March 8
1618 - Johann Kepler discovered the third Law of Planetary Motion.
1702 - England's Queen Anne took the throne upon the death of King William III.
1782 - The Gnadenhutten massacre took place. About 90 Indians were killed by militiamen in Ohio in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.
1853 - The first bronze statue of Andrew Jackson is unveiled in Washington, DC.
1855 - A train passed over the first railway suspension bridge at Niagara Falls, NY.
1862 - The Confederate ironclad "Merrimack" was launched.
1880 - U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes declared that the United States would have jurisdiction over any canal built across the isthmus of Panama.
1887 - The telescopic fishing rod was patented by Everett Horton.
1894 - A dog license law was enacted in the state of New York. It was the first animal control law in the U.S.
1904 - The Bundestag in Germany lifted the ban on the Jesuit order of priests.
1905 - In Russia, it was reported that the peasant revolt was spreading to Georgia.
1907 - The British House of Commons turned down a women's suffrage bill.
1909 - Pope Pius X lifted the church ban on interfaith marriages in Hungary.
1910 - In France, Baroness de Laroche became the first woman to obtain a pilot's license.
1910 - The King of Spain authorized women to attend universities.
1911 - In Europe, International Women's Day was celebrated for the first time.
1911 - British Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Gray declared that Britain would not support France in the event of a military conflict.
1917 - Russia's "February Revolution" began with rioting and strikes in St. Petersburg. The revolution was called the "February Revolution" due to Russia's use of the Old Style calendar.
1917 - The U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
1921 - Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato was assassinated while leaving the Parliament in Madrid.
1921 - French troops occupied Dusseldorf.
1933 - Self-liquidating scrip money was issued for the first time at Franklin, IN.
1941 - Martial law was proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish any anti-Nazi protests.
1942 - During World War II, Japanese forces captured Rangoon, Burma.
1943 - Japanese forces attacked American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville. The battle lasted five days.
1945 - Phyllis Mae Daley received a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She later became the first African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.
1946 - In New York City, the "Journal American" became the first commercial business to receive a helicopter license.
1946 - The French naval fleet arrived at Haiphong, Vietnam.
1948 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious instruction in public schools was unconstitutional.
1953 - A census bureau report indicated that 239,000 farmers had quit farming over the last 2 years.
1954 - France and Vietnam opened talks in Paris on a treaty to form the state of Indochina.
1954 - Herb McKenley set a world record for the quarter mile when he ran the distance in 46.8 seconds.
1957 - The International Boxing Club was ruled a monopoly putting it in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.
1959 - Groucho, Chico and Harpo made their final TV appearance together.
1961 - Max Conrad circled the globe in a record time of eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes in the Piper Aztec.
1965 - The U.S. landed about 3,500 Marines in South Vietnam. They were the first U.S. combat troops to land in Vietnam.
1966 - Australia announced that it would triple the number of troops in Vietnam.
1973 - Two bombs exploded near Trafalgar Square in Great Britain. 234 people were injured.
1982 - The U.S. accused the Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas.
1985 - The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reported that 407,700 Americans were millionaires. That was more than double the total from just five years before.
1986 - Four French television crewmembers were abducted in west Beirut. All four were eventually released.
1988 - In Fort Campbell, KY, 17 U.S. soldiers were killed when two Army helicopters collided in midair.
1989 - In Lhasa, Tibet, martial law was declared after three days of protest against Chinese rule.
1999 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Timothy McVeigh for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
1999 - The White House, under President Bill Clinton, directed the firing of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The firing was a result of alleged security violations.
2001 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted for an across-the-board tax cut of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
2005 - In norther Chechnya, Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was killed during a raid by Russian forces.
