On March 9th...

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1454 Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci was born.

1497 Nicolaus Copernicus recorded his first astronomical observation.

1522 Martin Luther preached his Invocavit.

1562 Kissing in public became a capital offense in Naples.

1617 Sweden and Russia signed the Peace of Stolbowa.

1758 Franz Joseph Gll, inventor of phrenology, was born.

1776 The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, was published.

1796 Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais.

1798 Dr. George Balfour became the first naval surgeon in the U. S. Navy.

1808 King Charles IV of Spain was forced to abdicate.

1811 Thomas D. Mutter, surgeon and Mütter Museum benefactor, was born.

1815 U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis was born.

1820 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Blatchford was born.

1822 Charles Graham patented artificial teeth.

1824 Businessman Leland Stanford was born.

1831 Playwright Friedrich Maximilian Klinger died.

1834 The French Foreign Legion was founded.

1839 The Prussian government limited the work week for children to 51 hours.
1839 Composer Modest Mussorgsky was born.

1841 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the Africans who had seized the Amistad had been illegally taken as slaves and were, therefore, free.

1842 Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Nabucco" premiered in Milan, Italy.

1851 Physicist Hans Christian Oersted died.

1856 Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded in the Johnston Mansion House at the University of Alabama.
1856 Inventor Edward G. Acheson was born.
1856 Singer Eddie Foy was born.

1858 Albert Potts patented the street mailbox.

1862 The USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a stalemate.

1864 Ulysses S. Grant was commissioned as commander-in-chief of the Union armies.

1879 Actor David Landau was born.

1889 Kansas passed the first general antitrust law in the United States.

1891 José P. Laurel, 3rd President of the Philippines, was born.

1897 Cleveland fans began calling their baseball team the Indians.

1902 Actor Will Geer was born.

1903 Albert Cardinal Meyer, Archbishop of Chicago, was born.

1907 The first involuntary sterilization law was enacted in Indiana.

1908 The Inter Milan football club was founded, as Foot-Ball Club Internazionale.

1910 Composer Samuel Barber was born.

1914 U.S. Congressman Al Ullman was born.

1916 Mexican General Pancho Villa invaded the United States.
1916 Germany declared war on Portugal.

1917 U. S. Congressman Dante Fascell was born.

1918 The Russian Bolshevik Party became the Communist Party.
1918 George Rockwell, founder of the Americn Nazi Party, was born.
1918 Author Mickey Spillane was born.

1921 Actor Carl Betz was born.

1923 U. S. Senator James L. Buckley was born.

1924 South Slavia approved Italy's annexation of Fiume.

1926 Talk show host Joe Franklin was born.

1927 Baseball player Jackie Jensen was born.

1928 Basketball player Paul Arizin was born.

1929 Desmond Hoyte, President of Guyana, was born.

1932 Former Chinese Emperor Henry Pu-Yi was installed as head of Manchuria.
1932 Eamon De Valera became President of Ireland.

1933 The U. S. Congress began a "hundred days" special session called by President Franklin Roosevelt.

1934 Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was born.

1936 Musician Mickey Gilley was born.
1936 Comedian Marty Ingels was born.

1940 Actor Raul Julia was born.

1942 Construction of the Alaska Highway began.
1942 Baseball player Bert Campaneris was born.

1943 Chess master Bobby Fischer was born.
1943 Television journalist Charles Gibson was born.

1945 334 U.S. B-29 Superfortresses dropped 120,000 fire bombs on Tokyo, Japan.
1945 Dennis Rader, aka the "BTK Killer," was born.
1945 Guitarist Robert Trower was born.

1947 Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the woman suffrage movement, died.

1948 A provisionary Indonesian government was installed in Batavia.
1948 Musician Jeffrey Osborne was born.

1949 Captain Bill Odom landed his Waikiki Beech Bonanza at Teterboro, New Jersey, after a record 4,957-mile flight from Honolulu, Hawaii.
1949 Actress Jaime Lyn Bauer was born.

1950 Willie Sutton robbed Manufacturers Bank in New York City, New York, of $64,000.

1950 Golfer Andy North was born.
1950 Auto racer Danny Sullivan was born.

1954 Irish activist Bobby Sands was born.

1955 Matthew A. Henson, the first man to reach the North Pole, died.

1956 Archbishop Makarios, head of the Orthodox Church in Cyprus, was arrested and exiled to the Seychelles Islands.

1957 Actor Henry Fonda married Italian Contessa Afdera Franchetti in New York City, New York.

1958 George Yardley of the Detroit Pistons became the first NBA player to score 2,000 points in one season.

1959 Mattel introduced Barbie to the world.
1959 The first known radar contact was made with Venus.

1961 A dog named Blackie became the first animal to be returned from space.

1962 A firedamp explosion in a coal mine near Hamm, West Germany, killed 31 miners and injured 6.

1963 The Beatles began their first British tour.

1964 The first Ford Mustang was produced.
1964 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that public officials must prove malice to claim libel and recover damages.
1964 Talk show host Steve Wilkos was born.

1965 Football player Brian Bosworth was born.
1965 Antonio Saca, President of El Salvador, was born.

1967 Svetlana Allilueva, daughter of the late Joseph Stalin, defected to the West.

1971 Actor Emmanuel Lewis was born.

1972 Actress Jean Louisa Kelly was born.
1972 Actor Kerr Smith was born.

1974 A Japanese soldier operating as a guerrilla in the Philippines surrendered, 29 years after World War II ended.

1975 Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline began.

1976 The frst female cadets were accepted into West Point Military Academy.

1980 Actor Matthew Gray Gubler was born.

1981 Dan Rather became the primary anchor of CBS-TV News.

1986 Actress Brittany Snow was born.

1987 Golfer Bobby Locke died.

1988 Kurt Georg Kiesinger, former Chancellor of Germany, died.

1989 Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe died.
1989 Actor Sam Melville died.

1992 Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin died.

1994 Actor Fernando Rey died.

1995 Publisher Ian Ballantine died.

1996 Actor George Burns died.

1997 Rapper Notorious B.I.G. was murdered.

2004 Abu Abbas, mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking, died.

2005 Football player Glenn Davis died.
2005 Singer Chris LeDoux died.

2006 Liquid water was discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.

2011 Space Shuttle Discovery made its final landing.

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This page was last updated on August 26, 2018.