March 8


Today's:


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.













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