March 3......

March 3 is the 62nd day of the year (63rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 303 days remaining in the year on this date.

Day of the week in surrounding years:
1980,1986,. . . .,1997,2003—MON—2008
1981,1987,1992,1998,. . . .—TUE—2009
1982,. . . .,1993,1999,2004—WED—2010
1983,1988,1994,. . . .,2005—THU—2011
. . . .,1989,1995,2000,2006—FRI—. . . .
1984,1990,. . . .,2001,2007—SAT—2012
1985,1991,1996,2002,. . . .—SUN—2013

PASCAL DATE INFORMATION
Easter Sunday for the Western Christian Church is defined as the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Lent is defined as the forty days prior to Easter not including Sundays thus Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is 46 days prior to Easter. Calculations for Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday were performed for the 3774 years from 326 to 4099. For the year range 326 to 1582, dates are based on the Julian calendar. For years 1583 to 4099, dates are based on the Gregorian calendar. Ash Wednesday falls in a range of 36 days from February 4 to March 10. Easter Sunday falls in a range of 35 days from March 22 to April 25. The extra day in the Ash Wednesday range is February 29, which only occurs in leap years. February 29 only effects when Ash Wednesday occurs since it is well before the Spring Equinox and has no effect on the date for Easter Sunday. March 10 to March 21 is a twelve-day range that must occur in Lent no matter the timing of Easter Sunday. The entire range of 82 dates from February 4 to April 25 represents all dates with Pascal ramifications.

March 3 is the 29th possible date for Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday occurs on this date 117 times during the 3774 years calculated and is ranked 21st of the 36 dates.

It occurred on this date previously in the years:
336, 398, 409, 420, 493, 504, 583, 588, 667, 678, 751, 762, 773, 835, 846, 857, 868, 930, 941, 952, 1025, 1036, 1115, 1120, 1199, 1210, 1283, 1294, 1305, 1367, 1378, 1389, 1400, 1462, 1473, 1484, 1557, 1568, 1593, 1604, 1677, 1683, 1688, 1745, 1756, 1802, 1813, 1824, 1897, 1954, 1965, 1976
It will occur on this date in the future in the years:
2049, 2055, 2060, 2106, 2117, 2128, 2269, 2275, 2280, 2337, 2348, 2421, 2427, 2432, 2500, 2579, 2584, 2641, 2647, 2652, 2709, 2720, 2793, 2799, 2804, 2883, 2888, 2894, 2951, 2956, 2962, 3013, 3019, 3024, 3165, 3171, 3176, 3255, 3260, 3266, 3317, 3323, 3328, 3475, 3480, 3486, 3543, 3548, 3627, 3632, 3638, 3700, 3779, 3790, 3847, 3852, 3858, 3909, 3915, 3920, 3999, 4004, 4010, 4083, 4094

Best Liberal Quote of the Day: On Fools & Fanatics "What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." — Robert F. Kennedy

Stupidest and/or Scariest Quote from the Right for the Day: On Beat the Press "[Seymour Hersh is] the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." — Richard Perle to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Stanley I. Kutler, "There Will Absolutely Be No Dissension," Chicago Tribune, 3-18-03. Perle disliked Hersh's article about him: "Lunch With the Chairman," The New Yorker, 3-17-03.

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day: From the world of Sports "I've made a couple of mistakes I'd Like to do over." — Jerry Coleman was an infielder for the Yankees (what is it about the Bronx Bombers that turned out such a raft of funny speakers?), and manager of the San Diego Padres. After playing, he made his mark as a radio and TV broadcaster, where his malapropisms, non sequiturs, and other goofs became legendary. Coleman is Hall of Shame member #8.

{Disclaimer: I have attempted to give credit to the many different sources that I get entries. Any failure to do so is unintentional. Any statement enclosed by brackets like these are the opinion of the blogger, A Proud Liberal.}

MOON PHASE

Berkeley, California—Times are Pacific Standard Time (PST)
Mar 3, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 20% Age: 85% Rise: 4:22 AM Set: 1:57 PM
Surprise, Arizona—Times are Mountain Standard Time (MST)
Mar 3, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 20% Age: 85% Rise: 4:28 AM Set: 2:28 PM
Iowa City, Iowa—Times are Central Standard Time (CST)
Mar 3, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 21% Age: 85% Rise: 4:29 AM Set: 1:36 PM
Cambridge, Massachusetts—Times are Eastern Standard Time (EST)
Mar 3, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 21% Age: 85% Rise: 4:08 AM Set: 1:08 PM


NASA ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY

Sand Dunes Thawing on Mars


Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA
Click picture to go to NASA APOD site for full explanation

EVENTS

● 78 - Origin of Saka Era (India)

● 468 - St. Simplicius elected to succeed Catholic Pope Hilarius

● 493 - Ostrogoten King Theodorik the Great beats Odoaker

● 561 - Pelagius I ends his reign as Catholic Pope

● 1409 - Austrian civil war ends

● 1431 - Bishop Gabriele Condulmer elected as Pope Eugene IV

● 1547 - The Seventh Session of the Council of Trent declared: 'If anyone says that one baptized cannot, even if he wishes, lose grace, however much he may sin, unless he is unwilling to believe, let him be anathema.'

● 1575 - Indian Mughal Emperor Akbar defeats Bengali army at the Battle of Tukaroi

● 1585 - The Olympic Theatre, designed by Andrea Palladio, is inaugurated in Vicenza

● 1627 - Piet Heyn conquerors 22 ships in Bay of Salvador Brazil

● 1638 - Duke Bernard van Saksen-Weimar occupies Rheinfelden

● 1639 - The early settlement of Taunton, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town.

● 1657 - Blacks and Native Americans rebel in Massachusetts.

● 1744 - Colonial missionary to the American Indians, David Brainerd wrote in his journal: 'In the morning, spent an hour in prayer. Prayer was so sweet an exercise to me that I knew not how to cease, lest I lose the spirit of prayer.'

● 1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Castle of Inverness

● 1776 - US commodore Esek Hopkins occupies Nassau Bahamas

● 1791 - 1st Internal Revenue Act (taxing distilled spirits & carriages)

● 1791 - The United States Mint is created by the U.S. Congress.

● 1794 - Richard Allen founded AME Church

● 1801 - 1st US Jewish Governor, David Emanuel, takes office in Georgia

● 1803 - 1st impeachment trial of a federal judge, John Pickering, begins

● 1803 - Colégio Militar is founded in Portugal by Colonel Teixeira Rebello.

● 1805 - Louisiana-Missouri Territory forms

● 1812 - US Congress passes 1st foreign aid bill (aids Venezuela earthquake victims)

● 1813 - Office of Surgeon General of the US army is established

● 1815 - US declares war on Algiers for taking US prisoners & demanding tribute

● 1817 - Mississippi Territory is divided into Alabama Territory & Mississippi

● 1817 - The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans was opened.

● 1820 - Missouri Compromise passes, allowing slavery in Missouri

● 1833 - According to Akilattirattu Ammanai, Ayya Vaikundar arises from the sea as avatar of Narayana at Thiruchendur.

● 1835 - Congress authorizes a US mint at New Orleans LA

● 1837 - Congress increases Supreme Court membership from 7 to 9 {Later attempts to enlarge the Court have failed, most notably FDR's attempt in the 1930s.}

● 1837 - US President Andrew Jackson & Congress recognizes Republic of Texas

● 1838 - Rebellion at Pelee Island, Ontario Canada

● 1842 - 1st US child labor law regulating working hours passed (Massachusetts)

● 1843 - Congress appropriates $30,000 "to test the practicability of establishing a system of electro-magnetic telegraphs" by the US

● 1845 - 1st US law overriding a Presidential veto (John Tyler's)

● 1845 - Congress authorizes ocean mail contracts for foreign mail delivery

● 1845 - Florida is admitted as the 27th U.S. state.

● 1847 - Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born American inventor of the telephone, was born.

● 1847 - Post Office Department authorized to issue postage stamps

● 1849 - Minnesota Territory organizes as a political division of the United States.

● 1849 - The Home Department, forerunner of the Interior Department, was established.

● 1849 - The U.S. Congress passes the Gold Coinage Act authorizing $20 Double Eagle gold coin.

● 1851 - Congress authorizes smallest US silver coin (3¢ piece)

● 1853 - Transcontinental railroad survey is authorized by Congress

● 1853 - US Assay Office in New York NY authorized

● 1855 - Congress approves $30,000 to test camels for military use

● 1855 - Registration of letters authorized by Congress

● 1857 - France and the United Kingdom declare war on China.

● 1861 - Alexander II of Russia signs the Emancipation Manifesto, freeing serfs.

● 1862 - General Pope lays siege in front of New Madrid MO

● 1863 - Abraham Lincoln approves charter for National Academy of Sciences

● 1863 - Congress authorizes a US mint at Carson City NV

● 1863 - Federal ironclad ships bomb Fort McAllister Georgia

● 1863 - First U.S. draft law passes. Contains a clause providing draft exemption in exchange for $300 -- a sum that only the rich could afford to pay.

● 1863 - Free city delivery replaces zone postage; 449 letter carriers hired

● 1863 - Gold certificates (currency) authorized by Congress

● 1863 - Idaho Territory organizes as a political division of the United States.

● 1865 - Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands established to help destitute free blacks

● 1865 - Opening of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the founding member of the HSBC Group.

● 1869 - University of South Carolina opens to all races

● 1870 - Paraguay - The forces of Francisco Solano Lopez are annihilated at Cora Hill.

● 1871 - Reacting strongly to charges of corruption, US Congress establishes a Commission on Civil Service Reform. In four years, however, it fails to appropriate a single penny for the Commission, which as a result, is forced to disband.

● 1871 - U.S. Congress calls all Native Americans wards of state, nullifying all treaties.

● 1873 - "Salary Grab" Act passes, raising the salaries of U.S. congressmen and government officials retroactively.

● 1873 - Censorship: The U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.

● 1873 - Congress authorizes federal departmental postage stamps

● 1875 - Congress authorizes 20¢ coin, lasts only 3 years

● 1875 - Illegal act of Congress removes lands from Oregon Coast Reservation, despite opposition by Coos and other tribes. Alsea Reservation, Oregon, is returned to public domain.

● 1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes is privately inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States (his public inauguration coming on March 5).

● 1878 - Bulgaria liberated from Turkey (Peace of San Stefano)

● 1878 - Russia and the Ottomans signed the treaty of San Stefano. The treaty granted independence to Serbia.

● 1879 - 1st female lawyer heard by Supreme Court (Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood)

● 1879 - The United States Geological Survey is created.

● 1882 - New York Steam Corp begins distributing steam to Manhattan buildings

● 1883 - Congress authorizes the 1st steel vessels in US navy

● 1885 - 1st US state (California) establishes a permanent forest commission

● 1885 - The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York State.

● 1885 - US Post Office offers special delivery for 1st-class mail

● 1887 - American Protective Association forms (anti-Catholic) in Clinton IA

● 1891 - Congress creates Office of Superintendent of Immigration (Treasury Department)

● 1891 - Congress creates US Courts of Appeal

● 1892 - 1st cattle tuberculosis test in US made, Villa Nova PA

● 1893 - Columbian Isabella silver quarter authorized

● 1893 - Congress authorizes 1st federal road agency, in Department of Agriculture

● 1894 - 4th & last British government of Gladstone resigns

● 1899 - Congress authorizes Lafayette silver dollar

● 1899 - George Dewey becomes 1st in US with rank of Admiral of the Navy

● 1900 - Striking miners in Germany returned to work.

● 1901 - Congress creates National Bureau of Standards, in Department of Commerce

● 1903 - Colorado City (Colo.) free-speech fight.

● 1903 - In St. Louis, MO, Barney Gilmore was arrested for spitting.

● 1903 - North Carolina becomes 1st state requiring registration of nurses

● 1903 - The U.S. imposed a $2 head tax on immigrants.

● 1904 - Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany becomes the first person to make a sound recording of a political document, using Thomas Edison's cylinder.

● 1905 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia agrees to create an elected assembly (the Duma).

● 1905 - US Forest Service forms

● 1906 - Vuia I aircraft built by Romanian Traja Vuia tested in France. It was the first airplane with tires to attempt flight.

● 1908 - The U.S. government declared open war on U.S. anarchists.

● 1909 - Aviators Herring, Curtiss and Bishop announced that airplanes would be made commercially in the U.S.

● 1910 - In New York, Robert Forest founded the National Housing Association to fight deteriorating urban living conditions.

● 1910 - J.D. Rockefeller Jr. announced his withdrawal from business to administer his father's fortune for an "uplift in humanity". He also appealed to the U.S. Congress for the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation.

● 1910 - Nicaraguan rebels admitted defeat in open war and resorted to guerrilla tactics in the hope of U.S. intervention.

● 1911 - 1st US federal cemetery with Union & Rebel graves opens, Missouri

● 1913 - Over 5,000 women march on Washington to demand right to vote. In early guerrilla theatre - women and children stage "Suffrage Tableau" on U.S. Capitol steps.

● 1915 - National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NASA forerunner) created

● 1917 - Congress passes 1st excess profits tax on corporations

● 1917 - Great monarch Michael resigns after 1 day as czar

● 1918 - Germany, Austria and Russia sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending Russia's involvement in World War I, and leading to the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

● 1919 - 1st international air mail service from US, Seattle WA-Victoria BC

● 1919 - Communist Party in Germany announces a general strike

● 1919 - Ruling on the conviction of anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the Supreme Court upholds the Espionage Act. Goldman and Berkman were arrested during World War I for so-called conspiracy against the draft. Today's court ruling thus puts draft resistance outside First Amendment protection. Emma Goldman's last act before entering prison was organizing the Political Prisoners' Amnesty League. During the war, thousands of dissenters have been sentenced to long prison terms. At Angel Island, a concentration camp for dissidents, many have been systematically tortured. At the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, prisoners have hung by their wrists for weeks at a time.

● 1921 - Toronto's Dr Banting & Dr Best announce discovery of insulin

● 1922 - Italian fascists occupy Fiume & Rijeka

● 1923 - US Senate rejects membership in International Court of Justice, The Hague

● 1924 - German & Turkish friendship/trade treaty signed

● 1924 - The 1400-year-old Islamic caliphate is abolished when Caliph Abdul Mejid II of the Ottoman Empire is deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gives way to the reformed Turkey of President Kemal Atatürk.

● 1931 - American linguistic pioneer Frank Laubach wrote in a letter: 'If we only let God have his full chance he will break our hearts with the glory of his revelation. That is the privilege which the preacher can have. It is his business to look into the very face of God until he aches with bliss.'

● 1931 - The "Star Spangled Banner," written by Francis Scott Key, was adopted as the American national anthem. The song was originally a poem known as "Defense of Fort McHenry."

● 1933 - German Presidential candidate Earnest Thälmann (KPD) arrested

● 1933 - Mount Rushmore National Memorial is dedicated.

● 1933 - US President Herbert Hoover signs the Norris-LaGuardia Act into law and opening the doors to increased unionization. {This is literally in the last days as president, FDR is already president-elect awaiting inauguration.}

● 1934 - John Dillinger breaks out of jail using a wooden pistol

● 1935 - Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Worker's party (RSAP), forms

● 1938 - Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.

● 1938 - Samuel Schwartzbard, Jewish watchmaker, anarchist, and poet, dies, Capetown, South Africa. Escaped the Russian pogroms in 1905, settled in Paris. In 1926 he gunned down Simon Petliura, who had directed the pogroms in which some of his family were murdered. He fired three times, announcing - "This, for the pogroms; this for the massacres, this for the victims." Schwartzbard was acquitted by a jury and freed.

● 1939 - In Mumbai, Mohandas Gandhi begins to fast in protest of the autocratic rule in India.

● 1940 - Five people are killed in an arson attack on the offices of the communist newspaper Norrskensflamman in Luleå, Sweden.

● 1941 - Moscow denounced the Axis rule in Bulgaria.

● 1941 - Netherlands NSB-leader Mussert visits Göring in Berlin

● 1942 - 1st combat flight for Canada's Avro Lancaster military plane

● 1942 - World War II: Ten Japanese warplanes raid the town of Broome, Western Australia killing more than 100 people.

● 1943 - US defeats Japan & wins Battle of Bismark Sea

● 1943 - World War II: In London, 173 people are killed in a crush while trying to enter an air-raid shelter at Bethnal Green tube station.

● 1944 - The Order of Nakhimov and Order of Ushakov were instituted in USSR as the highest naval awards.

● 1945 - Churchill visits Montgomery's headquarter

● 1945 - RAF bombing error hits The Hague killing 511

● 1945 - Roermond/Venlo Netherlands, freed

● 1945 - US & Philippine forces recaptures Corregidor

● 1945 - US 7th Army occupies last part of Westwall

● 1945 - World War II: Previously neutral Finland declares war on the Axis powers.

● 1949 - The Tucker Automobile Corporation folds.

● 1950 - Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote in "Sign of Jonas": 'The Christian life...is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places. And these discoveries are sometimes most profitable when you find him in something you had tended to overlook or even despise.'

● 1952 - Puerto Rico approves their 1st self written constitution

● 1952 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld New York's Feinberg Law that banned Communist teachers in the U.S.

● 1953 - A Canadian Pacific Airlines De Havilland Comet crashes in Karachi, Pakistan killing 11.

● 1953 - Guatemala - Jacobo Arbenz declares the nationalization of idle lands held by the United Fruit Company. U.S. backed terrorism and genocide follow for the next 30 years.

● 1956 - Indonesian government of Harahap resigns

● 1956 - Morocco gains independence from France (Anniversary of throne)

● 1957 - Cypriot liberation fighter Gregoris Afxentiou is killed, while fighting against British troops, burnt alive in a cave near the Machera Monastery, refusing to surrender.

● 1957 - The head of the Catholic archdiocese of Chicago (the largest in the world), Samuel Cardinal Strich, bans rock and roll from Catholic schools and "recreations" in his district. He cites the "tribal rhythms" and "encouragement to behave in a hedonistic manner." Chicago record sellers report no drop in sales of hedonism-encouraging records.

● 1958 - Nuri as-Said becomes the prime minister of Iraq for the 14th time.

● 1959 - 1st US probe to enter solar orbit, Pioneer 4, is launched

● 1959 - British government arrests Hastings Banda of Nyasaland, ends emergency crisis

● 1959 - By a vote taken in both bodies, the Unitarian Church and the Universalist Church, along with their fellowships -- the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America merged into a single denomination.

● 1959 - Lou Costello comedian, dies at 52.

● 1960 - 9th largest snowfall in NYC history (14.5")

● 1961 - King Hassan II ascends to throne of Morocco

● 1961 - Village Council in Inuit town of Point Hope, in far northwestern Alaska, objects in letter to Pres. Kennedy to chain explosion of five atomic bombs in nearby above-ground "Project Chariot" tests.

● 1961 - Waterborne Polaris Action Group "welcomes" first submarines, Holy Loch, Scotland.

● 1962 - British Antarctic Territory is formed

● 1962 - One hundred twenty participate in 24-hour Quaker vigil for peace, Macclesfield, Britain.

● 1963 - Senegal adopts constitution

● 1965 - Owsley starts making LSD - large quantities of acid available for the first time.

● 1965 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

● 1965 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalitinsk USSR

● 1966 - A British Overseas Airways Boeing 707 flies into a mountain after the captain decides to give the passengers a close-up view of Mt. Fuji. All 124 people aboard are killed.

● 1966 - BBC tunes in to colour; The BBC announces plans to begin broadcasting television programmes in colour from next year.

● 1966 - Kwame Nkrumah flees Ghana to Guinée

● 1966 - Twister hits Jackson MS; 3 minutes after 1st sighting, 57 die

● 1967 - Grenada gains partial independence from Britain

● 1967 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

● 1968 - Chicano students stage walkout of Los Angeles high schools, calling for an end to racist policies.

● 1968 - FBI director J. Edgar Hoover issues a memo to FBI offices concerning the goals of a "Counter-intelligence Program" against "Black Nationalist-Hate Groups."

● 1968 - Greece, Portugal & Spain's embassies bombed in the Hague

● 1969 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 to test the lunar module for 151 Earth orbits (10 days).

● 1969 - In a Los Angeles, California court, Sirhan Sirhan admits that he killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.

● 1971 - Beginning of Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and India's official entry to the Bangladesh Liberation War in support of Mukti Bahini

● 1971 - Winnie Mandela sentenced to 1 year in jail in South Africa

● 1972 - Mohawk Airlines Flight 405 crashes in unexplained circumstances.

● 1972 - Sculpted figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, & Stonewall Jackson are completed at Stone Mountain GA

● 1973 - Japan disclosed its first defense plan since World War II.

● 1973 - Presidents Rule introduced in the Indian state of Orissa.

● 1974 - Reported that a famine in the Sahel, western Africa, has resulted in the deaths of 100,000, and millions more are starving.

● 1974 - Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials reach an agreement for eventual reconciliation into one communion, marking the first agreement between the two churches since the Reformation.

● 1974 - Turkish jet crashes killing 345; A Turkish Airlines DC10 crashes near Paris, en route to London, killing all 345 people on board.

● 1976 - 5 workers are killed by the police in a demonstration in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

● 1976 - Mozambique closes border with Rhodesia

● 1977 - Libyan Socialist Arabs People's Republic forms

● 1978 - The remains of Charles Chaplin were stolen from his grave in Cosier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. The body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva.

● 1980 - France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island

● 1980 - The submarine Nautilus was decommissioned. The vessel's final voyage had ended on May 26, 1979.

● 1981 - Navajo and Hopi religious leaders request halt in construction of ski resort in the San Francisco Peaks, northern Arizona.

● 1982 - Queen opens Barbican Centre; The Queen opens the new £153m Barbican Arts Centre in the City of London.

● 1982 - Senate begins debate on expulsion of Senator Harrison Williams (D-NJ)

● 1983 - Author/activist Arthur Koestler, 77, and wife found dead of suicidal drug overdoses, London, England. Best known for his novel "Darkness at Noon," which reflects his break with the Communist Party. Hungarian born British novelist/journalist/critic, Koestler worked as a correspondent in the 1920s and 1930s, and was imprisoned by the fascists during Spanish Revolution of 1936. A lifelong advocate of euthanasia.

● 1985 - Arthur Scargill declares that the National Union of Mineworkers national executive voted to end the longest-running industrial dispute in Britain without any peace deal over pit closures.

● 1985 - Censorship: Women Against Pornography award their "Pig Award" to Huggies Diapers, claiming that the television ads had "crossed the line between eye-catching and porn."

● 1989 - Machinists strike Eastern Airlines; pilots honor picket lines

● 1989 - Robert McFarlane gets $20,000 fine, two years probation for his role in Iran-Contra.

● 1991 - African-American Rodney King is videotaped being severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers.

● 1991 - In two concurring referendums: 74 % of the population of Latvia vote for independence from the Soviet Union, in Estonia - 83 %.

● 1991 - Iraqi generals & General Schwarzkopf meet to discuss cease fire

● 1991 - Miguel Trovoada installed as President of Sao Tomé e Principal

● 1991 - Switzerland votes on lowering voting age from 20 to 18

● 1991 - United Airlines crashes near Colorado Springs, kills 25

● 1992 - Gas explodes in coal mine at Zonguldak Turkey, 100s die

● 1992 - President Bush apologizes for raising taxes after pledging not to {He still loses re-election.}

● 1992 - The nation of Bosnia was established.

● 1994 - The Mexican government reached a peace agreement with the Chiapas rebels.

● 1995 - A U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia ended. Several gunmen were killed by U.S. Marines in Mogadishu while overseeing the pull out of peacekeepers.

● 1995 - MPs move to outlaw hunting; A bill which would ban hunting with hounds in England and Wales has become the first such proposal to get a second reading in parliament.

● 1996 - San Francisco police illegally arrest 130 for walking on a street during a march against police brutality.

● 1997 - The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction.

● 1998 - Bill Gates testifies at Senate Judiciary Committee

● 1999 - Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones began their attempt to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon non-stop. They succeeded on March 20, 1999.

● 1999 - In Egypt, 19 people were killed when a bus plunged into a Nile canal.

● 1999 - LaGrand case: The State of Arizona executes Walter LaGrand, a German despite German legal action in the International Court of Justice.

● 2001 - A U.S. Air Force Materiel Command C-23 Sherpa transport crashes during stormy weather in the U.S. state of Georgia, killing 21.

● 2002 - Citizens of Switzerland narrowly vote in favour of their country becoming a member of the United Nations, abandoning almost 200 years of formal neutrality.

● 2004 - Belgian brewer Interbrew and Brazilian rival AmBev agreed to merge in a $11.2 billion deal that formed InBev, the world's largest brewer.

● 2005 - Mayerthorpe Incident: James Roszko murders four Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables during a drug bust at his property in Rochfort Bridge, Alberta, then commits suicide. It is the deadliest peace-time incident for the RCMP since 1885 and the North-West Rebellion.

● 2005 - Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly an airplane around the world solo without any stops without refueling - a journey of 40,234 km/25,000 mi completed in 67 hours and 2 minutes. {He will later be declared dead when after flying a small plane he is assumed lost and killed in an accident where no wreckage is found.}

● 2005 - The freighter M/V Karen Danielsen, crashes into part of the Great Belt Bridge of Denmark, 800 m from Funen. All traffic across the bridge stops, effectively separating Denmark in two.

● 2006 - Former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was sentenced by a federal judge in San Diego to more than eight years in prison for corruption.

● 2007 - The first of two total lunar eclipses in 2007, observed during the late hours (penumbral eclipse beginning 20:18:11 UT and reaching totality at 23:20:56 UT), will be unique in that it was partly visible from every continent around the world.

BIRTHS

● 1455 - King John II of Portugal (d. 1495)

● 1520 - Matthias Flacius, Croatian Protestant reformer (d. 1575)

● 1583 - Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, English diplomat, poet, and philosopher (d. 1648)

● 1589 - Gisbertus Voetius, Dutch theologian (d. 1676)

● 1606 - Edmund Waller, British poet (d. 1687)

● 1652 - Thomas Otway, British dramatist (d. 1685)

● 1678 - Madeleine de Verchères, French Canadian heroine (d. 1747)

● 1778 - Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Hannover (d. 1841)

● 1793 - William Charles Macready, English actor (d. 1873)

● 1800 - Heinrich Georg Bronn, German geologist (d. 1862)

● 1805 - Jonas Furrer, first President of the Swiss Confederation (d. 1861)

● 1831 - George Pullman, American inventor and industrialist (d. 1897)

● 1839 - Jamsetji Tata, Indian industrialist (d. 1904)

● 1841 - Sir John Murray, Scottish naturalist (d. 1914)

● 1845 - Georg Cantor, German mathematician (d. 1918)

● 1847 - Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor (d. 1922)

● 1851 - Alexandros Papadiamantis, Greek author (d. 1911)

● 1860 - John Montgomery Ward, American baseball player (d. 1925)

● 1860 - Monte Ward, Baseball player (d. 1925)

● 1863 - Arthur Machen, Welsh-born author (d. 1947)

● 1866 - Fred A. Busse, Mayor of Chicago (d. 1914)

● 1871 - Maurice Garin, French cyclist (d. 1957)

● 1873 - William Green, American labor union leader (d. 1952)

● 1878 - Leopold Jessner, German Expressionist theatrical producer and director (d. 1945)

● 1880 - Florence Auer, American actress (d. 1962)

● 1880 - Yōsuke Matsuoka, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan (d. 1946)

● 1883 - Cyril Burt, educational psychologist (d. 1971)

● 1886 - Tore Ørjasæter, Norwegian poet (d. 1968)

● 1890 - Norman Bethune, Canadian doctor and humanitarian (d. 1939)

● 1891 - Damaskinos, Greek archbishop of Athens (d. 1949)

● 1893 - Beatrice Wood, American artist and ceramicist (d. 1998)

● 1895 - Matthew Ridgway, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, U.S. Army Chief of Staff (d. 1993)

● 1895 - Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch, Norwegian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1973)

● 1910 - Kittens Reichert, American silent screen child actor (d. 1990)

● 1911 - Hugues Lapointe, Canadian politician and Lieutenant governor of Quebec (d. 1982)

● 1911 - Jean Harlow, American actress (d. 1937)

● 1918 - Dr. Arthur Kornberg, American Nobel Prize laureate in 1959 for the discovery of DNA polymerase (d. 2007)

● 1918 - Fritz Thiedemann, German equestrian (d. 2000)

● 1920 - James Doohan, Canadian-born actor (d. 2005)

● 1920 - Julius Boros, American golfer (d. 1994)

● 1920 - Ronald Searle, British illustrator

● 1922 - Nándor Hidegkuti, Hungarian footballer (d. 2002)

● 1923 - Barney Martin, American actor (d. 2005)

● 1923 - Doc Watson, American musician

● 1924 - Ali Faik Zaghloul, Egyptian radio presenter

● 1924 - Tomiichi Murayama, former Prime Minister of Japan

● 1926 - James Merrill, American poet (d. 1995)

● 1926 - Joseph Anthony Ferrario, American Catholic prelate (d. 2003)

● 1926 - Lys Assia, Swiss singer

● 1927 - Pierre Aubert, member of the Swiss Federal Council

● 1930 - Heiner Geißler, German politician

● 1930 - Ion Iliescu, President of Romania

● 1933 - Alfredo Landa, Spanish actor

● 1933 - Lee Radziwill, American fashion executive

● 1933 - Marco Antonio Muñiz, Mexican singer (Los Tres Aces)

● 1937 - Bobby Driscoll, American actor (d. 1968)

● 1940 - Germán Castro Caycedo, Colombian writer and journalist

● 1940 - Owen Spencer-Thomas, English broadcaster, journalist and Anglican clergyman

● 1940 - Perry Ellis, fashion designer (d. 1986)

● 1942 - Mike Pender, English singer and guitarist (The Searchers)

● 1945 - George Miller, Australian film director

● 1945 - Hattie Winston, Actress

● 1946 - John Virgo, English snooker player

● 1947 - Jennifer Warnes, American singer and songwriter

● 1947 - Otto Stuppacher, Austrian racing driver (d. 2001)

● 1948 - Snowy White, British guitarist (Thin Lizzy, Pink Floyd)

● 1949 - Gloria Hendry, American actress

● 1949 - Jesse Jefferson, American baseball player

● 1949 - Jüri Allik, Estonian psychologist

● 1950 - Tim Kazurinsky, American actor and comedian

● 1951 - Lindsay Cooper, English musician and composer (Henry Cow, News from Babel)

● 1952 - Dermot Morgan, Irish actor and comedian (d. 1998)

● 1953 - Robyn Hitchcock, British musician

● 1953 - Zico, Brazilian footballer

● 1954 - Édouard Lock, Canadian dance choreographer (La La La Human Steps)

● 1955 - Andy Breckman, American comedian and radio personality

● 1956 - Zbigniew Boniek, Polish footballer

● 1958 - Marc Silvestri, American comic book artist and publisher (Top Cow Productions)

● 1958 - Miranda Richardson, British actress

● 1959 - Ira Glass, American radio host

● 1960 - Colin Wells, English cricketer

● 1960 - Neal Heaton, American baseball player

● 1961 - Fatima Whitbread, English javelin thrower

● 1961 - Knut Nærum, Norwegian comedian

● 1961 - Mary Page Keller, Actress

● 1961 - Perry McCarthy, English racing driver

● 1962 - Glen E. Friedman, American photographer and artist

● 1962 - Herschel Walker, American football player

● 1962 - Jackie Joyner-Kersee, American athlete

● 1963 - Sophia Aliberti, Greek actress and TV presenter

● 1964 - Duncan Phillips, Australian drummer (Newsboys)

● 1964 - Laura Harring, Mexican-born American actress

● 1964 - Raúl Alcalá, Mexican cyclist

● 1966 - Fernando Colunga, Mexican actor

● 1966 - Timo Tolkki, Finnish musician (Stratovarius)

● 1966 - Tone Lōc, American rapper and actor

● 1968 - Brian Leetch, American ice hockey player

● 1969 - John Bigham, Rock musician

● 1969 - Simon Whitlock, Australian Darts Player

● 1970 - Inzamam-ul-Haq, Pakistani cricketer

● 1970 - Julie Bowen, American actress

● 1971 - Brett Warren, Country singer (The Warren Brothers)

● 1971 - Tyler Florence, chef, Food Network personality, & cookbook author

● 1972 - Darren Anderton, English footballer

● 1973 - Romāns Vainšteins, Latvian cyclist

● 1973 - Victoria Zdrok, Ukrainian model

● 1974 - David Faustino, American actor (''Married... With Children'')

● 1976 - Fraser Gehrig, Australian rules footballer

● 1977 - Ronan Keating, Irish singer (Boyzones)

● 1977 - Stéphane Robidas, Canadian ice hockey player

● 1978 - Matt Diaz, American baseball player

● 1978 - Seomoon Tak, Korean singer

● 1979 - Alex Zane, English comedian

● 1979 - Patrick Renna, American actor

● 1980 - Mason Unck, American football player

● 1981 - Dusty Dvoracek, American football player

● 1981 - Emmanuel Pappoe, Ghanaian footballer

● 1981 - Kim Yoo-Jin (Eugene), South Korean singer and actress

● 1981 - Lil' Flip, American rapper

● 1981 - Sung Yu Ri, South Korean singer and actress

● 1982 - Jessica Biel, American actress (''7th Heaven'')

● 1983 - Maite Perroni, singer in the Latin Pop group RBD

● 1985 - Sam Morrow, Northern Irish footballer

● 1986 - Stacie Orrico, American singer

● 1992 - Madison Cross, American singer and actress

● 1997 - Maria Francisca Isabel de Bragança, Infanta, daughter of Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza

DEATHS

● 1111 - Bohemund I, Prince of Antioch

● 1239 - Vladimir III Rurikovich, Grand Prince of Kiev (b. 1187)

● 1459 - Ausiàs March, Catalan poet (b. 1397)

● 1554 - John Frederick, Elector of Saxony (b. 1503)

● 1703 - Robert Hooke, English scientist (b. 1635)

● 1706 - Johann Pachelbel, German composer (b. 1653)

● 1707 - Aurangzeb, Mughal Emperor of India (b. 1618)

● 1717 - Pierre Allix, French Protestant pastor (b. 1641)

● 1744 - Jean Barbeyrac, French jurist

● 1765 - William Stukeley, English archaeologist (b. 1687)

● 1768 - Nicola Porpora, Italian composer (b. 1686)

● 1792 - Robert Adam, Scottish architect (b. 1728)

● 1850 - Oliver Cowdery, American religious leader (b. 1806)

● 1894 - Ned Williamson, American baseball player (b. 1857)

● 1899 - William P. Sprague, American politician from Ohio (b. 1827)

● 1927 - J.G. Parry-Thomas, Welsh motor-racing driver (b. 1884)

● 1927 - Mikhail Artsybashev, Russian writer (b. 1878)

● 1932 - Eugen d'Albert, German composer (b. 1864)

● 1943 - George Thompson, English cricketer (b. 1877)

● 1953 - James J. Jeffries, American heavyweight boxer (b. 1875)

● 1959 - Lou Costello, American actor and comedian (b. 1906)

● 1961 - Paul Wittgenstein, Austrian-born pianist (b. 1887)

● 1966 - Alice Pearce, American actress (b. 1917)

● 1966 - William Frawley, American actor (b. 1887)

● 1982 - Georges Perec, French writer (b. 1936)

● 1983 - Arthur Koestler, Austrian writer (b. 1905)

● 1983 - Hergé, Belgian comics creator (b. 1907)

● 1987 - Danny Kaye, American actor, singer, and comedian (b. 1913)

● 1988 - Sewall Wright, American biologist (b. 1889)

● 1990 - Gérard Blitz, Belgian waterpoloist and entrepreneur (b. 1912)

● 1991 - Arthur Murray, American dancer and dance instructor (b. 1895)

● 1993 - Albert Sabin, Polish-born medical researcher (b. 1906)

● 1993 - Carlos Marcello, Tunisian-born gangster (b. 1910)

● 1993 - Carlos Montoya, flamenco guitarist (b. 1903)

● 1995 - Howard W. Hunter, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1907)

● 1996 - John Cardinal Krol, American Catholic clergyman (b. 1910)

● 1996 - Marguerite Duras, French writer (b. 1914)

● 1998 - Fred Friendly, American broadcast executive (b. 1915)

● 1999 - Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)

● 2000 - Toni Ortelli, Italian composer and alpinist (b. 1904)

● 2001 - Louis Edmonds, American actor (b. 1923)

● 2002 - Harlan Howard, American musician (b. 1927)

● 2003 - Goffredo Petrassi, Italian composer (b. 1904)

● 2003 - Horst Buchholz, German actor (b. 1933)

● 2003 - Luis Marden, American photojournalist (b. 1913)

● 2003 - Peter Smithson, English architect (b. 1923)

● 2004 - Cecily Adams, American actress and casting director (b. 1958)

● 2005 - Max M. Fisher, American philanthropist (b. 1928)

● 2005 - Rinus Michels, Dutch football coach (b. 1928)

● 2006 - Ivor Cutler, Scottish poet (b. 1923)

● 2006 - William Herskovic, Holocaust hero and philanthropist (b. 1914)

HOLIDAYS AND OBSERVANCES

● Roman Catholic:
● St. Anselm of Nonantola
● St. Arthelais
● St. Calupan
● St. Camilla
● St. Cele-Christ
● St. Cleonicus
● St. Cunegundes
● St. Felix
● St. Foila
● Sts. Hemiterius and Cheledonius
● St. Katharine Drexel
● St. Lamalisse
● Sts. Marinus and Asterius
● St. Non
● St. Sacer
● St. Titian
● St. Winwaloc
● Bl. Mary Angela Truszkowska

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for February 20 (Civil Date: March 3)
● St. Leo, Bishop of Catania in Sicily.
● St. Agatho, pope of Rome.
● Hieromartyr Sadoc (Sadoth), Bishop of Persia, and 128 Martyrs with him.
● Beheading of St. Cornelius, abbot of the Pskov Caves, and his disciple St. Bessian of Murom.
● St. Agatho, wonderworker of the Kiev Caves.
● St. Bessarion the Great, wonderworker of Egypt.

● Greek Calendar:
● St. Cindeus, Bishop of Pisidia.
● St. Plotinus, monk.
● Abbot Macarius and 34 monks and novices of Valaam martyred by the Lutherans (1578).

● The Moslem World - Mohammed's Birthday

● Bulgaria - Liberation from Ottoman Rule Day (1878)

● Georgia (Country) - Mothers Day

● Grenada - Partial Independence Day (1967)

● Hawaii - Japanese Girl's Day

● Japan – Hinamatsuri, celebration day for girls.

● Malawi - Martyr's Day.

● Morocco - National Day (1961)

● Sudan - Unity Day

● Admission Day to the United States
● Florida - 27th state (1845)

● World Day of Prayer


THIS IS AN ABBREVIATED POST FOR THIS DATE USING ONLY THE FOLLOWING EIGHT SOURCES. A COMPLETE POST IS PLANNED AS SOON AS TIME ALLOWS.

This Previous Day in History Post With

This Original Wikipedia List form the core of this post.

Additional facts taken from:

Information on Geov Parrish's this Day in Radical History, things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school.

Roman Catholic Saint of the Day

Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar

Liberal Quotes of the Day taken from The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left Is Right Compiled by William P. Martin ©2004

Quotes from the Right of the Day taken from Take Them at Their Words: Startling, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the GOP and Their Friends, 1994-2004 Compiled by Bruce J. Miller with Diana Maio ©2004

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day taken from 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said Edited by Steven D. Price ©2004


Permanent Backlink to Post

March 2......

March 2 is the 61st day of the year (62nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 304 days remaining in the year on this date.

Day of the week in surrounding years:
1981,1987,1992,1998,. . . .—MON—2009
1982,. . . .,1993,1999,2004—TUE—2010
1983,1988,1994,. . . .,2005—WED—2011
. . . .,1989,1995,2000,2006—THU—. . . .
1984,1990,. . . .,2001,2007—FRI—2012
1985,1991,1996,2002,. . . .—SAT—2013
1986,. . . .,1997,2003,2008—SUN—2014

PASCAL DATE INFORMATION
Easter Sunday for the Western Christian Church is defined as the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Lent is defined as the forty days prior to Easter not including Sundays thus Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is 46 days prior to Easter. Calculations for Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday were performed for the 3774 years from 326 to 4099. For the year range 326 to 1582, dates are based on the Julian calendar. For years 1583 to 4099, dates are based on the Gregorian calendar. Ash Wednesday falls in a range of 36 days from February 4 to March 10. Easter Sunday falls in a range of 35 days from March 22 to April 25. The extra day in the Ash Wednesday range is February 29, which only occurs in leap years. February 29 only effects when Ash Wednesday occurs since it is well before the Spring Equinox and has no effect on the date for Easter Sunday. March 10 to March 21 is a twelve-day range that must occur in Lent no matter the timing of Easter Sunday. The entire range of 82 dates from February 4 to April 25 represents all dates with Pascal ramifications.

March 2 is the 28th possible date for Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday occurs on this date 120 times during the 3774 years calculated and is ranked 18th of the 36 dates.

It occurred on this date previously in the years:
371, 382, 393, 404, 466, 477, 488, 561, 572, 651, 656, 735, 746, 819, 830, 841, 903, 914, 925, 936, 998, 1009, 1020, 1093, 1104, 1183, 1188, 1267, 1278, 1351, 1362, 1373, 1435, 1446, 1457, 1468, 1530, 1541, 1552, 1588, 1650, 1661, 1672, 1718, 1729, 1740, 1808, 1870, 1881, 1892, 1927, 1938, 1949, 1960
It will occur on this date in the future in the years:
2022, 2033, 2044, 2101, 2112, 2174, 2185, 2196, 2242, 2253, 2264, 2310, 2321, 2332, 2394, 2405, 2416, 2489, 2546, 2557, 2568, 2614, 2625, 2636, 2704, 2766, 2777, 2788, 2861, 2867, 2872, 2929, 2940, 3008, 3081, 3092, 3138, 3149, 3160, 3233, 3239, 3244, 3301, 3312, 3385, 3391, 3396, 3453, 3464, 3521, 3532, 3605, 3616, 3695, 3763, 3768, 3825, 3831, 3836, 3904, 3977, 3983, 3988, 4067, 4072, 4078

Best Liberal Quote of the Day: On Feminism "One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian." — Shirley Chisholm {Far from being anti-male, feminists are pro-female and pro-human being. Some of the strongest feminists in the world just happen to be enlightened males.}

Stupidest and/or Scariest Quote from the Right for the Day: On All Hail King George ". . . I'm the commander—see, I don't need to explain—I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." — George W. "War Criminal" Bush. Bob Woodward, "A Course of 'Confident Action'; Bush Says Other Countries Will Follow Assertive U.S. in Combating Terror," Washington Post, 11-19-02.

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day: From the world of Sports "That noise in my earphone knocked my nose off, and I had to pick it up and find it." — Jerry Coleman was an infielder for the Yankees (what is it about the Bronx Bombers that turned out such a raft of funny speakers?), and manager of the San Diego Padres. After playing, he made his mark as a radio and TV broadcaster, where his malapropisms, non sequiturs, and other goofs became legendary. Coleman is Hall of Shame member #8.

{Disclaimer: I have attempted to give credit to the many different sources that I get entries. Any failure to do so is unintentional. Any statement enclosed by brackets like these are the opinion of the blogger, A Proud Liberal.}

MOON PHASE

Berkeley, California—Times are Pacific Standard Time (PST)
Mar 2, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 28% Age: 82% Rise: 3:40 AM Set: 12:53 PM
Surprise, Arizona—Times are Mountain Standard Time (MST)
Mar 2, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 29% Age: 82% Rise: 3:44 AM Set: 1:26 PM
Iowa City, Iowa—Times are Central Standard Time (CST)
Mar 2, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 29% Age: 82% Rise: 3:49 AM Set: 12:30 PM
Cambridge, Massachusetts—Times are Eastern Standard Time (EST)
Mar 2, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 30% Age: 82% Rise: 3:28 AM Set: 12:02 PM


NASA ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY

Comet Hale-Bopp Over Val Parola Pass


Credit & Copyright: A. Dimai, (Col Druscie Obs.), AAC
Click picture to go to NASA APOD site for full explanation

EVENTS

● 871 - Battle at Marton: Ethelred van Wessex beats Danish invasion army

● 986 - Louis V becomes King of the Franks.

● 1121 - Dirk VI becomes count of Holland

● 1127 - Assassination of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders.

● 1458 - Hussite George van Podiebrad chosen king of Bohemia

● 1498 - Vasco da Gama's fleet visits Mozambique Island

● 1629 - English King Charles I leaces house of commons

● 1675 - Prince William III installed as Governor of Overijssel

● 1776 - Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston

● 1789 - Pennsylvania ends prohibition of theatrical performances

● 1791 - Long-distance communication speeds up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris.

● 1793 - Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas, was born near Lexington, Va.

● 1795 - Africans revolt in Fedon’s Insurrection against British rule of Grenada.

● 1799 - Congress standardizes US weights & measures

● 1807 - U.S. Congress passes act prohibiting importation of slaves. The first American slave ship, named Desire, sailed from Marblehead, Massachussetts, in 1637. Since then, nearly 15 million blacks have been transported as slaves to the Americas. The African continent, meanwhile, has lost 50 million human beings to slavery and related deaths. But today's Congressional prohibition will go unenforced due to the huge profits it would curtail. Another 250,000 slaves will be imported illegally before the Civil War.

● 1808 - The inaugural meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, was held in Edinburgh.

● 1815 - Signing of Kandyan treaty by British invaders and Sri Lankan King.

● 1817 - 1st Evangelical church building dedicated, New Berlin PA

● 1819 - Territory of Arkansas organized

● 1819 - US passed its 1st immigration law

● 1820 - Birth of Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887), best known under his pseudonym, Multatuli (Latin, "I have suffered much"). Great Dutch anarchist writer/novelist, a one-time civil servant who wrote the autobiographical novel "Max Havelaar," reflecting his disgust with Dutch colonialism and racism. Despised middle-class conformism, excoriating religion, the family, and prejudices of all kinds -- racist, sexist or sexual. Multatuli's ideas influenced the socialist and libertarian milieu of his time, and practising his libertarian ideals scandalized his contemporaries, living as he did with two women and their children.

● 1824 - Interstate commerce comes under federal control

● 1829 - New England Asylum for the Blind, 1st in US, incorporated, Boston

● 1831 - John Frazee becomes 1st US sculptor to receive a federal commission

● 1836 - Texas Revolution: Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico. If only it had stayed that way.

● 1853 - Territory of Washington organized after separating from Oregon Territory

● 1855 - Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia.

● 1858 - Frederick Cook, New Orleans, patents a cotton-bale metallic tie

● 1861 - Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia: Tsar Alexander II signed the emancipation reform into law, abolishing Russian serfdom.

● 1861 - Government Printing Office purchases 1st printing plant, Washington DC

● 1861 - US Congress creates Dakota & Nevada Territories out of the Nebraska & Utah territories

● 1863 - The United States Congress authorizes track width of 4 ft 8½ in (1,435 mm) for Union Pacific Railroad

● 1865 - Freedman's Bureau founded for Black Education, 1865

● 1865 - General Early's army is defeated at Waynesborough

● 1865 - Second Taranaki War: The Volkner Incident in New Zealand.

● 1866 - Excelsior Needle Company began making sewing machine needles.

● 1867 - Congress abolishes peonage {a Mexican form of serfdom} in New Mexico

● 1867 - Howard University established

● 1867 - Jesse James-gang robs bank in Savannah MO, 1 dead

● 1867 - The United States Congress passed the 1st Reconstruction Act

● 1867 - US Congress creates the Department of Education {there was no debate about this being a Liberal plot to brainwash children}

● 1868 - University of Illinois opens

● 1877 - Despite an apparent Democratic victory at the polls, the Electoral College, swayed by Republican bribery, selects Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, as President. Supporters of Democrat Samuel Tilden claim a stolen election. Sound familiar?

● 1888 - The Convention of Constantinople is signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace.

● 1889 - Kansas passes 1st US antitrust laws

● 1893 - 1st federal railroad legislation passed; required safety features

● 1896 - Ethiopia defeats Italy in the Battle of Adwa, marking the first victory of an African nation over a colonial power.

● 1897 - U.S. President Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have required a literacy test for immigrants entering the country.

● 1899 - Congress allows railroad companies blanket approval for rights- of-way through Indian lands.

● 1899 - President McKinley signs bill creating Mount Rainier National Park (5th in US)

● 1899 - U.S. President McKinley signed a measure that created the rank of Admiral for the U.S. Navy. The first admiral was George Dewey.

● 1900 - The U.S. Congress voted to give $2 million in aid to Puerto Rico.

● 1901 - Hawaii's 1st telegraph company opens

● 1901 - The Platt Amendment is passed by Congress. The amendment informs Cuba that U.S. troops will not be withdrawn. Cuba unofficially becomes a protectorate of the U.S.

● 1903 - In New York City the Martha Washington Hotel opens, becoming the first hotel exclusively for women.

● 1904 - Greatest radical political organizer of all time, Dr. Seuss (Teodore Giesel), born, Springfield, Mass

● 1906 - A tornado in Missouri killed 33 and did $5 million in damage.

● 1907 - General Louis Botha named premier of Transvaal

● 1907 - In Hamburg, Germany, dock workers went on strike after the end of the night shift. British strike breakers were brought in. The issue was settled on April 22, 1907.

● 1908 - In New York, the Committee of the Russian Republican Administration was founded.

● 1908 - In Paris, Gabriel Lippmann introduced three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.

● 1909 - Great Britain, France, Germany & Italy ask Serbia to set no territorial demands

● 1910 - 2 trains crash in snow storm in Wellington WA, 118 die

● 1915 - British Vice Admiral Carden begins bombing of Dardanelles forts

● 1915 - Vladmir Jabotinsky forms a Jewish military force to fight in Palestine

● 1917 - The enactment of the Jones-Shafroth Act grants Puerto Ricans, United States citizenship.

● 1917 - (Old Style) Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the throne in favor of his brother Michael II of Russia after a series of strikes and protests spread through Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and Moscow, Russia; the government lasts until October, when it is overthrown by the Bolsheviks.

● 1919 - The first Communist International meets in Moscow.

● 1921 - Kronstadt Provisional Revolutionary Committee forms, The Kronstadt Soviet was due to be renewed, and 16,000 showed up and the mass assembly adopted the Petropavlovsk resolution -- opposed only by two Bolsheviks.

● 1925 - Japan's House of Representatives recognizes male suffrage

● 1925 - SDAP-Second-Faction (Dutch Socialists) of parliament demands drastic disarmament

● 1925 - Secretary of Agriculture approves first list of United States Numbered Highways

● 1929 - Congress creates Court of Customs & Patent Appeals

● 1930 - 1st US indoor glider flight, St Louis Terminal Building

● 1930 - American missionary Gustav Schmidt, 39, opened the Danzig Instytut Biblijny in the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk), Poland. It was the first Pentecostal Bible institute established in Eastern Europe.

● 1933 - Most powerful earthquake in 180 years hit Japan

● 1934 - Birthday of Dottie Rambo, contemporary gospel singer and songwriter. She has authored such country gospel favorites as "In the Valley He Restoreth My Soul," "Build My Mansion Next Door to Jesus" and "I Just Came to Talk With You, Lord."

● 1934 - Union Pacific tests light-weight high-speed passenger train, Omaha

● 1937 - Mexico nationalizes oil

● 1937 - The Steel Workers Organizing Committee signs a surprise collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel, leading to unionization of the United States steel industry.

● 1938 - Landslides & floods cause over 200 deaths (Los Angeles CA)

● 1938 - Trials of Soviet leaders begins in the Soviet Union

● 1939 - Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected Pope and takes the name Pius XII. {As cardinal he was instrumental in new treaties between the Vatican and the fascist states of Germany and Italy.}

● 1939 - The Massachusetts legislature voted to ratify the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. These first ten amendments had gone into effect 147 years before.

● 1940 - Soviet armies conquer Tuppura Island Finland

● 1941 - World War II: First German military units enter Bulgaria after it joined the Axis Pact.

● 1942 - Acting under Executive Order 9066, Lt. General John DeWitt proclaims all Japanese-Americans would be required to move away from the West Coast, and recommends, for their own good, they should do so voluntarily. (Any time a government uses the phrase "for their own good," big, big trouble is brewing.)

● 1942 - Admiral Helfrich departs Java for Ceylon

● 1943 - 1st transport from Westerbork Netherlands to Sobibor concentration camp

● 1943 - World War II: Battle of the Bismarck Sea - United States and Australian forces sink Japanese convoy ships.

● 1944 - Fumes from locomotive stalled in a tunnel suffocates 521 in Italy

● 1945 - 8th Air Force bombs Dresden

● 1945 - Anne Frank dies in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

● 1945 - King Michael of Romania gives in to Communist government

● 1946 - Dutch troops land on East Bali

● 1946 - Ho Chi Minh is elected the President of North Vietnam.

● 1946 - Kingman Douglass, becomes deputy director of CIA

● 1948 - U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed: 'O God, forgive the poverty and the pettiness of our prayers. Listen not to our words but to the yearnings of our hearts. Hear beneath our petitions the crying of our need.'

● 1949 - Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

● 1949 - The first automatic street light was installed in New Milford, Conn..

● 1955 - King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicates the throne in favor of his father, King Norodom Suramarit.

● 1955 - Months before Rosa Parks, teenager Claudette Colvin is arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person.

● 1956 - King of Jordan sacks British general; King Hussein of Jordan sacks the British commander of the Arab Legion in an effort to strengthen his own position within the Arab world.

● 1956 - Morocco tears up the Treaty of Féz, declares independence from France

● 1958 - 1st surface crossing of Antarctic continent is completed in 99 days

● 1958 - Yemen announces it will join the United Arab Republic

● 1959 - American Presbyterian apologist Francis Schaeffer wrote in a letter: 'Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched.'

● 1962 - Atmospheric nuclear weapons tests resumed by UK.

● 1962 - In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win seizes power in a coup.

● 1962 - JFK announces US will resume above ground nuclear testing

● 1964 - Marlon Brando and Bob Satiacum are arrested at a "fish-in" at Frank's Landing, Washington, in support of Native American fishing rights.

● 1965 - Montcalm Community College in Sidney MI, founded

● 1965 - The North Carolina legislature voted to bring Charlotte College into the UNC system, forming the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

● 1966 - 215,000 US soldiers in Vietnam

● 1966 - A Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-8 crashes on landing at Tokyo's Haneda Airport in a thunderstorm one day before the crash of BOAC Flight 911 from the same location.

● 1967 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

● 1968 - USAF displays Lockheed C-5A Galaxy, biggest plane in the world

● 1968 - USSR launches space probe Zond 4; fails to leave Earth orbit

● 1969 - Chinese-Russian borders fight (approximately 70 die)

● 1969 - In Toulouse, France the first test flight of the Anglo-French Concorde is conducted.

● 1969 - Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River.

● 1970 - American Airlines' 1st flight of a Boeing 747

● 1970 - Ian Smith declares Rhodesia a republic; Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Smith declares his country a republic, cutting its last link with the British Crown.

● 1970 - Supreme Court ruled draft evaders can not be penalized after 5 years

● 1971 - Oriental Student Union protesters occupy Seattle Central Community College.

● 1972 - Jean-Bédel Bokassa appoints himself President for life of Central African Republic

● 1972 - The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.

● 1973 - "Black September" terrorists occupy Saudi Embassy in Khartoum

● 1974 - 1st class postage raised from 8¢ to 10¢

● 1974 - Grand jury concludes President Nixon is involved in Watergate cover-up

● 1974 - Salvador Puig Antich, 24, dies, garrotted at Model de Barcelone despite international protests. Young anarchist militant in the guerilla MIL (Mouvement Iberique de Liberation) fighting the yoke of Francoism.

● 1977 - Libya amends constitution

● 1978 - Czech Vladimír Remek becomes the first non-Russian or non-American to go into space, when he is launched aboard Soyuz 28.

● 1979 - Over 1,100 Christian organizations combined to form the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). This oversight agency was created to demonstrate to the public that religious groups wanted to make themselves accountable for the funds they raise and spend. {Some preachers today still refuse to open their books to ECFA; one might think they have something to hide.}

● 1981 - Aircraft hijacked by 3 Pakistani terrorists

● 1982 - Philip K. Dick dies, Santa Ana, California, American science fiction writer par excellence, known for creation of eerily prescient (so far) dystopias.

● 1982 - Terror group "The Illuminated Path" frees 260 prisoners in Peru

● 1983 - Compact Disc recordings developed by Phillips & Sony introduced {Cooperation between two companies avoid VHS/Betamax type of fight.}

● 1983 - USSR performs underground nuclear test

● 1984 - Iran offensive against Iraq fails

● 1985 - The U.S. government approved a screening test for AIDS that detected antibodies to the virus that allowed possibly contaminated blood to be kept out of the blood supply.

● 1986 - Corazon Aquino was sworn into office as president of the Philippines. Her first public declaration was to restore the civil rights of the citizens of her country.

● 1986 - Protesters try to stop Land Rover motor company being sold to US

● 1987 - Chrysler acquires American Motors.

● 1988 - Dutch Liberal Party merged with SDP

● 1989 - Exxon Houston runs aground in Hawaii, spills 117,000 gallons of oil

● 1989 - Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.

● 1990 - Greyhound Bus goes on strike

● 1990 - Nelson Mandela elected deputy President of the African National Congress.

● 1990 - Univ. of California-Berkeley campus police attack poetry reading at Barrington Hall co-op.

● 1991 - Battle at Rumaila Oil Field brings end to the 1991 Gulf War.

● 1991 - Sri Lankan hardliner among 19 killed in blast; The Tamil Tigers are being blamed for the assassination of Sri Lanka's Deputy Defence Minister, Ranjan Wijeratne.

● 1991 - UN votes in favor of US resolutions for cease fire with Iraq

● 1992 - Moldova joins the United Nations.

● 1992 - Rally against ethnic barricades, Sarajevo, Bosnia.

● 1992 - Uzbekistan joins the United Nations.

● 1994 - Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh promises to surrender if taped statement is broadcast; it is, but he doesn't

● 1994 - William Natcher, (Representative-Democrat-KY), casts his 18,401 & last consecutive vote

● 1995 - Ferry boat sinks off Sumbe Angola, 42+ killed

● 1995 - Last United Nations "peacekeepers" leave Somalia.

● 1995 - Nick Leeson is arrested for his role in the collapse of Barings Bank.

● 1995 - Proposal to reinstate death penalty loses in Iowa.

● 1995 - Russian anti-corruption journalist Vladislav Listyev was killed by a gunman in Moscow.

● 1995 - Space shuttle STS-67 (Endeavour 8), launches

● 1996 - All members of Brazilian rock band Mamonas Assassinas die in a plane crash near São Paulo.

● 1996 - Establishment of Ranabima Royal College, Kandy, Sri Lanka.

● 1996 - John Howard is appointed as Prime Minister of Australia.

● 1997 - It was revealed that Vice President Al Gore had made fund-raising calls for the 1996 election on phones installed in government buildings for that purpose.

● 1997 - Soyuz TM-24 returns to Earth (Russia)

● 1998 - Images from the American spacecraft Galileo indicated that the Jupiter moon Europa has a liquid ocean and a source of interior heat.

● 1998 - The U.N. Security Council endorses U.N. chief Kofi Annan's deal to open Iraq's presidential palaces to arms inspectors.

● 2000 - In Great Britain, Chile's former President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was freed from house arrest and allowed to return to Chile. Britain's Home Secretary Jack Straw had concluded that Pinochet was mentally and physically unable to stand trial. Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland had sought the former Chilean leader on human-rights violations.

● 2002 - Eleven Israelis were killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.

● 2002 - U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19 after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, with 11 Western troop fatalities).

● 2003 - Over the Sea of Japan, there was a confrontation between four armed North Korean fighter jets and a U.S. RC-135S Cobra Ball. No shots were fired in the encounter in international airspace about 150 miles off North Korea's coast. The U.S. Air Force announced that it would resume reconnaissance flights on March 12. {I am always surprised that news sources have to note the other guy is "armed" and ignore the fact we always are.}

● 2003 - The first International Symposium on Taiwan Sign Language Linguistics is held at Chung Cheng University.

● 2004 - NASA announced that the Mars rover Opportunity had discovered evidence that water had existed on Mars in the past.

● 2004 - War in Iraq: A United Nations report from the weapons inspection teams states that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994, despite US President George W. Bush's and Prime Minister Blair's objection to the contrary before the invasion.

● 2004 - War in Iraq: Al Qaeda carries out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

● 2005 - The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq reached 1,500.

● 2006 - President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation deal in New Delhi.

● 2006 - Sir Menzies Campbell is elected the new leader of the United Kingdom Liberal Democrats.

BIRTHS

● 1316 - Robert II of Scotland, (d. 1390)

● 1409 - John II of Alençon, French soldier (d. 1476)

● 1459 - Pope Adrian VI, Dutch - Elected Pope in 1522 (d. 1523)

● 1545 - Thomas Bodley, English diplomat and library founder (d. 1613)

● 1578 - George Sandys, English colonist and poet (d. 1644)

● 1705 - William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, Scottish judge and politician (d. 1793)

● 1760 - Camille Desmoulins, French journalist and politician (d. 1794)

● 1769 - DeWitt Clinton, American who presided over construction of the Erie Canal (d. 1828)

● 1770 - Louis Gabriel Suchet, French marshal (d. 1826)

● 1779 - Joel Roberts Poinsett, American statesman and botanist (d. 1851)

● 1793 - Sam Houston, President of the Republic of Texas (d. 1863)

● 1800 - Evgeny Baratynsky, Russian poet (d. 1844)

● 1810 - Pope Leo XIII (d. 1903)

● 1816 - Alexander H. Bullock, 26th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1882)

● 1820 - Multatuli, Dutch writer (d. 1887)

● 1824 - Bedřich Smetana, Czech composer (d. 1884)

● 1829 - Carl Schurz, German revolutionary and statesman (d. 1906)

● 1836 - Henry Billings Brown, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1913)

● 1842 - Carl Jacobsen, Danish brewer and patron of the arts after whom the Carlsberg brewery was named (d. 1914)

● 1843 - Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy (d. 1911)

● 1849 - Robert Means Thompson, U.S. naval officer (d. 1930)

● 1859 - Sholom Aleichem, Russian novelist (d. 1916)

● 1860 - Susanna M. Salter, American politician (d. 1961)

● 1862 - Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist (d. 1916)

● 1862 - John Jay Chapman, American poet, dramatist, and critic (d. 1933)

● 1876 - Pope Pius XII (d. 1958)

● 1878 - William Kissam Vanderbilt II, member of the Vanderbilt family (d. 1944)

● 1886 - Willis O'Brien, American animator (d. 1962)

● 1900 - Kurt Weill, German composer (d. 1950)

● 1902 - Edward Condon, American physicist (d. 1974)

● 1902 - Moe Berg, American baseball player and spy (d. 1972)

● 1904 - Dr. Seuss, American author (d. 1991)

● 1905 - Geoffrey Grigson, English poet, editor, and literary critic (d. 1985)

● 1908 - Fyodor Matveyevich Okhlopkov, Yakut-born Soviet sniper (d. 1968)

● 1908 - Walter Bruch, German engineer (d. 1990)

● 1909 - Mel Ott, American baseball player (d. 1958)

● 1913 - Celedonio Romero, Spanish guitarist (d. 1996)

● 1913 - Godfried Bomans, Dutch author and television personality (d. 1971)

● 1913 - Mort Cooper, American baseball player (d. 1958)

● 1914 - Martin Ritt, American director (d. 1990)

● 1917 - David Goodis, American writer (d. 1967)

● 1917 - Desi Arnaz, Cuban-born American actor and bandleader (d. 1986)

● 1917 - Jim Konstanty, American baseball player (d. 1976)

● 1918 - Peter O'Sullevan, Irish horse racing commentator

● 1919 - Jennifer Jones, American actress

● 1919 - Tamara Toumanova, Russian ballerina and actress (d. 1996)

● 1921 - Ernst Haas, Austrian-born photojournalist (d. 1986)

● 1923 - Orrin Keepnews, American writer and critic

● 1923 - Robert H. Michel, American politician

● 1926 - Murray Rothbard, American economist (d. 1995)

● 1927 - Roger Walkowiak, French cyclist

● 1928 - Father John Romanides, Greek priest and professor (d. 2001)

● 1930 - Emma Penella, Spanish actress (d. 2007)

● 1930 - John Cullum, American actor and singer (''Northern Exposure'')

● 1931 - Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

● 1931(30? NYT) - Tom Wolfe, American author

● 1935 - Al Waxman, Canadian actor (d. 2001)

● 1937 - Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of Algeria

● 1938 - Lawrence Payton, American singer and songwriter (The Four Tops) (d. 1997)

● 1938 - Ricardo Lagos, former President of Chile

● 1939 - Barbara Luna, Actress

● 1940 - Tony Croatto, Italian-born composer (d. 2005)

● 1941 - David Satcher, 16th United States Surgeon General

● 1941 - Jon Finch, Actor

● 1942 - John Irving, American author

● 1942 - Lou Reed, American singer and guitarist

● 1942 - Luc Plamondon, French Canadian lyricist

● 1942 - Peter Guber, American film producer

● 1943 - Peter Straub, American author

● 1943 - Tony Meehan, English drummer (The Shadows) (d. 2005)

● 1943 - Zygfryd Blaut, Polish footballer (d. 2005)

● 1944 - Uschi Glas, German actress

● 1947 - Harry Redknapp, English football manager

● 1948 - Jeff Kennett, Australian politician

● 1948 - Larry Carlton, American guitarist

● 1948 - Rory Gallagher, Irish guitarist (d. 1995)

● 1949 - Alain Chamfort, French singer

● 1949 - Eddie Money, American singer

● 1949 - Gates McFadden, American actress

● 1949 - J. P. R. Williams, Welsh rugby union footballer

● 1950 - Jeffrey Chodorow, American restaurateur and financier

● 1950 - Karen Carpenter, American singer (The Carpenters) (d. 1983)

● 1951 - Cassie Yates, Actress

● 1952 - Laraine Newman, American actress

● 1952 - Mark Evanier, American writer

● 1953 - Russ Feingold, American politician

● 1955 - Jay Osmond, American musician (The Osmonds)

● 1955 - Ken Salazar, American politician

● 1955 - Shoko Asahara, Japanese cult leader

● 1956 - John Cowsill, American musician (The Cowsills)

● 1956 - Mark Evans, Australian bassist (AC/DC)

● 1958 - Ian Woosnam, Welsh golfer

● 1958 - Peter Arnold, American architect

● 1959 - Larry Stewart, Country singer (Restless Heart)

● 1961 - Simone Young, Australian conductor

● 1962 - Al Del Greco, American football player

● 1962 - Jon Bon Jovi, American musician (Bon Jovi)

● 1962 - Michael Salinger, American Poet

● 1962 - Morioka Hiroyuki, Japanese writer

● 1962 - Raimo Summanen, Finnish ice hockey player and coach

● 1962 - Scott Sterling, American musician (Scott La Rock)

● 1963 - Tanyu Kiryakov, Bulgarian pistol shooter

● 1963 - Tuff Hedeman, American bull rider

● 1964 - Megan Leigh, American porn star (d. 1990)

● 1964 - Mike Von Erich, American professional wrestler (d. 1987)

● 1965 - Lembit Öpik, British politician

● 1965 - Ron Gant, American baseball player

● 1968 - Daniel Craig, English actor

● 1971 - Dave Gorman, English documentary comedian

● 1971 - Elizabeth Lackey, American actress

● 1972 - Amber Smith, American actress and model

● 1973 - Dejan Bodiroga, Serbian basketball player

● 1973 - Trevor Sinclair, English footballer

● 1974 - Hayley Lewis, Australian swimmer

● 1974 - Monika Niederstätter, Italian athlete

● 1976 - Casey, Rock musician (Jimmie's Chicken Shack)

● 1976 - Glenn Rubenstein, American writer and journalist

● 1977 - Andrew Strauss, English cricket player

● 1977 - Chris Martin, English musician (Coldplay)

● 1977 - Heather McComb, American actress (''Party of Five'')

● 1977 - Jay Gibbons, American baseball player

● 1978 - Claudio Sanchez, American musician (Coheed and Cambria)

● 1978 - Giannis Skopelitis, Greek footballer

● 1979 - Damien Duff, Irish footballer

● 1980 - Édson Nobre, Angolan footballer

● 1980 - Lance Cade, American professional wrestler

● 1981 - Bryce Dallas Howard, American actress

● 1982 - Ben Roethlisberger, American football player

● 1982 - Corey Webster, American football player

● 1982 - Henrik Lundqvist, Swedish ice hockey player

● 1982 - Kevin Kurányi, German footballer

● 1983 - Glen Perkins, American baseball player

● 1984 - Elizabeth Jagger, English Model and Actress

● 1985 - Luke Pritchard, British singer (The Kooks)

● 1985 - Reggie Bush, American football player

● 1985 - Robert Iler, American actor (''The Sopranos'')

● 1988 - Keith Jack, British singer and actor

● 1988 - Markéta Irglová, Czech songwriter and actress

● 1988 - Nadine Samonte, Filipino actress

● 1989 - Will Makar, American singer

DEATHS

● 855 - Lothair, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor (b. 795)

● 1316 - Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert I of Scotland (b. 1296)

● 1572 - Mem de Sá, Portuguese Governor-General of Brazil

● 1589 - Alessandro Cardinal Farnese, Italian cardinal (b. 1520)

● 1729 - Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and scientist (b. 1662)

● 1730 - Pope Benedict XIII (b. 1649)

● 1755 - Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, French writer (b. 1675)

● 1758 - Pierre Guérin de Tencin, French cardinal (b. 1679)

● 1791 - John Wesley, English founder of Methodism (b. 1703)

● 1793 - Carl Gustaf Pilo, Swedish-born artist

● 1797 - Horace Walpole, English politician and writer (b. 1717)

● 1830 - Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, German physician (b. 1755)

● 1835 - Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1768)

● 1840 - Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer (b. 1758)

● 1865 - Carl Sylvius Völkner, German missionary to New Zealand (b. 1819)

● 1880 - Sir John MacNeill, Irish civil engineer (b. 1790)

● 1894 - William McMurdo, British army officer (b. 1819)

● 1895 - Berthe Morisot, French painter (b. 1841)

● 1895 - Isma'il Pasha, Governor of Egypt (b. 1830)

● 1921 - Champ Clark, American politician (b. 1850)

● 1921 - King Nicholas I of Montenegro (b. 1841)

● 1930 - D. H. Lawrence, English writer (b. 1885)

● 1938 - Ben Harney, American composer and pianist (b. 1871)

● 1939 - Howard Carter, British archaeologist (b. 1874)

● 1945 - Emily Carr, Canadian artist (b. 1871)

● 1946 - Fidél Pálffy, Hungarian Nazi (b. 1895)

● 1953 - Jim Lightbody, American runner (b. 1882)

● 1958 - Fred Merkle, American baseball figure (b. 1888)

● 1959 - Eric Blore, English actor (b. 1887)

● 1960 - Stanisław Taczak, Polish general, commander-in-chief of the Greater Poland Uprising (b. 1874)

● 1962 - Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, Belgian mathematician (b. 1866)

● 1967 - José Martínez Ruiz, Spanish poet and writer (b. 1873)

● 1973 - Cleo A. Noel, Jr., US Chief of Mission to Sudan, assassinated (b. 1918)

● 1974 - Salvador Puig Antich, Spanish anarchist (b. 1948)

● 1975 - Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, Kenyan politician (b.1929)

● 1979 - Christy Ring Irish hurler (b. 1920)

● 1982 - Philip K. Dick, American author (b. 1928)

● 1987 - Randolph Scott, American actor and director (b. 1898)

● 1991 - Serge Gainsbourg, French singer (b. 1928)

● 1992 - Sandy Dennis, American actress (b. 1937)

● 1994 - Anita Morris, American actress (b. 1943)

● 1997 - Bloodshed, American rapper (b. 1975)

● 1999 - David Ackles, American singer and songwriter (b. 1937)

● 1999 - Dusty Springfield, English singer (b. 1939)

● 2001 - John Diamond, British journalist (b. 1953)

● 2003 - Hank Ballard, American musician (b. 1927)

● 2003 - Malcolm Williamson, Australian composer (b. 1931)

● 2004 - Cormac McAnallen, Northern Irish Gaelic footballer (b. 1980)

● 2004 - Marge Schott, American baseball team owner {and well known racist} (b. 1928)

● 2004 - Mercedes McCambridge, American actress (b. 1916)

● 2005 - Martin Denny, American musician (b. 1911)

● 2005 - Rick Mahler, American baseball player (b. 1953)

● 2006 - Jack Wild, British actor (b. 1952)

● 2006 - Milton Katims, American violist and conductor (b. 1909)

● 2007 - Clem Labine, American baseball player (b. 1926)

● 2007 - Henri Troyat, French writer, dean of the Académie française (b. 1911)

● 2007 - Ivan Safronov, Russian journalist (b. 1956)

● 2007 - Thomas S. Kleppe, U.S. politician (b. 1919)

HOLIDAYS AND OBSERVANCES

● Roman Catholic:
● St. Abdalon
● St. Agnes of Boheinia
● Martyrs of Campania
● St. Chad
● St. Cynibild
● St. Fergna
● St. Gilstlian
● Sts. Jovinus & Basileus
● Sts. Paul, Heraclius, and Companions
● St. Willeic
● Bl. Charles the Good, Count of Flanders

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for February 19 (Civil Date: March 2)
● Apostles Archippus and Philemon of the Seventy, and Martyr Apphia.
● St. Dositheus of Palestine, disciple of St. Abba Dorotheus.
● St. Rabulas of Samosata.
● Saints Eugene and Macarius, presbyters, confessors at Antioch.
● Martyrs Maximus, Theodotus, Hesychius, and Asclepiodota of Adrianopolis.
● St. Conon, abbot in Palestine.
● St. Philothea, nun of Athens.
● New Hieromartyr Nicetas of Epirus.
● Repose of Hieromonk Theodore of Sanaxar Monastery (1791).

● Anglican:
● St. Chad, Bishop of Lichfield

● Lutheran:
● Charles Wesley
● John Wesley

● Bahá'í Faith:
● Feast of 'Alá (Loftiness) - First day of the 19th month of the Bahá'í calendar.
● Beginning of the Fast (sunrise to sunset fast for 19 days).

● Burma - Peasant's Day

● Ethiopia - Battle of Aduwa Day (1896)

● Morocco - Independence Day (1956)

● Texas - Independence Day (1836)


THIS IS AN ABBREVIATED POST FOR THIS DATE USING ONLY THE FOLLOWING EIGHT SOURCES. A COMPLETE POST IS PLANNED AS SOON AS TIME ALLOWS.

This Previous Day in History Post With

This Original Wikipedia List form the core of this post.

Additional facts taken from:

Information on Geov Parrish's this Day in Radical History, things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school.

Roman Catholic Saint of the Day

Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar

Liberal Quotes of the Day taken from The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left Is Right Compiled by William P. Martin ©2004

Quotes from the Right of the Day taken from Take Them at Their Words: Startling, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the GOP and Their Friends, 1994-2004 Compiled by Bruce J. Miller with Diana Maio ©2004

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day taken from 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said Edited by Steven D. Price ©2004


Permanent Backlink to Post

March 1......

March 1 is the 60th day of the year (61st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 305 days remaining in the year on this date.

Day of the week in surrounding years:
1982,. . . .,1993,1999,2004—MON—2010
1983,1988,1994,. . . .,2005—TUE—2011
. . . .,1989,1995,2000,2006—WED—. . . .
1984,1990,. . . .,2001,2007—THU—2012
1985,1991,1996,2002,. . . .—FRI—2013
1986,. . . .,1997,2003,2008—SAT—2014
1987,1992,1998,. . . .,2009—SUN—2015

PASCAL DATE INFORMATION
Easter Sunday for the Western Christian Church is defined as the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Lent is defined as the forty days prior to Easter not including Sundays thus Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is 46 days prior to Easter. Calculations for Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday were performed for the 3774 years from 326 to 4099. For the year range 326 to 1582, dates are based on the Julian calendar. For years 1583 to 4099, dates are based on the Gregorian calendar. Ash Wednesday falls in a range of 36 days from February 4 to March 10. Easter Sunday falls in a range of 35 days from March 22 to April 25. The extra day in the Ash Wednesday range is February 29, which only occurs in leap years. February 29 only effects when Ash Wednesday occurs since it is well before the Spring Equinox and has no effect on the date for Easter Sunday. March 10 to March 21 is a twelve-day range that must occur in Lent no matter the timing of Easter Sunday. The entire range of 82 dates from February 4 to April 25 represents all dates with Pascal ramifications.

March 1 is the 27th possible date for Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday occurs on this date 143 times during the 3774 years calculated and is ranked 1st of the 36 dates.

It occurred on this date previously in the years:
355, 366, 377, 439, 450, 461, 472, 523, 534, 545, 556, 618, 629, 640, 713, 719, 724, 803, 808, 814, 887, 898, 909, 971, 982, 993, 1004, 1055, 1066, 1077, 1088, 1150, 1161, 1172, 1245, 1251, 1256, 1335, 1340, 1346, 1419, 1430, 1441, 1503, 1514, 1525, 1536, 1623, 1634, 1645, 1656, 1702, 1713, 1724, 1775, 1786, 1797, 1843, 1854, 1865, 1876, 1911, 1922, 1933, 1995, 2006
It will occur on this date in the future in the years:
2017, 2028, 2090, 2147, 2158, 2169, 2180, 2215, 2226, 2237, 2248, 2299, 2305, 2316, 2367, 2378, 2389, 2400, 2451, 2462, 2473, 2484, 2519, 2530, 2541, 2552, 2609, 2620, 2682, 2693, 2739, 2750, 2761, 2772, 2834, 2845, 2856, 2902, 2913, 2924, 2986, 2997, 3043, 3054, 3065, 3076, 3111, 3122, 3133, 3144, 3206, 3217, 3228, 3358, 3369, 3380, 3426, 3437, 3448, 3505, 3516, 3578, 3589, 3600, 3673, 3684, 3730, 3741, 3752, 3809, 3820, 3893, 3950, 3961, 3972, 4045, 4056

Best Liberal Quote of the Day: On Fear "We fear that we are inadequate, but our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." — Marianne Williamson

Stupidest and/or Scariest Quote from the Right for the Day: On Coup D'etat 2000 "Cheaters! Let us in!" — A mob of GOP-organized demonstrators—many of them lawyers and staff assistants to Republican legislators and campaign people—screaming in the hall outside the Miami-Dade vote counting center while hand recounts were taking place inside. Ron Fournier, Charleston (WV) Gazette, 11-23-00. On national television, these demonstrators were seen forcing their way into the office building and banging on the locked doors of the counting center. Theodore Olson, former assistant to Ken Starr and now Solicitor General, later admitted that the demonstrations were organized by the GOP to pressure the local canvassing boards. Jonathan Alter, "Far from the Madding crowd," Newsweek, 12-4-00.

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day: From the world of Sports "The way he's swinging the bat, he won't get a hit until the twentieth century." — Jerry Coleman was an infielder for the Yankees (what is it about the Bronx Bombers that turned out such a raft of funny speakers?), and manager of the San Diego Padres. After playing, he made his mark as a radio and TV broadcaster, where his malapropisms, non sequiturs, and other goofs became legendary. Coleman is Hall of Shame member #8.

{Disclaimer: I have attempted to give credit to the many different sources that I get entries. Any failure to do so is unintentional. Any statement enclosed by brackets like these are the opinion of the blogger, A Proud Liberal.}

MOON PHASE

Berkeley, California—Times are Pacific Standard Time (PST)
Mar 1, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 38% Age: 79% Rise: 2:51 AM Set: 11:54 AM
Surprise, Arizona—Times are Mountain Standard Time (MST)
Mar 1, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 38% Age: 79% Rise: 2:55 AM Set: 12:28 PM
Iowa City, Iowa—Times are Central Standard Time (CST)
Mar 1, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 38% Age: 79% Rise: 3:00 AM Set: 11:31 AM
Cambridge, Massachusetts—Times are Eastern Standard Time (EST)
Mar 1, 2008 2:00 AM Name: Waning Crescent Percent of Full: 39% Age: 79% Rise: 2:38 AM Set: 11:02 AM


NASA ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY

Mauna Kea Shadow Play


Credit & Copyright: Alex Mukensnable
Click picture to go to NASA APOD site for full explanation

EVENTS

● 86 B.C.E. - Lucius Cornelius Sulla, at the head of a Roman Republic army, enters in Athens, removing the tyrant Aristion who was supported by troops of Mithridates VI of Pontus.

● 1 B.C.E. - Start of revised Julian calendar in Rome

● 286 - Roman Emperor Diocletian raises Maximian to the rank of Caesar.

● 293 - Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus and Galerius as Caesares, thus beginning the Tetrarchy.

● 317 - Crispus and Constantine II, sons of Roman Emperor Constantine I, and Licinius iunior, son of Emperor Licinius, are made Caesares

● 492 - St. Felix III ends his reign as Catholic Pope

● 492 - St. Gelasius I begins his reign as Catholic Pope

● 589 - Saint David, patron saint of Wales, dies.

● 705 - John VII begins his reign as Catholic Pope

● 743 - Slave export by Christians to heathen areas prohibited

● 918 - Balderik becomes bishop of Utrecht

● 1260 - Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, conquerors Damascus

● 1382 - French Maillotin uprises against taxes

● 1420 - Pope Martinus I calls for crusade against the hussieten

● 1457 - The Unitas Fratrum is established in the village of Kunvald, on the Bohemian-Moravian borderland. It is to date the second oldest Protestant denomination.

● 1498 - Vasco de Gama landed at what is now Mozambique on his way to India.

● 1562 - Over 1,000 Huguenots are massacred by Catholics in Wassy, France marking the start of the French Wars of Religion.

● 1565 - The city of Rio de Janeiro is founded by Spanish occupier Estacio de Sá.

● 1587 - English parliament leader Peter Wentworth confined in London Tower

● 1591 - Pope Gregory XIV threatens to excommunicate French King Henri IV

● 1593 - The Uppsala Synod is summoned to confirm the exact forms of the Lutheran Church of Sweden.

● 1628 - Writs are issued in February by Charles I of England that every county in England (not just seaport towns) pay ship tax by this date.

● 1633 - On his deathbed, English poet and clergyman George Herbert, 39, uttered these last words: 'I shall be free from sin and all the temptations and anxieties that attend it...I shall dwell... where these eyes shall see my Master and Savior.'

● 1633 - Samuel de Champlain reclaims his role as commander of New France on behalf of Cardinal Richelieu.

● 1634 - Battle at Smolensk; Polish King Wladyslaw IV beats Russians

● 1642 - Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in the USA.

● 1692 - The Salem Witch Trials in the Massachusetts colony officially began with the conviction of Rev. Samuel Parris' West Indian slave, Tituba, for witchcraft.

● 1700 - Sweden introduces its own Swedish calendar, in an attempt to gradually merge into the Gregorian calendar, reverts to the Julian calendar on this date in 1712, and introduces the Gregorian Calendar on this date in 1753.

● 1780 - Pennsylvania becomes 1st US state to abolish slavery (for newborns only) {Mothers and fathers remaining slaves leave little hope for true freedom for the newborn children.}

● 1781 - The Continental Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation.

● 1785 - Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture organized

● 1790 - First U.S. Census count includes slave and free Negroes. Indians were not included. {Of course, slaves only count as three-fifths of a person as per the Constitution.}

● 1792 - US Presidential Succession Act passed

● 1796 - 1st National Meeting in the Hague

● 1803 - Ohio is admitted as the 17th U.S. state.

● 1805 - Justice Samuel Chase is acquitted at the end of his impeachment trial by the U.S. Senate.

● 1809 - Embargo Act of 1807 repealed & Non-Intercourse Act signed

● 1810 - Georgetown College was chartered in Washington, D.C., making it the first Roman Catholic institution of higher learning established in the United States.

● 1810 - Sweden became the first country to appoint an Ombudsman, Lars August Mannerheim.

● 1811 - French Civil Code of Criminal law accepted by Netherlands Mamelukes in Cairo's Citadel

● 1811 - Leaders of the Mameluke dynasty are killed by Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali.

● 1815 - Napoleon returned to France from the island of Elba. He had been forced to abdicate in April of 1814.

● 1815 - Sunday observance in Netherlands regulated by law

● 1836 - A Convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convenes in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas, to deliberate independence from Mexico.

● 1840 - Adolphe Thiers becomes prime minister of France.

● 1845 - President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.

● 1847 - Michigan becomes 1st English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty (except for treason against the state)

● 1852 - Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

● 1854 - German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears; two years later his remains are found in a canal near Charlottenburg.

● 1854 - SS City of Glasgow leaves Liverpool harbor & is never seen again

● 1859 - Present seal of San Francisco adopted (its 2nd)

● 1862 - Prussia formally recognized the Kingdom of Italy.

● 1864 - Bebecca Lee of Boston, MA, becomes first African-American woman to gain a medical degree.

● 1864 - Louis Ducos de Hauron patented a machine for taking and projecting motion pictures. The machine was never built.

● 1866 - Paraguayan canoes sink 2 Brazilian ironclads on Rio Parana

● 1867 - Howard University, Washington DC, chartered

● 1867 - Most of Nebraska becomes 37th US state (expanded later); Lancaster, Nebraska is renamed Lincoln and becomes the state capital.

● 1869 - Postage stamps showing scenes are issued for 1st time

● 1870 - Anarchists Costa and Bakunin issue first revolutionary bulletin in Italy.

● 1871 - J Milton Turner named minister to Liberia

● 1872 - Congress gives African Americans the right to serve on juries and occupy public places. In the wake of the Civil War, black men have been able to vote and hold elected office. But because African Americans remain dependent on whites for work, these rights often are denied by force. Southern whites are beginning to use their economic power and form terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and many northern politicians say stabilizing the South requires a return to white supremacy. It is only a matter of time before they reduce blacks again to near slavery.

● 1872 - Yellowstone becomes world's first national park.

● 1873 - E. Remington and Sons in Ilion, New York start production of the first practical typewriter.

● 1873 - Henry Comstock discovers the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada.

● 1875 - Civil Rights Bill enacted by U.S. Congress gives blacks the rights to equal treatment in public places and transport. Declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883 saying Congress overstepped its authority. {Current libertarians and "strict constitutionalists" make same argument about current civil rights laws; so far there are not enough NeoCons on the Supreme Court to make Jim Crow legal again.}

● 1876 - Guernsey Cattle Club forms (Farmington CT)

● 1877 - Birth of Milly Witkop Rocker (1877-1955), Ukraine. Exiled to London, she was an activist in the Jewish anarchist movement among the Lower Eastside sweatshop workers. In 1916 she was sentenced to two years in prison for antiwar activities, and in 1918 went to Germany, where Milly organized women workers. In 1933, with the Nazi burning of the Reichstag they were forced to the U.S., where they continued to fight and organize, and were prominent supporters of the revolution in Spain.

● 1879 - Library of Hawaii founded

● 1886 - Anglo-Chinese School, Singapore is founded by Bishop William Oldham.

● 1893 - Diplomatic Appropriation Act, authorizes the US rank of ambassador

● 1896 - Battle of Adowa: an Ethiopian army defeats an outnumbered Italian force, ending the First Italo–Ethiopian War.

● 1896 - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity.

● 1896 - Italy - On the island of Tremiti, confrontations take place with the police, who kill the anarchist Argante Salucci and wound 10 companions.

● 1900 - In South Africa, Ladysmith was relieved by British troops after being under siege by the Boers for more than four months.

● 1907 - In New York, the Salvation Army opened an anti-suicide bureau.

● 1907 - In Odessa, Russia, there were only about 15,000 Jews left due to evacuations.

● 1907 - In Spain, a royal decree abolished civil marriages.

● 1907 - Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) strike Portland, Oregon sawmills.

● 1909 - 1st US university school of nursing established, University of Minnesota

● 1910 - The first issue of "The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel" was published in Cleveland, Tennessee. A. J. Tomlinson, the publishing editor, was an instrumental figure in the history of the Church of God (also headquartered today in Cleveland, Tennessee).

● 1910 - Three passenger trains buried at Stevens Pass in Cascade Range, Washington; 118 die. Worst snowslide in U.S. history.

● 1911 - Jose Ordonez was elected President of Uraguay.

● 1912 - Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from a moving airplane.

● 1912 - Coal strike that began days before in Derbyshire, England becomes a general, nationwide strike.

● 1912 - Isabella Goodwin, 1st US woman detective, appointed, New York NY

● 1913 - 1st state law requiring bonding of officers & state employees, North Dakota

● 1913 - Federal income tax takes effect (16th amendment)

● 1914 - Birth of Ralph Ellison, Oklahoma City, Okla. Best known and only published novel "Invisible Man" (1952) tells a story of a black man who retires in a basement to solve his relationship with American society. {Book remains on enlightened high school reading lists.}

● 1914 - The Republic of China joins the Universal Postal Union.

● 1916 - Germany begins attacking ships in the Atlantic

● 1917 - 1st federal land bank chartered

● 1917 - Birth of Robert Lowell, American poet, WWII conscientious objector, Boston, Massachusetts.

● 1917 - U.S. government releases the plaintext of the Zimmermann Telegram {Germans had offered old Mexican territories in the US if Mexico were to enter WWI on the German side.} to the public.

● 1918 - German submarine U-19 sinks HMS Calgarian off Rathlin Island.

● 1919 - March 1st Movement begins in Korea.

● 1920 - Austria becomes a kingdom again, under Admiral Horthy

● 1921 - Russia - From March 1-17, the old Bolshevik stronghold of Kronstadt rises demanding free election to the Soviets -- but is slandered and brutally suppressed upon the orders of Lenin and Trotsky. Today the Kronstadt naval base on Kotlin Island, some 25 miles off-shore from Petrograd, adopts a 15- point program of political and economic demands -- a program in open defiance of the Bolshevik Party's control of the Soviet state. Less than three weeks later, on March 17, Kronstadt was subdued in a bloody assault by select Red Army units.

● 1921 - Rwanda ceded to England

● 1922 - Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who worked for peace with Palestinian and Arab neighbors, was born.

● 1923 - Allies occupy Ruhrgebied; killing railroad striker

● 1924 - Germany's prohibition of Communist Party KPD lifted

● 1927 - Bank of Italy becomes a National Bank

● 1932 - Librado Rivera dies from complications following a car accident. Mexican anarchist, a school principal, then a professor, companion in the fight waged by the Magon brothers, Enrique and Flores. His libertarian ideals landed him in jail numerous times; in May 1905 Rivera went into exile in the U.S. Several times jailed and threatened with expulsion. Finally sentenced to 15 years of forced labor. Rivera was released in 1923 and extradited to Mexico.

● 1932 - The son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, is kidnapped.

● 1933 - Bank holidays declared in 6 states, to prevent run on banks

● 1934 - Henry Pu Yi crowned emperor Kang Teh of Manchuria

● 1936 - A strike occurs aboard the S.S. California, leading to the demise of the International Seamen's Union and the creation of the National Maritime Union.

● 1936 - Hoover Dam is completed.

● 1937 - 1st permanent automobile license plates issued (Connecticut)

● 1937 - US Steel raises workers' wages to $5 a day

● 1941 - Himmler inspects Auschwitz concentration camp

● 1941 - W47NV (now known as WSM-FM) begins operations in Nashville, Tennessee becoming the first FM radio station in the U.S..

● 1941 - World War II: Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact, allying itself with the Axis powers.

● 1942 - 3 day Battle of Java Sea ends, US suffers a major naval defeat

● 1942 - Japanese troops occupy Kalidjati airport in Java

● 1942 - Suriname camp for NSB people opens to save Jews

● 1942 - Tito establishes 2nd Proletarit Brigade in Bosnia

● 1943 - Huge rally calls on U.S. government to reconsider its refusal to offer sanctuary to Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany. Madison Square, New York City.

● 1943 - Jewish old age home for disabled in Amsterdam raided

● 1943 - World War II: Battle of Bismarck Sea begins.

● 1944 - Massive strikes in Northern Italian towns

● 1944 - U-358 sinks in Atlantic

● 1945 - British 43rd Division under General Essame occupies Xanten

● 1945 - Chinese 30th division occupies Hsenwi

● 1945 - FDR announces success of Yalta Conference

● 1945 - Fieldmarshal Kesselring succeeds von Rundstedt as commander

● 1945 - US infantry regiment captures Mönchengladbach

● 1946 - Panamá accepts its new constitution

● 1946 - The Bank of England is nationalised.

● 1947 - Chinese Premier T. V. Soong resigned.

● 1947 - The International Monetary Fund begins financial operations.

● 1949 - Indonesia seizes Yogyakarta from the Dutch.

● 1950 - Chiang Kai-shek resumed the Presidency of National China on Formosa

● 1950 - Cold War: Communist spy jailed for 14 years; Nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs is sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for espionage.

● 1950 - USSR issues golden rubles

● 1951 - Spain - Public transport boycott, prelude to the first strike wave under Franco.

● 1952 - Egyptian government-Ali Maher Pasja resigns

● 1952 - Helgoland, in North Sea, returned to West Germany by Britain

● 1953 - Joseph Stalin collapses, having suffered a stroke. He dies four days later.

● 1954 - Five Congressmen shot on the floor of the House by four Puerto Rican Nationalists who fired at random from the spectator's gallery.

● 1954 - Nuclear testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States with over 7,000 square miles contaminated as well as many local residents and Japanese fishermen.

● 1954 - Rebellion during visit of President Naguib in Khartoum Sudan, 30 die

● 1955 - Israeli assault on Gaza, kills 48

● 1956 - The International Air Transport Association finalizes a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet for the International Civil Aviation Organization.

● 1958 - Samuel Alphonsus Stritch, is appointed Pro-Prefect of the Propagation of Faith and thus becomes the first American member of the Roman Curia.

● 1959 - Archbishop Makarios returns to Cyprus after 3 years

● 1961 - President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

● 1961 - Uganda becomes self-governing and holds its first elections.

● 1962 - American Airlines 707 plunges nose 1st into Jamaica Bay NY killing 95

● 1962 - Pakistan announced that it had a new constitution that set up a presidential system of government.

● 1962 - US/British nuclear test experiment in Nevada

● 1963 - 200,000 French mine workers strike

● 1965 - Gas explosion kills 28 in apartment complex (La Salle Québec Canada)

● 1966 - Britain to go decimal in 1971; Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan confirms the "historic and momentous" decision to change over to decimal coinage.

● 1966 - Ghana ordered all Soviet, East German and Chinese technicians to leave the country.

● 1966 - Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote in a letter: If Jesus is and does what we read in 1 John 2:2, then He prays for all men: for those who already pray and for those who do not yet pray.'

● 1966 - The Ba'ath Party takes power in Syria.

● 1966 - Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.

● 1967 - Dominica & St Lucia gain independence from Britain

● 1967 - House of Representatives expels Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. D-NY (307 to 116) after he is cited for contempt of court for refusing to pay damages in a lawsuit. He is re-elected without campaigning the following month.

● 1968 - Chicana Welfare Rights Organization is formed, with Alicia Escalante as director.

● 1968 - Political Party Radikalen (PPR) established in Netherlands

● 1968 - Vatican City's Apostolic Constitution of 1967 goes into effect

● 1970 - End of US commercial {admitted and sanctioned} whale hunting

● 1970 - Kreisky's social-democrats win Austrian parliamentary election

● 1970 - White government of Rhodesia declares independence from Britain

● 1971 - A bomb planted by the Weather Underground explodes in a U.S. Capitol restroom, "in retaliation for the Laos decision."

● 1971 - At Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium, Jim Morrison of the Doors is arrested for allegedly exposing his penis during the show. Morrison is officially charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, indecent behavior, open profanity and public drunkenness.

● 1971 - Pakistani President Yahya Khan indefinitely postpones the pending national assembly session, precipitating massive civil disobedience in East Pakistan.

● 1971 - Workers down tools over union rights; Hundreds of thousands of workers across Britain take part in an unofficial day of protest against the government's new industrial relations Bill.

● 1972 - The Thai province of Yasothon is created after being split off from the Ubon Ratchathani province.

● 1973 - Black September terrorists storm the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan resulting in the 1973 Khartoum diplomatic assassinations.

● 1974 - Watergate scandal: Seven are indicted for their role in the Watergate break-in and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Among the seven were former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John Mitchell.

● 1975 - Colour television transmissions begin in Australia.

● 1976 - Bradford Bishop bludgeoned his mother, spouse and three children to death and is still at large.

● 1977 - Death of Haghard Jonassen, co-founder of AMK.

● 1977 - US extends territorial waters to 200 miles

● 1978 - Charlie Chaplin's coffin is stolen from a Swiss cemetery. {Charlie didn't see the need to comment.}

● 1980 - CTUC, Commonwealth Trade Union Council, established

● 1980 - Snow falls in Florida

● 1980 - Voyager 1 probe confirms that Janus (moon of Saturn) exists.

● 1981 - Bobby Sands, IRA member, begins 65-day hunger strike in Maze Prison (he dies)

● 1982 - 5 die as ski lift malfunctions a Lúz-Ardiden in Pyrenees

● 1982 - Russian spacecraft Venera 14 lands on Venus, sends back data

● 1983 - Tornado tears through Louisiana, injuring 33 people

● 1984 - NASA launches Landsat-D Prime (Landsat 5) to thematic map the Earth

● 1984 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalitinsk USSR

● 1985 - Pentagon accepts theory that atomic war would cause a nuclear winter {Some later think this could cure global warming.}

● 1986 - Start of Great Peace March for global nuclear disarmament, Los Angeles.

● 1988 - Iraq says it launched 16 missiles into Tehran

● 1988 - Soviet troops were sent into Azerbaijan after ethnic riots between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

● 1989 - Comet du Toit at perihelion

● 1989 - In Washington, DC, Mayor Barry and the City council imposed a curfew on minors.

● 1989 - The United States becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.

● 1990 - Benin nullifies its constitution

● 1990 - In Cairo, 16 people were killed in a fire at the Sheraton Hotel.

● 1990 - Luis Alberto Lacelle sworn in as President of Uruguay

● 1990 - Secrets act gags whistleblowers; Whistleblowers and journalists will, from today, risk criminal prosecution if they reveal information viewed as damaging to the defence of the UK.

● 1990 - Steve Jackson Games is raided by the United States Secret Service, prompting the later formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

● 1990 - The Seabrook, NH, nuclear power plant won federal permission to go on line after two decades of protests and legal struggles.

● 1991 - US Embassy in Kuwait officially reopens

● 1991 - Women for Peace protest against militarism, Belgrade and Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.

● 1992 - Bosnia and Herzegovina declares its independence from Yugoslavia.

● 1992 - Bosnian Serb snipers fired upon civilians after a majority of the Moslem and Croatian communities voted in favor of Bosnia's independence.

● 1992 - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia announced major political reforms that ceded some powers after 10 years of disciplined rule.

● 1992 - Sen. Brock Adams, D-Wash., abandoned his re-election campaign after eight women accused him in a Seattle Times report of sexual abuse and harassment.

● 1993 - Authorities in Waco TX negotiate with Branch Davidians

● 1993 - The U.S. government announced that the number of food stamp recipients had reached a record number of 26.6 million.

● 1994 - Israel released about 500 Arab prisoners in an effort to placate Palestinians over the Hebron massacre.

● 1994 - Martti Ahtisaari inaugurated as President of Finland

● 1994 - Senate rejects a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution

● 1994 - West charged as death toll mounts; Fred West is charged with two further murders following the discovery of more human remains in the garden of his Gloucester home.

● 1995 - Belgium ends military conscription

● 1995 - Julio María Sanguinetti sworn in as President of Uruguay

● 1995 - Polish Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak resigns from parliament and is replaced by ex-communist Józef Oleksy.

● 1995 - The European Parliament rejected legislation that would have allowed biotechnology companies to patent new life forms.

● 1995 - Ukraine premier Vitaly Massol, resigns

● 1997 - Fifteen thousand demonstrate in Lunesburg, Germany, against shipment of French nuclear waste to site in Gorleben. Over the next several days hundreds of thousands would participate in demonstrations and direct actions along the shipping route.

● 1999 - In Uganda, eight tourists were brutally murdered by Hutu rebels. {I've always wondered when murder isn't brutal.}

● 1999 - The Angolan Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia, exploded. Four other bombs went off in the capital.

● 2000 - Hans Blix assumes the position of Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC.

● 2000 - The Constitution of Finland is rewritten.

● 2002 - Operation Anaconda began in eastern Afghanistan. Allied forces were fighting against Taliban and Al Quaida fighters.

● 2002 - Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off for mission STS-109, its final successful mission.

● 2002 - The Envisat environmental satellite successfully reaches an orbit 800 kilometers (500 miles) above the Earth on its 11th launch, carrying the heaviest payload to date at 8500 kilograms (9.5 tons).

● 2002 - The Peseta is discontinued as official currency of Spain and is replaced with the euro (€).

● 2003 - In New York, a $250,000 Salvador Dali sketch was stolen from a display case in the lobby at Rikers Island jail. On June 17, 2003, it was announced that four corrections officers had surrendered and plead innocent in connection to the theft. The mixed-media composition was a sketch of the crucifixion. {What the hell is a valuable piece of art doing at a jail to begin with?}

● 2003 - In the U.S., approximately 180,000 personnel from 22 different organizations around the government became part of the Department of Homeland Security. This completed the largest government reorganization since the beginning of the Cold War.

● 2003 - Suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured by CIA and Pakistani agents near Islamabad.

● 2004 - Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum becomes President of Iraq.

● 2004 - Punycode adopted by the national registrars of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

● 2004 - Terry Nichols is convicted of state murder charges and being an accomplice to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

● 2005 - A closely divided Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for juvenile criminals.

● 2005 - Dennis Rader, the churchgoing family man accused of leading a double life as the BTK serial killer, was charged in Wichita, Kan., with 10 counts of first-degree murder. (Rader later pleaded guilty and received multiple life sentences.).

● 2006 - English-language Wikipedia reaches its one millionth article, Jordanhill railway station.

● 2006 - Queen Elizabeth II officially opens the new debating chamber for the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff, a milestone in devolution.

● 2006 - Tarja Halonen is inaugurated as president of Finland for the second and last time.

● 2006 - The first confirmed case of H5N1 bird flu virus in Switzerland, a dead swan on Lake Geneva, near the city of Geneva.

● 2007 - "Squatters" are evicted from Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Denmark, provoking the March 2007 Denmark Riots.

● 2007 - Tornadoes swarm across the southern United States, killing at least 20; eight of the deaths were at a high school in Enterprise, Alabama.

BIRTHS

● 40 - Martial, Latin poet (d. 102)

● 1389 - Antoninus, Italian Archbishop of Florence (d. 1459)

● 1432 - Isabel of Coimbra, queen of Portugal (d. 1455)

● 1445 - Sandro Botticelli, Italian painter (d. 1510)

● 1456 - King Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary (d. 1516)

● 1474 - Angela Merici, Italian nun (d. 1540)

● 1547 - Rudolph Goclenius, German philosopher (d. 1628)

● 1597 - Jean-Charles de la Faille, Belgian mathematician (d. 1652)

● 1610 - John Pell, English mathematician (d. 1685)

● 1644 - Simon Foucher, French ecclesiastic philosopher (d. 1696)

● 1657 - Samuel Werenfels, Swiss theologian (d. 1740)

● 1683 - Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II of Great Britain (d. 1737)

● 1732 - William Maxwell Cushing, 2nd (confirmed) Chief Justice of the United States. (d. 1810)

● 1760 - François Nicolas Leonard Buzot, French revolutionary (d. 1794)

● 1769 - François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, French general (d. 1796)

● 1807 - Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1898)

● 1810 - Frédéric Chopin, Polish-French composer and pianist (d. 1849)

● 1812 - Augustus Pugin, English-born architect (d. 1852)

● 1817 - Giovanni Duprè, Italian sculptor (d. 1882)

● 1821 - Joseph Hubert Reinkens, German Catholic bishop (d. 1896)

● 1837 - William Dean Howells, American writer, historian, and politician (d. 1920)

● 1842 - Nicholaos Gysis, Greek painter (d. 1901)

● 1848 - Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Irish-born American sculptor (d. 1907)

● 1852 - Théophile Delcassé, French statesman (d. 1923)

● 1858 - Georg Simmel, German sociologist and philosopher (d. 1918)

● 1863 - Alexander Golovin, Russian painter (d. 1930)

● 1865 - Abe Iso, Japanese politician (d. 1949)

● 1871 - Ben Harney, American composer and ragtime pianist (d. 1938)

● 1876 - Henri de Baillet-Latour, Belgian IOC president (d. 1942)

● 1880 - Giles Lytton Strachey British writer (d. 1932)

● 1886 - Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian painter and poet (d. 1980)

● 1888 - Ewart Astill, English cricketer (d. 1948)

● 1889 - Watsuji Tetsuro, Japanese philosopher (d. 1960)

● 1892 - Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Japanese writer (d. 1927)

● 1893 - Mercedes de Acosta, American socialite (d. 1968)

● 1896 - Dimitris Mitropoulos, Greek conductor and composer (d. 1960)

● 1896 - Moriz Seeler, German writer and producer (d. 1942)

● 1899 - Erich von dem Bach, Nazi official (d. 1972)

● 1901 - Pietro Spiggia, Italian poet

● 1904 - Glenn Miller, American bandleader (d. 1944)

● 1904 - Paul Hartman, American actor (d. 1973)

● 1905 - Doris Hare, Welsh actress (d. 2000)

● 1910 - Archer John Porter Martin, English chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2002)

● 1910 - David Niven, English actor (d. 1983)

● 1912 - Gerald Emmett Cardinal Carter, archbishop of Toronto (d. 2003)

● 1914 - Harry Caray, American sportscaster (d. 1998)

● 1914 - Ralph Ellison, American writer (d. 1994)

● 1917 - Robert Lowell, American poet (d. 1977)

● 1918 - Gladys Noon Spellman, American politician (d. 1988)

● 1918 - João Goulart, President of Brazil (d. 1976)

● 1918 - Roger Delgado, English actor (d. 1973)

● 1920 - Howard Nemerov, American poet (d. 1991)

● 1920 - Max Bentley, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 1984)

● 1921 - Richard Wilbur, American poet

● 1921 - Terence Cardinal Cooke, American Catholic archbishop (d. 1983)

● 1922 - William Gaines, American publisher ("Mad Magazine") (d. 1992)

● 1922 - Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1995)

● 1923 - Kuczka Péter, Hungarian writer and editor (d. 1999)

● 1924 - Deke Slayton, American astronaut (d. 1993)

● 1926 - Alvin "Pete" Rozelle, commissioner of American football (d. 1996)

● 1926 - Cesare Danova, Italian-born American actor (d. 1992)

● 1926 - Robert Clary, French actor (''Hogan's Heroes'')

● 1927 - Harry Belafonte, American musician and activist

● 1927 - Robert H. Bork, Former U.S. solicitor general and rejected Supreme Court nominee {and general NeoCon idiot}

● 1928 - Dr. Seymour Papert, South African mathematician and artificial intelligence researcher

● 1928 - Jacques Rivette, French film director

● 1928 - Seymour Papert, South African mathematician

● 1929 - Georgi Markov, Bulgarian dissident (d. 1978)

● 1930 - Gastone Nencini, Italian cyclist (d. 1980)

● 1935 - Robert Conrad, American actor

● 1936 - Jean-Edern Hallier, French author (d. 1997)

● 1936 - Monique Bégin, French-Canadian politician

● 1937 - Jed Allan, American actor

● 1939 - Leo Brouwer, Cuban composer and guitarist

● 1940 - Robert Grossman, American illustrator

● 1942 - Richard Bowman Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

● 1943 - Akinori Nakayama, Japanese gymnast

● 1943 - Gil Amelio, American venture capitalist

● 1943 - José Ángel Iribar, Spanish footballer

● 1943 - Rashid Sunyaev, Russian physicist

● 1943 - Richard H. Price, American physicist

● 1944 - John Breaux, U.S. Senator from Louisiana

● 1944 - Mike d'Abo, English singer (Manfred Mann)

● 1944 - Roger Daltrey, English musician (The Who)

● 1945 - Dirk Benedict, American actor

● 1946 - Elvin Bethea, American football player

● 1946 - Gerry Boulet, French-Canadian singer (d. 1990)

● 1946 - Lana Wood, American actress

● 1947 - Alan Thicke, Canadian actor and songwriter ("Growing Pains")

● 1948 - Burning Spear, Jamaican singer and musician

● 1952 - Leigh Matthews, Australian rules footballer

● 1952 - Martin O'Neill, Northern Irish footballer and manager

● 1952 - Steven Barnes, American writer

● 1953 - Richard Bruton, Irish politician and economist

● 1954 - Catherine Bach, American actress (''The Dukes of Hazzard'')

● 1954 - Ron Howard, American actor and director

● 1956 - Timothy Daly, American actor ("Wings")

● 1957 - Jon Carroll, Singer-musician

● 1958 - Bertrand Piccard, Swiss balloonist and psychiatrist

● 1958 - Chosei Komatsu, Japanese conductor

● 1960 - William Bennett, English musician (Whitehouse)

● 1962 - Bill Leen, Rock musician

● 1963 - Dan Michaels, American musician and record producer

● 1963 - Rob Affuso, American drummer

● 1963 - Ron Francis, Canadian ice hockey player

● 1963 - Russell Wong, Actor

● 1963 - Thomas Anders, German singer (Modern Talking)

● 1964 - Clinton Gregory, American musician

● 1964 - Paul Le Guen, French football manager

● 1965 - Booker Huffman, American professional wrestler

● 1965 - Mary Lou Lord, American singer/songwriter

● 1965 - Stewart Elliott, Canadian jockey

● 1966 - John David Cullum, Actor

● 1966 - Susan Auch, Canadian speed-skater

● 1967 - Aron Winter, Dutch footballer

● 1967 - George Eads, American actor ("CSI")

● 1967 - Yelena Afanasyeva, Russian athlete

● 1969 - Dafydd Ieuan, Welsh drummer (Super Furry Animals)

● 1969 - Doug Creek, American baseball player

● 1969 - Javier Bardem, Spanish actor

● 1969 - Litefoot, Native American rapper

● 1970 - Shaun Pollock, South African cricketer

● 1971 - Tyler Hamilton, American cyclist

● 1973 - Carlo Resoort, Dutch DJ

● 1973 - Chris Webber, American basketball player

● 1973 - Ryan Peake, Canadian guitarist (Nickelback)

● 1974 - Mark-Paul Gosselaar, American actor

● 1974 - Stephen Davis, American football player

● 1976 - Peter F. Bell, Australian rules footballer

● 1977 - Esther Cañadas, Spanish actress and supermodel

● 1977 - Rens Blom, Dutch athlete

● 1978 - Alicia Leigh Willis, American actress

● 1978 - Donovan Patton, Guamanian television star (''Blues Clues'')

● 1978 - Jensen Ackles, American actor

● 1980 - Abdur Rehman, Pakistani cricketer

● 1980 - Djimi Traoré, Malian footballer

● 1980 - Shahid Afridi, Pakistani cricketer

● 1981 - Adam LaVorgna, American actor

● 1981 - Ana Hickmann, Brazilian supermodel

● 1981 - Brad Winchester, American ice hockey player

● 1981 - Sean Woolstenhulme, Rock musician

● 1981 - Will Power, Australian racing driver

● 1983 - Blake Hawksworth, Canadian baseball player

● 1983 - Chris Hackett, English footballer

● 1983 - Daniel Carvalho, Brazilian footballer

● 1983 - Elan Sara DeFan, Mexican singer-songwriter

● 1984 - Alexander Steen, Canadian-born Swedish ice hockey player

● 1984 - Naima Mora, American model

● 1985 - Andreas Ottl, German footballer

● 1985 - J Leman, American Football Player

● 1986 - Jonathan Spector, American soccer player

● 1987 - Sammie, American singer

● 1988 - Katija Pevec, American actress

● 1989 - Carlos Vela, Mexican footballer

● 1989 - Sonya Kitchell, American singer

● 1990 - Harry Eden, English actor

● 1990 - Nikolas Tsattalios, Australian soccer player

DEATHS

● 589 - Saint David, Patron Saint of Wales (b. 500)

● 986 - King Lothair of France (b. 941)

● 1131 - King Stephen II of Hungary (b. 1101)

● 1233 - Count Thomas I of Savoy (b. 1178)

● 1244 - Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr, son of Llywelyn the Great (b. 1200)

● 1383 - Amadeus VI of Savoy (b. 1334)

● 1510 - Francisco de Almeida, Portuguese soldier and explorer

● 1536 - Bernardo Accolti, Italian poet (b. 1465)

● 1546 - George Wishart, Scottish religious reformer (martyred) (b 1513)

● 1620 - Thomas Campion, English poet and composer (b. 1567)

● 1633 - George Herbert, English poet and orator (b. 1593)

● 1643 - Girolamo Frescobaldi, Italian composer (b. 1583)

● 1661 - Richard Zouch, English jurist (b. 1590)

● 1697 - Francesco Redi, Italian physician (b. 1626)

● 1706 - Heino Heinrich Graf von Flemming, German field marshal and Governor of Berlin (b. 1632)

● 1734 - Roger North, English biographer (b. 1653)

● 1757 - Edward Moore, English writer (b. 1712)

● 1768 - Hermann Samuel Reimarus, German philosopher and writer (b. 1694)

● 1773 - Luigi Vanvitelli, Italian architect (b. 1700)

● 1777 - Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Austrian composer (b. 1715)

● 1792 - Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1747)

● 1841 - Claude Victor-Perrin, duc de Belluno, French marshal (b. 1764)

● 1862 - Peter Barlow, English mathematician (b. 1776)

● 1875 - Tristan Corbière, French poet (b. 1845)

● 1879 - Joachim Heer, Swiss politician (b. 1825)

● 1884 - Isaac Todhunter, English mathematician (b. 1820)

● 1898 - George Bruce Malleson, English officer in India, author (b. 1825)

● 1906 - José María de Pereda, Spanish novelist (b. 1833)

● 1911 - Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)

● 1912 - George Grossmith, English actor and comic writer (b. 1847)

● 1914 - Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto (b. 1845)

● 1920 - John H. Bankhead, U.S. Senator (b. 1842)

● 1920 - Joseph Trumpeldor, Russian Zionist (b. 1880)

● 1922 - Rafael Moreno Aranzadi, Spanish footballer (b. 1892)

● 1929 - Royal H. Weller, American politician (b. 1881)

● 1932 - Frank Teschemacher, American jazz clarinettist (b. 1906)

● 1933 - Uładzimir Zylka, Belarusian poet (b. 1900)

● 1936 - Mikhail Kuzmin, Russian writer (b. 1871)

● 1938 - Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian writer, war hero, and politician (b. 1863)

● 1940 - Anton Hansen Tammsaare, Estonian author (b. 1878)

● 1943 - Alexandre Yersin, Swiss physician (b. 1863)

● 1952 - Mariano Azuela, Mexican novelist (b. 1873)

● 1963 - Irish Meusel, American baseball player (b. 1893)

● 1963 - Jorge Daponte, Argentine racing driver (b. 1923)

● 1966 - Fritz Houtermans, German physicist (b. 1903)

● 1970 - Lucille Hegamin, American singer and entertainer (b. 1894)

● 1974 - Bobby Timmons, American jazz pianist (b. 1935)

● 1979 - Mustafa Barzani, Kurdish politician (b. 1903)

● 1980 - Dixie Dean, English footballer (b. 1907)

● 1980 - Wilhelmina, high-fashion model and owner of model agency (b. 1940)

● 1984 - Jackie Coogan, American actor (b. 1914)

● 1988 - Joe Besser, American comedian and actor (b. 1907)

● 1991 - Edwin H. Land, American scientist and inventor (Polaroid Corporation) (b. 1909)

● 1995 - Georges J.F. Kohler, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1946)

● 1995 - Vladislav Listyev, Russian television journalist (b. 1956)

● 2000 - Dennis Danell, American guitarist (Social Distortion) (b. 1961)

● 2006 - Harry Browne, American politician and author (b. 1933)

● 2006 - Jack Wild, English actor (b. 1952)

● 2006 - Johnny Jackson, American musician (b. 1951)

● 2006 - Peter Osgood, English footballer (b. 1947)

● 2006 - Peter Snow, New Zealand doctor

● 2007 - Manuel Bento, Portuguese goalkeeper (b. 1948)

HOLIDAYS AND OBSERVANCES

● Roman Catholic:
● St. Abdalong of Marseilles - informal feast
● St. Abdecalas
● St. Adrianus
● St. Albin
● St. Aubin
● St. David (National Holiday of Wales)
● St. Eudocia
● St. Herculaflus
● Sts. Hermes and Adrian
● St. Leo Luke
● St. Leo of Rouen
● St. Lupercus
● St. Marnock
● St. Monan, largely legendary Scottish saint
● St. Rudesind
● St. Swidbert

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for February 17 (Civil Date: March 1)
● Great-Martyr Theodore the Tyro.
● Opening of the Relics of Martyr Menas of Alexandria
● St. Mariamne, sister of Apostle Philip.
● St. Auxibius, Bishop of Soli in Cyprus.
● St. Theodosius the Bulgarian and his disciple St. Romanus, monks.
● St. Theodore the Silent of the Kiev Caves.
● St. Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
● New-Martyr Theodore of Byzantium, at Mitylene.

● Greek Calendar:
● Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria his wife
● Commemoration of the dedication of the Great Church in Constantinople.
● Weeping "Tikhvin" Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos on Mt. Athos.
● Repose of Elder Agapitus of the Kiev Caves (1887), and Elder Barnabas of the Gethsemane Skete of St. Sergius' Lavra (1906).

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for February 18 (Civil Date: March 1)
● St. Leo the Great, pope of Rome.
● St. Flavian the confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople.
● St. Agapitus, Bishop of Synnada in Phrygia, and Martyrs Victor, Dorotheus, Theodulus, and Agrippa, who suffered under Licinius.
● St. Cosmas, monk of Yakhromsk.
● New-Martyr Priest Alexander Medvedsky (1932) and Hieromonk Benjamin (1938).
● Commemoration of the New-Martyrs who suffered during the "Holy Night" in Petersburg (1932).

● Greek Calendar:
● Martyrs Leo and Parigorius of Patara in Lycia.
● Martyr Publius.

● Anglican:
● St. David, patron Wales

● Lutheran:
● George Herbert, priest

● Bhutan - Buddhist New Years

● Bahá'í Faith - Last Day (4 or 5) of Ayyám-i-Há (Intercalary Days) - days in the Bahá'í calendar devoted to service and gift giving.

● Roman Empire - Feriae Marti in honor of Mars

● Roman Empire - Matronalia in honor of Juno

● Roman Empire - New Year

● Roman Empire - The sacred fire of Rome was renewed

● Bayonna Spain - Pinzon Day

● Bosnia and Herzegovina - Independence Day

● Bulgaria - Baba Marta, a custom when the Martenitsa is worn for good health and luck symbolizing the beginning of the spring season in Bulgaria.

● Engadine, Switzerland : Chalanda Marz/Coming of spring

● Iceland - Beer day - This day in 1989 beer was allowed again

● Korea - Independence Movement Day (Samiljeol; 삼일절)

● Lanark, Lanarkshire Scotland - Whuppity Scoorie Day

● Martisor - a seasonal holiday in Romania.

● Panamá - Constitution Day (1946)

● Paraguay - Heroes' Day/National Defense Day/Memorial Day

● Romania - Martisor

● Self Injury Awareness Day

● Tasmania, Australia - Eight Hours Day

● United States Admission Day:
● Ohio, 17th state (1803)
● Nebraska, 37th state (1867)

● Wales - Saint David's Day

● Western Australia - Labour day

● World Civil Defense Day - This Day commemorates the entry into force in 1972 of the ICDO Constitution as an inter-governmental organisation.

● World Day of Prayer.

SEASONS AND YEARS BEGINNING ON MARCH FIRST

● In Denmark, spring begins on March 1, while in Australia autumn begins on March 1. Meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere also begins on March 1; meteorological autumn in the Southern Hemisphere also begins on March 1.

● Historically, March 1 was considered to be the beginning of the Roman 'work year'; The numerical Latin names of some months reflect this. (September = Seventh, October = Eighth, November = Ninth, December = Tenth). (see New Year).

● If one begins each year on March 1, till the next March 1, then each date will have the same day number in this year, regardless of whether it is a leap year or not (e.g. December 25 is always day 300), unlike counting from January 1. This is due to the fact that the Gregorian and Julian calendars are based on the old Roman Calendar, which had March 1 as the first day of the year. The addition of the leap day of February 29 (which is what causes the days of leap years to fall on different day numbers) is a continuation of the February placement of the old Roman calendar's Mensis Intercalaris (a shortened extra month inserted to bring the 355 day long calendar into rough alignment with the seasons).

● Also the months follow a regular 5-month cycle of 153 days, till the end of February. This can be seen by listing the number of days in the months thus:
● Mar 31, Apr 30, May 31, Jun 30, Jul31
● Aug 31, Sep 30, Oct 31, Nov 30, Dec 31
● Jan 31, Feb 28/29
● This regularity is sometimes used in calendar calculations.


THIS IS AN ABBREVIATED POST FOR THIS DATE USING ONLY THE FOLLOWING EIGHT SOURCES. A COMPLETE POST IS PLANNED AS SOON AS TIME ALLOWS.

This Previous Day in History Post With

This Original Wikipedia List form the core of this post.

Additional facts taken from:

Information on Geov Parrish's this Day in Radical History, things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school.

Roman Catholic Saint of the Day

Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar

Liberal Quotes of the Day taken from The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left Is Right Compiled by William P. Martin ©2004

Quotes from the Right of the Day taken from Take Them at Their Words: Startling, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the GOP and Their Friends, 1994-2004 Compiled by Bruce J. Miller with Diana Maio ©2004

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day taken from 1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said Edited by Steven D. Price ©2004


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