On March 17th...

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St. Patrick's Day

461 Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland, died.

1328 King Robert I of England recognized the independence of Scotland.

1473 King James IV of Scotland was born.

1521 Ferdinand Magellan "discovered" the Philippines.

1755 The Transylvania Land Company bought what is now Kentucky from a Cherokee chief.

1776 The British evacuated Boston, Massachusetts.

1777 Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, was born.

1804 American frontiersman Jim Bridger was born.

1806 Chemical engineer Norbert Rillieux was born.

1834 Motorcycle inventor Gottlieb Daimler was born.

1845 Henry Jones patented self-rising flour.
1845 Stephen Perry patented the rubber band.

1846 Illustrator Kate Greenaway was born.

1861 The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed.

1866 U. S. Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler was born.

1868 The postage stamp canceling machine was patented.

1870 The Massachusetts Legislature authorized the incorporation of Wellesley Female Seminary.

1871 The National Association of Professional Base-Ball players was organized.

1898 Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first Black to be elected to the U.S. Senate for a full term, died.

1899 Fire destroyed The Windsor Hotel in New York City, New York, and killed 92 persons.

1902 Golfer Bobby Jones was born.

1906 The Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity was founded, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

1908 Tommy Burns KO'd Jem Roche in 88 seconds to win the heavyweight boxing title in record time.

1912 Canp Fire Girls was organized.

1917 Delta Phi Epsilon was founded, at New York University Law School.
1917 Singer Nat King Cole was born.

1930 Construction of the Empire State Building began.

1931 Nevada legalized gambling.

1938 Dancer Rudolf Nureyev was born.

1941 Musician Paul Kantner was born.

1943 Willem J. Kolff performed the world's first "hemodialysis" using his artificial kidney machine.

1944 Singer John Sebastian was born.

1949 Actor Patrick Duffy was born.

1950 The discovery of Element 98 (Californium) was announced.

1951 Actor Kurt Russell was born.

1955 Actor Gary Sinise was born.

1956 Radio and television personality Fred Allen died.
1956 Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irène Joliot-Curie died.

1957 Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others were killed in a plane crash.

1958 The United States Navy launched Vanguard I.

1959 The Dalai Lama fled Tibet.
1959 The U.S.S. Skate became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole.

1961 A factory fire killed 23 persons in Jalgaon, India.

1963 Elizabeth Ann Seton was beatified.
1963 The eruption of Mount Agung on the Indonesian island of Bali killed about 1,900 people.

1964 Actor Rob Lowe was born.

1965 Football player Amos Alonzo Stagg died.

1966 A U. S. submarine located a missing H-bomb in the Mediterranean Sea.

1972 Soccer player Mia Hamm was born.

1976 The Ulster Volunteer Force exploded a car bomb at Hillcrest Bar, Dungannon, Northern Ireland, killing 4 persons, including 2 children.

1978 The tanker Amoco Cadiz, carrying a capacity load of 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, broke in half in heavy seas after striking rocks 3 miles off the coast of Brittany, France.
1978 A tornado killed 32 persons and injured another 700 in the northern outskirts of Delhi, India.

1979 A Russian TU-104 jetliner crashed shortly afer taking off from Moscow (Russia) Vnukovo Airport, killing 58 of the 119 persons aboard.

1990 Jim Pencak won the PBA National Championship.

1992 Twenty-eight persons were killed in the truck bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1993 A bomb attack killed 86 persons in Calcutta, India.
1993 Stage and movie actress Helen Hayes died.

1995 The United States approved the first chicken pox vaccine, Varivax by Merck & Co.

2005 Author Andre Norton died.

2006 Fashion designer Oleg Cassini died.

2008 New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned.

2011Singer Ferlin Husky died.

2013 A car bombing killed 10persons in Basra, Iraq.

2014 The Republic of Crimea was declared.

2016 Actor Larry Drake died.

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This page was last updated on June 24, 2018.