 pm and several columns of Mexican troops are seen leaving town. It is on this afternoon that William Barret Travis is said to have drawn his line in the sand, according to Mrs. Dickinson.
1870: Frank Norris born.
1908: Actor Rex Harrison was born.
1933: Nazi party wins a majority of seats in parlimentary elections in Germany.
1946: Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, while speaking at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo, spoke of an "Iron Curtain" from the Baltic to the Adriatic.
1953: Josef Stalin died at 73, after 29 years of bloody power.
1955: Magician Penn Jillette was born.
1963: Singer Patsy Cline died in the crash of the Piper Comanche she was in near Camden, Tennessee.
1970: The first nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.
1982: John Belushi died.
1995: Famous libertarian, Roger MacBride, dies at age 65.

March 06

1475: Michelangelo born in Caprese, Republic of Florence.
1806: Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning born in Durham, England.
1836: Just after 5 am Santa Anna's troops charge the Alamo. Twice the attacks are repulsed. Santa Anna calls in his reserves, Deguello is sounded and the North Wall is breached. Travis is felled on the North Wall. Crockett dies defending the Pallisade on the South side. Bowie dies inside the main structure or the low barracks. The last of the fighting is fierce hand-to-hand combat in the long barracks. Whether or not prisoners are taken, all 187 defenders are killed. The noble stand of these brave men becomes the rallying cry for the Texas Revolution as the cry of "Remember the Alamo" will echoe across Texas in the days to come.
1853: Verdi's opera La Traviata premiered.
1857: The US Supreme Court, to its everlasting shame, ruled in the Dred Scott case, that a slave could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.
1885: Ring Lardner born.
1926: Alan Greenspan born.
1981: Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time as anchorman of the CBS Evening News.
1982: Ayn Rand died.

March 07

1875: Composer Maurice Ravel was born in Cibourne, France.
1901: By Concurrent Resolution the Legislature of Texas adopted the Bluebonnet as the State Flower of Texas.
1926: The first successful trans-Atlantic radio telephone conversation took place, linking London and New York.
Patent No. 174,465 issued to Alexander Graham Bell. 1936: Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thus breaking the Treaty of Versailles.
1946: The Foundation for Economic Education was founded.
1975: The US Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 Senators to limit debate in most cases instead of the previously required two-thirds.

March 08

1841: Oliver Wendell Holmes born in Boston, Mass.
1894: New York state enacted the first dog-licensing law in the United States.
1917: The US Senate voted to limit the filibuster by adopting the cloture rule.
1917: Rioting and strikes break out in St. Petersburg.

March 09

1776: Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith first published.
1796: Napolean Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais.
1822: Charles M Graham was granted a patent for false teeth.
1862: The Monitor and the Merrimac (renamed the Virginia) fought to a draw after five hours.
1916: Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing over a dozen people.
1918: Mickey Spillane born.
1933: FDR called Congress into "Special Sesion" and it began its hundred days of enacting the New Deal.
1954: CBS newsman Edward R Murrow came down on Wisconsin Senator Joseph R McCarthy's anti-communist campaign on Murrow's show, See It Now.
1975: Work began on the Alaska pipeline.

March 10

1496: Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the New World.
1876: Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, telling his assistant in the next room in Boston, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
1880: The Salvation Army formed in the United States. It started out in England.
1891: Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, patents direct dial phone. He develops the system because he believs that the wife of a local competitor is diverting his party line calls to the competition.
1896: The first marathon in modern times was won by Charilous Vasilakos of Greece in 3 hours, 18 minutes.
1916: James Herriot was born.

March 11

1903: Lawrence Welk born.
1936: Antonin Scalia born.
1941: President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill.
1942: General Douglas MacArthur, forced to retreat off Corregidor in the Phillipines for Australia, vowed, "I shall return." He did.

March 12

1864: U.S. Grant becames commander of Union Armies.
1912: Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Guides, in Savannah Georgia. It later became the Girl Scourt of America.
1922: Jack Kerovac born.
1928: Adward Albee born.
1955: Jazz musician Chrarlie ("Bird") Parker died in New York at age 34.
1959: Congress approved statehood for Hawaii.
2001: Novelist Robert Ludlum dies at age 73.

March 13

1639: Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.
1781: the planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel.
1852: "Uncle Sam" made his first appearance in a cartoon in the Lantern.
1868: The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began in the US Senate.
1884: Standard time was adopted throughout the US.
1906: Susan B Anthony died in Rochester, New York.
1925: A Tennessee law went into effect prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
1988: One of the greatest legal speakers ever, Irving Younger, died.
1933: Banks in the US began to reopen after the bank "holiday" declared by FDR.

March 14

1743: The first recorded town meeting in America was held in Boston.
1794: Eli Whitney received a patent for the cotton gin.
1879: Albert Einstein born in Ulm, Germany.
1883: Karl Marx died in London, England.
1885: Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, The Midado premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London.
1900: The US goes on the gold standard.
1917: Novelist and thinker extraordinaire, Robert H. Rimmer, born. He was the author of The Harrad Experiment, Rebellion of Yale Marratt, and Thursday, My Love, among other thought-provoking books.
1951: UN forces recaptured Seoul, Korea.
1951: Comic strip character Dennis the Menace first appeared in 18 newspapers.
1964: A Dallas jury found Jack Ruby "guilty" of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald.

1975: Monty Python and the Holy Grail premiered in Los Angeles.
March 15

Beware the Ides of March.
44 BC: Roman Emporer Julius Casear assassinated by Brutus and Cassius.
1493: Cloumbus returned to Spain after his first voyage.
1767: The seventh president, Andrew Jackson, was born in Waxhaw, South Carolina.
1820: Maine became the twenty-third state.
1913: President Wilson held the first open presidential press conference.
1919: The American Legion was founded in Paris.
1956: My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, opened on Broadway.

March 16

1751: James Madison, the fourth president of the US, born in Port Conway, Virginia.
1802: Congress authorized the establishment of the US Military Academy at West Point.
1827: The first newspaper edited by and for Blacks, Freedom's Journal, was published in New York.
1836: The Republic of Texas approved its constitution.
1850: The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published.
1935: Adolf Hitler voided the Treaty of Versailles.
1964: President Johnson announces his "War on Poverty."
1968: My Lai Massacre.

March 17

461: According to tradition, St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, died.
1905: Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin Roosevelt.
1941: The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C.
1970: The United States cast its first veto in the United Nations Security Council (killing a resolution condemning Britain for failure to use force to overthrow the all-white government of Rhodesia).

March 18

1766: Britain repealed the Stamp Act.
1837: Grover Cleveland, the twenty-second and the twenty-fourth President of the United Sates, was born.
1909: Einar Dessau of Denmark used a shortwave transmitter in what is considered the first "ham" radio broadcast. He talked to someone only six miles away.
1922: Gandhi sentenced to six year imprisonment in India for civil disobedience.
1931: The first electric razor is offered for sale by Schick.
1932: John Updike born.
1938: Mexico seized control of foreign owned oil properties in Mexico.
1959: President Eisenhower signed the bill making Hawaii the 50th state.
1974: Most of the Arab oil-producing nations ended their oil embargo with the United States.
2010: Fess Parker, actor, dies at age 85. He played Davy Crocket on the Walt Disney series in 1954, and Daniel Boone on the 1964-1970 series. He was also in Old Yeller. He was also a respected winery owner.

March 19

1859: The opera Faust by Charles Gounod, premiered in Paris.
1918: Congress approved daylight savings time.
1931: Nevada legalized gambling.
1951: Herman Wouk's novel, The Caine Mutiny, published.
2008: Arthur C. Clarke, novelist, dies in his adopted home in Sri Lanka at age 90.

March 20

1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin first published.
1987: The FDA approved AZT for the treatment of Aids patients.

March 21

1685: Johann Sebastian Bach born in Eisenach, Germany.
1871: Journalist Henry Stanley began his famous search to Africa for missing Scottish missionary David Livingston.
1935: Persia was renamed Iran.
1963: The last prisoner at Alcatraz was transferred.
1965: Martin Luther King, Jr. lead more than 3,000 people in a march in Selma, Alabama.

March 22

1685: Johann Sebastain Bach born.
1765: Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from American colonies. After a tremendous outpouring of protest from America, the Act was repealed the following year.
1794: Congress prohibited American ships from supplying slaves to other countries.
1882: Congress outlawed polygamy.
1916: Harold Robbins born.
1946: The first rocket to leave earth's atmosphere was launched. It attained a height of 50 miles.
1933: During the prohibition era, President Roosevelt signed a law to allow consumption of wine and beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol.
1997: Steve Watters, president of Sterling Victorian Homes, and master designer and builder of classic Victorian homes in Houston (including Talking Leaves), died at age 46. RIP.

March 23

4004 BC: In 1654 Archbishop James Ussler calculated this date as the exact date of creation.
1743: George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah, had its London premiere.
1775: Patrick Henry, in a speech to the Virginia Convention, exclaimed, "Give me liberty or give me death."
1806: Lewis and Clark began their journey back east from the Pacific coast.
1900: Erich Fromm born.
1919: Benito Mussolini began his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.
1942: The United States, to its everlasting shame, began imprisoning American citizens of Japanese descent in "detention centers."
1983: President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly known as "Star Wars").
1992: Friedrich von Hayek died at age 92 in Freiburg, Germany. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974.

March 24

33: Jesus of Nazareth executed by Pontius Pilate.
1644: Charter granted to Roger Williams for colony of Rhode Island.
1765: Britain enacts the Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to provide temporary housing for British soldiers.
1882: In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announces his discovery of the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.
1958: Elvis Presley inducted into Army.
1986: Out of Africa wins seven Oscars, including best picture.
1989: Exxon Valdez runs aground at Alaska's Prince William Sound.
2001: Charles Dadant dies at age 81. He was owner and past president of Dadant and Sons, leading supplier of beekeeping equipment.

March 25

1911: Fire breaks out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York, killing over 140 immigrant workers.
1913: The Palace Theatre, the home of vaudeville, opens in New York City.
1918: Claude Debussy dies in Paris, France.
1957: European Common Market is established in the Treaty of Rome.
1965: The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 25,000 marchers to the State Capital in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the denial voting to Blacks.

March 26

1827: Ludwig van Beethoven dies in Vienna.
1874: Poet Robert Frost born in San Francisco.
1911: Playwright Tennessee Williams born in Columbus, Mississippi.
1914: General William Westmoreland born.
1930: Sandra Day O'Connor born.
1931: Leonard Nimoy born
1982: Groundbreaking ceremonies take place in Washington, DC, for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

March 27

1512: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida.
1794: President Washington and Congress authorized creation of the US Navy.
1884: The first long distance telephone call is made between Boston and New York City.
1929: Herbert Hoover is first president to have a phone installed on his desk. Before this, presidents had used a phone booth outside the Oval Office.
2002: Actor Dudley Moore dies at age 66.

March 28

1797: Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patents the washing machine.
1969: Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president, dies at 78 years old.
1979: The cooling system at Three Mile Island nuclear reactor malfuntions.

March 29

1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage charges. They are executed in June, 1953.
1962: Jack Parr hosts The Tonight Show for the last time.
1971: Army Lt. William L. Calley convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians at the My Lai massacre. He spends three years under house arrest.
1973: The last US troops leave South Vietnam.

March 30

1842: Dr. Crawford W. Long of Jefferson, Georgia, is the fisrt doctor to use ether as an anethesia.
1853: Vincent van Gogh is born.
1867: US Secretary of State William H. Seward reaches an agreement with Russians to purchase the territory of Alaska for 7.2 million dollars.
1870: Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, preventing the abridgment of the right to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude declared to be in effect.
1872: Florida becomes a US Territory.
1945: Soviet Union invades Austria.
1981: President Reagan, Press Secretary James S. Brady and two law enforcement officers are shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr., in Washington, D.C.
1986: Actor James Cagney dies at age 86 in Strafordville, New York.

March 31

1870: Thomas Peterson Mundy casts a ballot in a municipal election in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, becoming the first black to vote following ratification of the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution on March 30, 1870.
1932: Ford Motor Company unveils its V-8 engine.
1933: Congress authorizes the Civilian Conservation Corps.
1943: Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! opens on Broadway.
1968: LBJ announces he will not run for another term.
1980: Jesse Ownes dies in Tucson, Arizona at age 66.
1993: Brandon Lee, sone of Bruce Lee, dies when shot on the set of The Crow.

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