On March 8th...

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1702 King William III of England, Scotland, and Ireland died.

1754 The Marquis of Ensenada became Premier of Spain.

1783 Hannah Hoes, wife of President Martin Van Buren, was born.

1817 The New York Stock Exchange was founded.

1839 Josephine Cochrane, inventor of the automatic dishwashing machine, was born.

1841 Jurist Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., was born.

1844 Karl XIV Johan, King of Sweden and Norway, died.

1855 The firsttrain crossed the first U. S. railway suspension bridge, over Niagara Falls.

1861 St. Augustine, Florida, surrendered to a Union army.

1862 The Confederate ironclad Merrimack was launched.

1865 Type designer Frederick Goudy was born.

1867 The British North America Act was passed in the House of Commons.

1869 Composer Hector Berlioz died.

1874 Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States, died.

1887 Everett Horton patented a fishing rod made of telescoping steel tubes.
1887 Clergyman Henry Ward Beecher died.

1889 Inventor John Ericsson died.

1894 The state of New York enacted the nation's first dog-licensing law.

1896 The Volunteers of America was formed.

1906 The Ottawa Silver defeated Smiths Falls for the Stanley Cup.

1910 Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris, France, became the first ever licensed female pilot.

1913 The Internal Revenue Service began to levy and collect income taxes.

1917 Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the rigid dirigible, died.

1921 Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier was assassinated while exiting the Parliament building in Madrid.
1921 Actor Alan Hale, Jr., was born.

1922 Dancer Cyd Charisse was born.

1924 A coal mine explosion killed 171 persons at Castle Gate, Utah.

1927 Pan American Airlines was incorporated.

1930 William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, was born.

1936 The first organized stock car race was held on the beach of Daytona Beach, Florida.

1941 Author James Reston, Jr., was born.
1941 Author Sherwood Anderson died.

1942 Japanese forces captured Rangoon, Burma.

1943 Actress Lynn Redgrave was born.

1945 International Women'sDay was first observed.
1945 Musician/actor Micky Dolenz was born.

1947 Rock guitarist Mike Allsup was born.

1948 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that religious instruction in public schools is unconstitutional (McCollum v. Board of Education).
1948 Singer Peggy March was born.

1957 The United Nations Emergency Force assumed full control of the Sharm el Sheikh area at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba.
1957 Singer Harry Belafonte and dancer Julie Robinson were married in Tecate, Mexico.

1958 Musician Gary Numan was born.

1959 Iraqi army forces rebelled against the regime of General Abdul Karim el-Kassem.

1961 Actress Camryn Manheim was born.

1964 A Taxader Airlines DC-3 crashed between Madrid and Subacoche, Colombia, killing 30 persons.

1965 The first U.S. combat troops, from the 3rd Marine Division, landed at Da Nang, South Vietnam.

1971 Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali in 15 rounds to retain the heavyweight boxing title.
1971 Actor Harold Lloyd died.

1972 The Goodyear blimp flew for the first time.

1973 The Eisenhower Tunnel, the highest in the world and longest in the United States, opened.

1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opened in Paris, France.

1976 Actor Freddie Prinze, Jr., was born.

1977 Actor James Van Der Beek was born.

1979 The first extraterrestrial volcano was discovered, on Jupiter's satellite Io.

1983 IBM released PC DOS version 2.0.

1987 The last new episode of "The A-Team" aired on NBC-TV.

1992 Christian K. Nelson, inventor of the Eskimo Pie, died.

1994 A B737 collided with an Ilyushin-86 at New Delhi, India, killing 8 persons.
1994 A train accident at Pinetown, Natal, killed 47 persons.

1999 Actress Peggy Cass died.
1999 Baseball player Joe DiMaggio died.

2004 Iraq's Governing Council signed a new constitution.

2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with 239 persons aboard, disappeared while flying over the Indian Ocean.

2016 Music producer George Martin died.

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This page was last updated on March 07, 2018.