On March 12th...

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1088 Odo Lagery was elected as Pope Urban II.

1144 Gherardo Caccianemici was elected as Pope Lucius II.

1365 The University of Vienna was founded.

1609 Bermuda became an English colony.

1619 The Dutch settlement on Java changed its name to Batavia.

1622 Ignatius of Loyola was declared a saint.

1642 Abel Tasman sighted what is now called New Zealand.

1664 New Jersey became an English colony.

1755 The first steam engine in America was installed, to pump water from a mine.

1773 Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable founded a settlement on the site of what is now Chicago, Illinois.

1795 Canadian politician William Mackenzie was born.

1799 Austria declared war on France.

1801 Tsar Paul I of Russia was assassinated.

1806 Jane Means Appleton, wife of U.S. President Franklin Pierce, was born.

1821 John J.C. Abbott, Prime Minister of Canada, was born.

1831 Manufacturer Clement Studebaker was born.

1835 Astronomer Simon Newcomb was born.

1838 Chemist William Henry Perkin was born.

1848 The Second Republic was established in France.

1850 The first U.S. $20 gold piece was issued.

1858 Newspaper publisher Adolph S. Ochs was born.

1863 Poet Gabriele d' Annunzio was born.

1867 The last French troops left Mexico.

1868 The United Kingdom annexed Basutoland (now Lesotho).
1868 Henry O'Farrell attempted to assassinate Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.

1877 Great Britain annexed Walvis Bay at Cape Colony, Southern Africa.

1881 Kemal Ataturk, President of Turkey, was born.

1884 Mississippi established the first state college for women.

1889 Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV was defeated at the Battle of Metema.
1889 John Archibald Campbell, former Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, died.

1893 Christian K. Nelson, inventor of the Eskimo Pie, was born.

1894 Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time, in Vickburg, Mississippi.

1902 John P. Altgeld, Governor of Illinois, died.

1904 The first man line electric train in the United Kingdom began service between Liverpool and Southport, England.

1910 Masayoshi Ohira, Prime Minister of Japan, was born.

1911 Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz was born.

1912 Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scout movement in the United States.

1913 The foundation stone of the Australian Capitol was laid in Canberra.

1914 George Westinghouse, inventor of railroad air brakes and promoter of AC electricity, died.

1917 A German submarine sank the unarmed U.S. merchant ship Algonquin.

1919 Actor Frank Campanella was born.

1921 Actor Gordon MacRae was born.

1922 Author Jack Kerouac was born.
1922 Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, was born.

1923 Astronaut Wally Schirra was born.

1925 The first transatlantic radio broadcast was made.
1925 Sun Yat-sen, former President of China, died.

1926 Publisher E. W. Scripps died.

1928 The failure of California's St. Francis Dam caused more than 600 deaths.
1928 Playwright Edward Albee was born.
1928 Astronaut Frank Borman was born.

1930 Mohandas Gandhi began a 200-mile march protesting a British salt tax.
1930 Actor Scoey Mitchell was born.

1932 American politician Andrew Young, Jr. was born.

1933 President Franklin Roosevelt conducted his first "Fireside Chat."
1933 Actress Barbara Feldon was born.

1934 Acting Estonian President Constantine Päts staged a coup in Tallinn.

1938 Germany invaded Austria.
1938 Auto racer Johnny Rutherford was born.

1940 Finland surrendered to Russia.
1940 Singer Al Jarreau was born.

1945 New York became the firststate to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment.
1945 The Soviet Union returned Transylvania to Romania.

1946 Singer Liza Minnelli was born.

1947 President Harry Truman announced the Truman Doctrine.
1947 American politician Mitt Romney was born.
1947 Novelist Winston Churchill died.

1948 Singer James Taylor was born.

1950 Belgians voted for the return of King Leopold III.

1951 Communist troops were driven out of Seoul, South Korea.

1955 Jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker died.

1957 Billionaire Howard Hughes married actress Jean Peters.
1957 Musician Marlon Jackson was born.

1958 British Empire Day was renamed Commonwealth Day.

1959 The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Hawaii Statehood Act.

1960 The murder trial of Bernard Finch and Carole Tregoff ended with a hung jury.
1960 Actor Courtney Vance was born.

1962 Baseball player Darryl Strawberry was born.

1965 Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs released "Wooly Bully."

1968 Mauritius became indepent of the United Kingdom.

1970 The voting age in the United States was lowered from 21 to 18.

1971 TheAlmman Brothers began recording Live at Fillmore East.

1972 Hockey player Gordie Howe retired.

1976 South African troops left Angola.

1980 A jury found John Wayne Gacy guilty of 33 counts of murder.

1981 The Soyuz 4 mission was launched.

1985 Conductor Eugene Ormandy died.

1987 "Les Miserables" opened at the Imperial Theater in New York City, New York.
1987 College football coach Woody Hayes died.

1990 The Los Angeles Raiders announced their return to Oakland, California.

1991 Thomas LeRoy Collins, former Governor of Florida, died.

1992 Mauritius became a republic.

1993 Bomb attacks killed 317 persons in Bombay, India.

1994 The Church of England ordained its first women priests.

1999 The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO.

2001 Talk show host Morton Downey, Jr., died.
2001 Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas died in prison.

2004 Roh Moo-hyun became the first President of South Korea ever to be impeached.

2005 Tung Chee Hwa resigned as Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

2011 A reactor at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant melted and exploded, releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere.

2012 The Syrian Army massacred 45 persons, including children, in Homs.
2012 The film Hunger Games premiered in Los Angeles, California.

2014 A gas explosion in East Harlem, New York, killed 8 persons and injured 70.

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This page was last updated on January 06, 2018.