On March 6th...

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1475 Michelangelo, Renaissance artist, was born.

1479 Portugal gave the Canary Islands to Castile in exchange for claims in West Africa.

1619 Playwright Cyrano de Bergerac was born.

1787 Joseph Fraunhofer, Bavarian glassmaker and early experimenter in the field of spectroscopy, was born.

1806 Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born.

1810 Illinois passed the first state vaccination legislation in the U.S.

1819 The U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the McCulloch vs Maryland case.

1831 Philip Henry Sheridan, American Civil War general, was born.

1834 The city of Toronto, Canada, was incorporated.

1836 A small band of Texans was defeated by the army of Santa Anna at the Alamo.

1838 Inventor John Stevens died.

1844 Composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was born.

1851 Henry Miller Shreve, Mississippi River trader and inventor, died.

1857 The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sanford case.

1862 The Battle of Pea Ridge (Arkansas) was fought.

1869 Dmitri Mendeleev published his Periodic Table of the Elements.

1885 Humorist Ring Lardner was born.

1886 The first alternating current power plant in the United States began operating, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

1888 Author Louisa May Alcott died.

1899 Asprin (acetylsalicylic acid) was patented by Felix Hoffmann.

1900 The Social Democratic Party was formed in Indianapolis, Indiana, and nominated Eugene V. Debs as its first candidate for President.
1900 Gottlieb Daimler, inventor of the motorcycle, died.

1902 The U.S. Census Bureau was created.

1905 Country musician Bob Wills was born.

1911 William Worrall Mayo, co-founder of the Mayo Clinic, died.

1906 Nora Blatch became the first woman to be elected to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
1906 Comedian Lou Costello was born.

1921 Police in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, issued an edict requiring women to wear skirts at least 4 inches below the knee.

1923 "Tonight Show" sidekick Ed McMahon was born.

1926 Economist Alan Greenspan was born.

1929 American politician Tom Foley was born.
1929 Automobile designer David Buick died.

1930 Clarence Birdseye introduced his frozen foods to the marketplace.

1932 Bandmaster and composer John Philip Sousa died.

1933 U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank holiday.
1933 Poland occupied the free city of Danzig.

1935 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., U. S. Supreme Court Justice, died.

1936 American politician Marion Barry was born.

1937 Investment banker Ivan Boesky was born.

1939 U. S. Senator Kit Bond was born.

1940 Baseball player Willie Stargell was born.

1941 Sculptor Gutzon Borglum died.

1945 George Nissen was granted a patent for the first modern trampoline.

1946 Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour was born.

1947 Actor Rob Reiner was born.

1950 Silly Putty was introduced to the public.

1951 The trial of accused spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg began.

1957 The former British colony of the Gold Coast and the trust territory of British Togoland formally gained their independence as the nation of Ghana.
1957 A ferryboat capsized on the Elbe River in East Germany. A reported 28 Russian soldiers were drowned and another 8 were missing and presumed dead.

1959 Actor Tom Arnold was born.

1964 Cassius Clay joined the Nation of Islam and took the name Muhammad Ali.
1964 King Paul of Greece died.

1967 Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Allilujeva asked for political asylum in the United States.
1967 Teamsters Union president James R. Hoffa began an eight-to-thirteen-year sentence for jury tampering and other charges at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
1967 Singer Nelson Eddy died.

1970 The Beatles released "Let it Be" in England.
1970 Actor William Hopper died.

1972 Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal was born.

1973 Author Pearl S. Buck died.

1978 Hustler publisher Larry Flynt was shot by a sniper.

1981 Walter Cronkite signed-off as anchorman of "CBS Evening News."

1982 The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Milwaukee Bucks 171-166 in triple overtime.
1982 Author Ayn Rand died.

1983 The U. S. Football League began its first season.

1986 Painter Georgia O'Keeffe died.

1987 The Herald of Free Enterprise, a British passenger-and-auto ferry, capsized off Zeebrugee, Belgium, killing 192 persons.

1992 The Council of the Baltic Sea States was founded.

2007 Winemaker Ernest Gallo died.

2014 The Crimean Parliament voted unanimously to make the Crimea part of Russia.

2016 Former First Lady Nancy Reagan died.

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This page was last updated on March 05, 2018.