Event-a-Day

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1521 – Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam.

1820 – The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

1834 – York, Upper Canada, is incorporated as Toronto.

1836 – Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo – After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.

1857 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

1912 – Italo-Turkish War: Italian forces become the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet.

1967 – Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.

1981 – After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.

1983 – The first United States Football League games is played.

1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.

1814 – Emperor Napoleon I of France wins the Battle of Craonne.

1850 – Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the "telephone".

1900 – The German liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse becomes the first ship to send wireless signals to shore.

1936 – In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.

1965 – Bloody Sunday: a group of 600 civil rights marchers is brutally attacked by state and local police in Selma, Alabama.

1985 – The song "We Are the World" receives its international release.

1986 – Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver locate the crew cabin of Challenger on the ocean floor.

1796 – Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.

1831 – The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis Philippe to support his war in Algeria.

1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.

1842 – The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush.

1847 – Mexican–American War: The first large-scale amphibious assault in U.S. history is launched in the Siege of Veracruz.

1862 – American Civil War: The USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.

1916 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.

1925 – Pink's War: The first Royal Air Force operation conducted independently of the British Army or Royal Navy begins.

1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress, the first of his New Deal policies.

1959 – The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

1960 – Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis.

1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a human dummy nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, and demonstrating that Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.

2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights.

1629 – Charles I of England dissolves Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.

1762 – French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.

1804 – Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.

1814 – Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France.

1876 – The first successful test of a telephone is made by Alexander Graham Bell.

1945 – The U.S. Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting conflagration kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.

1969 – In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr. He later unsuccessfully attempts to recant.

1977 – Astronomers discover the rings of Uranus.

2006 – The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.

2017 - President Park Geun-hye of South Korea is removed from office.

1702 – The Daily Courant, England's first national daily newspaper is published for the first time.

1708 – Queen Anne withholds Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, the last time a British monarch vetoes legislation.

1818 – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel, Frankenstein; or The modern Prometheus, is published.

1824 – The United States Department of War creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

1941 – World War II: United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American-built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.

1946 – Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, is captured by British troops.

1990 – Lithuania declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.

1993 – Janet Reno is confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States.

1881 – Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain.

1894 – Coca-Cola is bottled and sold for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi, by local soda fountain operator Joseph A. Biedenharn.

1918 – Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years. This was first started by Peter the Great when he built Saint Petersburg.

1930 – Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200-mile march, known as the Salt March, to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt

1933 – Great Depression: Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This is also the first of his "fireside chats".

1938 – Anschluss: German troops occupy and absorb Austria.

1940 – Winter War: Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia. Finnish troops and the remaining population are immediately evacuated.

1999 – Former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO.

2009 – Financier Bernard Madoff pleads guilty in New York to scamming $18 billion, the largest in Wall Street's history.

1781 – William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus.

1809 – Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden is deposed in a coup d'état.

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

1865 – American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African-American troops.

1881 – Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. (Gregorian date: it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.)

1930 – The news of the discovery of Pluto is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.

1933 – Great Depression: Banks in the U.S. begin to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandates a "bank holiday".

1940 – The Russo-Finnish Winter War ends.

1943 – The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

1991 – The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

1997 – The Phoenix Lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.

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

1885 – The Mikado, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, receives its first public performance in London.

1900 – The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.

1903 – The Hay–Herrán 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.

1931 – Alam Ara, India's first talking film, is released.

1936 – The first all-sound film version of Show Boat opens at Radio City Music Hall.

1939 – Slovakia declares independence under German pressure.

1942 – Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the United States successfully to treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.

1951 – Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul.

1964 – A jury in Dallas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy.

1967 – The body of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.

1995 – Space exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle.

1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1672 – Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.

1783 – In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'état never takes place.

1819 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel wins a contest at the Academie des Sciences in Paris by proving that light behaves like a wave. The Fresnel integrals, still used to calculate wave patterns, silence skeptics who had backed the particle theory of Isaac Newton.

1820 – Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state.

1848 – A revolution breaks out in Hungary. The Habsburg rulers are compelled to meet the demands of the Reform party.

1877 – First ever official cricket test match is played: Australia vs England at the MCG Stadium, in Melbourne, Australia.

1892 – Liverpool F.C. is founded.

1906 – Rolls-Royce Limited is incorporated.

1916 – United States President Woodrow Wilson sends 4,800 United States troops over the U.S.–Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne ending the 304-year Romanov dynasty.

1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, tells U.S. Congress "We shall overcome" while advocating the Voting Rights Act.

1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

1991 – The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany comes into effect, granting full sovereignty to the Federal Republic of Germany.

1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: An Austrian column is defeated by the French in the Battle of Valvasone.

1802 – The Army Corps of Engineers is established to found and operate the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1916 – The 7th and 10th US cavalry regiments under John J. Pershing cross the US–Mexico border to join the hunt for Pancho Villa.

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

1945 – World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ended, but small pockets of Japanese resistance persisted. Ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers, resulting in around 5,000 deaths.

1958 – The Ford Motor Company produces its 50 millionth automobile, the Thunderbird, averaging almost a million cars a year since the company's founding.

1966 – Launch of Gemini 8, the 12th manned American space flight and first space docking with the Agena target vehicle.

1968 – General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, the Oldsmobile Toronado.

1995 – Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865.

2014 – Crimea votes in a controversial referendum to secede from Ukraine to join Russia.

1337 – Edward, the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy in England.

1776 – American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, ending the Siege of Boston, after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.

1780 – American Revolution: 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.

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

1942 – Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland.

1958 – The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite.

1959 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet for India.

1960 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

1973 – The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, depicting a former prisoner of war being reunited with his family, which came to symbolize the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

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

1766 – American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act.

1850 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.

1865 – American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.

1871 – Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders the evacuation of Paris.

1874 – Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trade rights.

1892 – Former Governor General Lord Stanley pledges to donate a silver challenge cup, later named after him, as an award for the best hockey team in Canada the Stanley Cup.

1913 – King George I of Greece is assassinated in the recently liberated city of Thessaloniki.

1915 – World War I: During the Battle of Gallipoli, three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.

1959 – The Hawaii Admission Act is signed into law.

1965 – Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

2014 – The parliaments of Russia and Crimea sign an accession treaty.

1279 – A Mongol victory at the Battle of Yamen ends the Song dynasty in China.

1649 – The House of Commons of England passes an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it "useless and dangerous to the people of England".

1863 – The SS Georgiana, said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions, medicines and merchandise then valued at over $1,000,000.

1918 – The U.S. Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time.

1920 – The United States Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time (the first time was on November 19, 1919).

1941 – World War II: The 99th Pursuit Squadron also known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all-black unit of the US Army Air Corps, is activated.

1943 – Frank Nitti, the Chicago Outfit Boss after Al Capone, commits suicide at the Chicago Central Railyard.

1944 – World War II: Nazi forces occupy Hungary.

1945 – World War II: Off the coast of Japan, a dive bomber hits the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing 724 of her crew. Badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under her own power. Adolf Hitler issues his "Nero Decree" ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.

1954 – Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory in round seven at Madison Square Garden in the first televised prize boxing fight shown in colour. Willie Mosconi sets a world record by running 526 consecutive balls without a miss during a straight pool exhibition at East High Billiard Club in Springfield, Ohio, setting a record which remains unbroken.

1965 The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000, is discovered by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, exactly 102 years after its destruction.

1966 – Texas Western becomes the first college basketball team to win the Final four with an all-black starting lineup.

1979 – The United States House of Representatives begins broadcasting its day-to-day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.

1616 – Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment.

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

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

1915 – Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.

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

1933 – Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of Dachau concentration camp as Chief of Police of Munich and appointed Theodor Eicke as the camp commandant.

1942 – World War II: 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".

1952 – The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan.

1964 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organisation) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.

1999 – Legoland California, the first Legoland outside of Europe, opens in Carlsbad, California.

2015 – A Solar eclipse, equinox, and a Supermoon all occur on the same day.

1152 – Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.

1188 – Emperor Antoku accedes to the throne of Japan.

1556 – In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.

1788 – A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins.

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.

1801 – The Battle of Alexandria is fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis in Egypt.

1804 – Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law.

1814 – Napoleonic Wars: Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube.

1871 – Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire.

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 with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.

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

1960 – Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.

1963 – Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary (in California) closes.

1965 – Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes. Dr. 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.

1980 – US President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

2006 – The social media site Twitter is founded.

1622 – Jamestown massacre: Algonquians kill 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony's population, during the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.

1630 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.

1765 – The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.

1829 – In the London Protocol, the three protecting powers (United Kingdom, France and Russia) establish the borders of Greece.

1872 – Illinois becomes the first state to require gender equality in employment.

1873 – The Spanish National Assembly abolishes slavery in Puerto Rico.

1894 – The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts.

1906 – The first England vs France rugby union match is played at Parc des Princes in Paris.

1972 – The United States Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification.

1982 – NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia is launched from the Kennedy Space Center on its third mission, STS-3.

1995 – Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returns to earth after setting a record of 438 days in space.