This Day in History

[Tayana42]

2003 was a good year Gord!

[GordMay]

March 18

0037: The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will, and proclaims Caligula [Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus] emperor.

1584: Russian czar, Ivan IV [Ivan ‘The Terrible’] died, at age 53.

1662: First public bus service begins, promoted by Blaise Pascal, operates in Paris as the "Carosses a Cinq Sous" until 1675.

1874: Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States, granting exclusive trading rights.

1899: Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, is discovered by William Pickering.

1909: Einar Dessau, of Denmark, makes 1st ham broadcast.

1915: French battleship “Bouvet” explodes, 640 killed.

1921: Steamer "Hong Koh" runs aground off Swatow China killing 1,000.

1922: British magistrates, in India, sentence Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years imprisonment, for disobedience.

1937: Gas explosion in school in New London, Texas, 294 die.

1942: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority, which was charged with overseeing the internment of Japanese Americans, during World War II.

1959: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Hawaii statehood bill.

1965: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.

1967: Oil tanker “Torrey Canyon” hits a rock, off Cornwall, & spills 919,000 barrels of oil.

1971: A 100 feet (30 meter) high wave destroys a Peruvian mining camp, and kills hundreds of people. The tsunami was caused by a massive rock avalanche that crashed into Lake Yanahuani, from a height of 1300 feet (400 meters).

1992: American businesswoman, Leona Helmsley, sentenced to 4 years for tax evasion. "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes"

2018: Vladimir Putin is elected to a new six-year term, as Russian President, with 76% of the vote, his fourth term.

2018: First fatal accident, involving an Uber self-driving, car hitting a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.
2020: US President Donald Trump, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, agree to close the US-Canada border, the world's longest, to non-essential travel to curb COVID-19.
2020: First COVID-19-related death, reported in Ontario, Canada.

[GordMay]

March 19

1687: The French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle is murdered by his own men, while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

1863: Confederate cruiser SS “Georgiana” destroyed on her maiden voyage, with a cargo of munitions, and medicines, then valued over $1,000,000. Wreck discovered exactly 102 years later by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence.

1866: Immigrant ship “Monarch of the Seas” sinks in Liverpool; 738 die.

1885: North-West Rebellion of 1885: Louis Riel returns to Canada, proclaims provisional government, at Batoche, Saskatchewan.

1903: The U.S. Senate ratifies the Cuban treaty, gaining naval bases in Guantanamo and Bahia Honda.

1920: The U.S. Senate rejects the Versailles Treaty, for the second time, refusing to ratify League of Nations' covenant (maintaining isolation policy).

1932: The Sydney Harbour Bridge is opened in Sydney, Australia.

1937: Astronomer Fritz Zwicky publishes his research on stellar explosion, in which he coins the term "supernova", and hypothesizes that they were the origin of cosmic rays.

1946: French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique & Reunion become overseas "departments" of France.

1962: Bob Dylan releases his first album

1965: The wreck of the SS “Georgiana, said to have been most powerful Confederate cruiser, discovered by then teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, exactly 102 years after its destruction.

1972: John Vincent Atanasoff emerges as victor from a protracted US legal battle for the title of the inventor of the electronic digital computer. A judge determined his work had preceded and contributed to development of the ENIAC machine, whose inventors had previously been credited.

1982: Falklands War: Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, precipitating war with the U.K.

2003: Airstrikes by an American and British-led coalition signal the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, without United Nations support.

2008: Arthur C. Clarke dies.

2020: Italian death toll from COVID-19 at 3,405 surpasses China's official total (3,245), making it then the worst-affected country in the world.

[GordMay]

March 20

2019: Joy Milne, a woman who can smell Parkinson's disease has helped researchers identify molecules on the skin of people with the disease in Manchester, England.
➥ https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...to-diagnose-di

2003: The United States invade Iraq, assisted by the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland. Invasion termed illegal by then UN Secretary, Kofi Annan.

2001: “Petrobras 36" Oil Platform, the world's largest oil rig, sinks with 400,000 US gallons of fuel and crude oil aboard, after suffering three explosions on March 15.

1995: Members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo release sarin gas, on three lines of the Tokyo subway, killing 13 people and injuring over 1,000.

1980: The “Mi Amigo” ship containing England's pirate radio Caroline sinks.

1922: USS “Langley” is commissioned, US Navy's 1st aircraft carrier.

1916: Albert Einstein presents his general theory of relativity.
The revolutionary theory describes the interdependency of matter, on the one hand, and space and time on the other.

1886: 1st AC power plant in US begins commercial operation in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

1815: Napoleon enters Paris after escape from Elba, begins 100-day rule.

1800: Alessandro Volta reports his discovery of the electric battery, in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London.

1774: The British parliament passes first of the Intolerable Acts: the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston harbor until colonists would pay for damages following the Boston Tea Party.

1726: English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, theologian, Isaac Newton dies.

1616: Walter Raleigh released from Tower of London, to seek gold in Guyana.

1345: According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on March 20, 1345, from what they call “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345. The Black Death, also known as the Plague.

[GordMay]

March 21

1791: Captain Hopley Yeaton becomes 1st commissioned officer in the Revenue Marine, later the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner of the modern US Coast Guard.

1804: ‘Napoleonic Code’ approved in France.

1871: Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his famous expedition [searching for David Livingston] to Africa.

1891: A Hatfield marries a McCoy, ending long feud in West Virginia, which started with an accusation of pig-stealing, & lasted 20 years.

1918: Germany launches Somme offensive, during WW I.

1925: Tennessee governor Austin Peay passes the "Butler Act," making Tennessee the 1st state to outlaw teaching the theory of evolution (repealed 1967).

1943: Second plot [Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow] to kill Hitler foiled.

1957: France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg sign the treaty in Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC).

1960: In the Black township of Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, South Africa, Afrikaner police open fire on a group of unarmed Black South African demonstrators, killing 72 people, and wounding 180, in a hail of submachine-gun fire.
1960: F1 race driver, Ayrton Senna da Silva born. He was killed, while racing at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, on May 1st, 1994.

1965: Following the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march earlier in the month, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., SCLC leader Hosea Williams, and SNCC leader John Lewis, led 3,000 civil rights demonstrators in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, under the protection of army units deployed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1970: Earth Day is celebrated for the first time.

1975: Ethiopia abolishes its monarchy, after 3,000 years.

1994: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC, or ‘Paris Agreement’] enters into force after being ratified by the required 50 nations. Currently, there are 197 Parties [196 States and 1 regional economic integration organization] to the Convention.

2006: Jack Dorsey sends the world's first Twitter message, or tweet.

2013: The European Space Agency reveals new data, that indicates that the universe is 13.82 billion years old.

2019: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons, 6 days after the Christchurch terrorist attack.

2020: According to Johns-Hopkins, Italy records record daily death toll of 793, for COVID-19, as the worldwide death tolls surpasses 12,000 with 299,000 known infections.

[GordMay]

March 22

1778: Captain James Cook sights Cape Flattery, now in Washington state.

1790: Thomas Jefferson becomes the first U.S. Secretary of State, under President Washington.

1794: US Congress passes laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries, although slavery remains legal in the United States.

1832: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dies.

1903: Niagra Falls runs out of water, because of a drought.

1929: US Coast Guard vessel sinks Canadian schooner suspected of carrying liquor.

1963: The Beatles release their 1st album, "Please Please Me".

1972: The U.S. Senate passes the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment fails to achieve the required 38 State ratifications.

1988: US Congress overrides President Reagan's veto of sweeping civil rights bill.

1993: Intel introduces Pentium-processor (80586) 64 bits-60 MHz-100+ MIPS. Intel holds about 80% of the world market share in the PC microprocessor business.

1997: Comet "Hale-Bopp" makes Closest Approach to Earth (1.315 AU).

2006: BC Ferries' M/V “Queen of the North” runs aground on Gil Island British Columbia, and sinks; 101 on board, 2 presumed deaths.

2014: 251 people are killed, after a boat capsizes, in Lake Albert, Uganda.
2014: Guinea confirms Ebola outbreak has already killed 59 people.

2020: India puts 1 billion people under a daytime curfew to curb COVID-19.

2021: The UN's World Water Day, held March 22 every year since 1993, aims to raise awareness about the reality that so many people are living without access to safe water.
More ➥ https://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday2021/

[GordMay]

March 23

1775: American revolutionary, Patrick Henry, while addressing the Virginia legislature [House of Burgesses], declares "give me liberty, or give me death!"*. An outspoken Anti-Federalist, Henry opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which he felt put too much power in the hands of a national government.
* “Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace, Peace,’ but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

1848: The ship “John Wickliffe” arrives at Port Chalmers, carrying the first Scottish settlers for Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago province is founded.

1857: Elisha Otis installs the first modern passenger elevator in a public building, at the corner of Broome Street and [488] Broadway in New York City.

1903: The Wright brothers 1st file a patent for a flying machine, which is granted 3 years later.

1909: British Lt. Ernest Shackleton finds the magnetic South Pole.

1912: Wernher von Braun born.

1933: The German Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree [Enabling Act].

1950: UN World Meteorological Org established.

1956: Pakistan [including Bangladesh] becomes the world's first Islamic republic.

1965: "Gemini 3" launched, 1st US 2-man space flight [Grissom & Young].

1976: International Bill of Rights goes into effect [35 nations ratifying].

2001: The Russian space station, “Mir”, is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere, before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji

2020: WHO says the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating, 1st 100,000 cases took 67 days, 2nd 100,000 cases 11 days, 3rd 100,000 cases 4 days.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by GordMay

March 21 ...
2006: Jack Dorsey sends the world's first Twitter message, or tweet ...

Twitter's Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sells for $2.9m
More ➥ https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/20...-sold-for-2-9m

[GordMay]

March 24

1603: Queen Elizabeth I dies, which will bring into power James VI of Scotland, thus joining the English and Scottish crowns.

1765: Britain passes the Quartering Act, requiring the colonies to house 10,000 British troops in public and private buildings.

1837: Canada gives its black citizens the right to vote.

1878: British frigate “Eurydice” sunk; 300 lost.

1882: German scientist Robert Koch discovers, and describes, the tubercle bacillus, which causes tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), and establishes germ theory.

1896: Aleksander Popov achieves the world's first radio transmission, with the words “Heinrich Hertz”, from one building of St. Petersburg University to another.

1900: Mayor Van Wyck, of New York, breaks ground for the New York subway tunnel [‘Rapid Transit Railroad’], that will link Manhattan and Brooklyn.

1904: Japanese Vice Admiral Togo sinks seven Russian ships, as the Japanese strengthen their blockade of Port Arthur.

1906: "Census of the British Empire" shows Great Britain rules 1/5th of the world.

1942: US government begins moving native-born citizens, with Japanese ancestry, into detention centres, under Executive Order 9066, with intention of preventing home-grown espionage.

1944: 76 Allied officers escape Stalag Luft 3 [Great Escape].

1958: Elvis Presley trades in his guitar for a rifle and Army fatigues [serial number 53310761].

1962: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards perform as Little Boy Blue & Blue Boys.

1972: Great Britain imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland.

1976: Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, dies.

1989: The “Exxon Valdez” oil tanker spills 240,000 barrels of oil, in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

1998: Jonesboro massacre: Two students, ages 11 and 13, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are dead and ten are wounded.

1999: Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire: 39 people die when a Belgian transport truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel.
1999: For the first time in its history, NATO attacks a sovereign country
The military alliance bombed Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War - without a UN mandate.

2016: Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić, found guilty of genocide, during 1995 Srebrenica massacre, sentenced to 40 years.

2020: Indian PM, Narendra Modi, orders a 21 day lockdown, for world's second most populous country [1.3 billion people], to deal with COVID-19.
2020: Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, announces postponement of Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, until summer of 2021, because of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

[GordMay]

March 25

1584: English explorer Walter Raleigh renews Humphrey Gilbert's patent to explore North America.

1609: Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for Dutch East India Company to find a passage to Asia.

1807: British Parliament abolishes the slave trade throughout the British Empire; penalty of £12,0 per slave, introduced for ship captains.

1846: German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt arrives in Sydney to a hero's welcome, after completing his exploration of Australia's Northern Territory.

1865: SS ‘General Lyon catches fire & sinks, at Cape Hatteras , killing 400.

1911: Triangle Shirtwaist fire kills 146, in New York City.

Owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle 'sweat shop' was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910.
It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century.

While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again.

Added to this delinquency were Blanck and Harris’ notorious anti-worker policies. Their employees were paid a mere $15 a week, despite working 12 hours a day, every day. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and shorter and more predictable hours, Blanck and Harris’ company was one of the few manufacturers who resisted, hiring police as thugs to imprison the striking women, and paying off politicians to look the other way.

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire broke out in a rag bin on the eighth floor. The manager turned the fire hose on it, but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. Panic ensued as the workers fled to every exit. The elevator broke down after only four trips, and women began jumping down the shaft to their deaths. Those who fled down the wrong set of stairs were trapped inside and burned alive. Other women trapped on the eighth floor began jumping out the windows, which created a problem for the firefighters whose hoses were crushed by falling bodies. Also, the firefighters’ ladders stretched only as high as the seventh floor, and their safety nets were not strong enough to catch the women, who were jumping three at a time.

Blanck and Harris were on the building’s top floor with some workers when the fire broke out. They were able to escape by climbing onto the roof and hopping to an adjoining building.
The fire was out within half an hour, but not before over 140 died.

The workers’ union organized a march on April 5 to protest the conditions that led to the fire; it was attended by 80,000 people.

Though Blanck and Harris were put on trial for manslaughter, they managed to get off scot-free. Still, the massacre for which they were responsible did finally compel the city to enact reform.
In addition to the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law passed that October, the New York Democratic set took up the cause of the worker and became known as a reform party.


If I had a dollar, for every serious problem with unregulated capitalism ...
I probably wouldn't be complaining, about capitalism.

[GordMay]

March 26

0127: Greek astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy begins his observations of the heavens (until 141 AD).

1668: England takes control of Bombay [Mumbai], India.

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.

1827: Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna.

1859: 1st supposed sighting of Vulcan, a planet thought to orbit inside Mercury. It doesn't exist.

1885: Louis Riel's forces defeat Canadian forces, at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.

1941: Richard Dawkins born.

1953: Dr. Jonas E. Salk, announced a vaccine had been used safely, and successfully used in preliminary trials on 90 children and adults as a polio vaccine, Two years later the vaccine was released, and given to virtually every child in the United States.

1971: Bangladesh [East Pakistan], under Sheikh Mujibur, declares its independence from Pakistan.

1979: The Camp David accord is signed, between Israel and Egypt.

1989: The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.

1995: The Schengen Treaty goes into effect.

2000: Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia, for the first time.

2012: Canadian filmmaker James Cameron becomes the first person to visit ‘Challenger Deep’, the deepest point on Earth, in over 50 years.

2018: US soldier receives world's first penis and scrotum transplant, at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland.

2019: Maker of Oxycontin, Purdue Pharma, agrees to pay Oklahoma $270 million settlement, ahead of trial accusing the company of fueling the opioid epidemic.
2019: State of emergency declared in Rockland |County, New York, due to measles epidemic, with unvaccinated children banned from public spaces for 30 days, after 153 cases.

2020: American cases of COVID-19 exceed all other countries on this date, with 81,578 cases, and 1,180 deaths.

[GordMay]

March 27

1350: Alfonso XI, of Castile, dies of the black death, while besieging Gibraltar.

1512: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida.

1845: German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, Wilhelm Röntgen born.

1866: President Andrew Johnson vetoes the civil rights bill, which later becomes the 14th amendment.
More ➥ https://constitutioncenter.org/inter.../amendment-xiv

1899: Italian inventor, G. Marconi, achieves the first international radio transmission, between England and France.

1909: For the first time fingerprint evidence is used to solve a murder case. The worlds first official Fingerprint Bureau was founded in Scotland Yard in 1901.

1968: Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, who flew the world's first manned space mission, died during a training flight.

1977: The worst air crash in history occurs in Tenerife, Spain, when a KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747, on the runway, at Tenerife airport, in the Canary Islands, killing 582 passengers and crew members.

1980: The “Alexander Kielland” oil platform, 230 miles off shore from Dundee, in Scotland, is hit by a giant wave, which causes one of the legs supporting it to give way. The platform then capsized, throwing those trying to get off into the cold North Sea. RAF and Norwegian helicopters, along with any shipping close to the accident, been asked to help with the rescue. The stormy weather conditions made rescue difficult, and the bitter cold sea, combined with the stormy conditions left 123 dead [89 survive].

1994: The European Fighter Aircraft "Eurofighter" makes its inaugural test flight.

1998: Pfizer's ‘Viagra’ is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [against male impotence].

2006: Al-Qaeda conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, claimed, in his trial, that he was supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House; but it is unclear if he was telling the truth, or seeking publicity. He was convicted of conspiring to kill Americans, as part of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and is serving a life sentence at the Federal ADX Supermax prison, in Florence, Colorado.

[GordMay]

March 28


0037: Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula (which means "little soldier's boots), accepts the titles of the Principate, entitled to him by the Senate.

1584: Russian Tsar, Ivan the Terrible dies.

1799: New York State abolishes slavery.

1804: Ohio passes law restricting movement of Blacks.

1854: Britain and France declare war on Russia, during the Crimean War.

1860: First Taranaki War: The Battle of Waireka begins in New Zealand.

1910: French inventor Henri Fabre's Canard (Fabre Hydravion) was the first floatplane to take off, from water, under its own power. The first flight measured 457 meters.

1939: The Spanish Civil War ends, as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco.

1969: Dwight D. Eisenhower dies, at Walter Reed General Hospital, in Washington, D.C.

1979: A coolant leak and partial meltdown, at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, results in the release of radioactive gas and iodine into the atmosphere, but no deaths.

1989: New Zealand wins America's Cup, over Stars & Stripes, in a NY court. In the first disqualification in the Cup’s 138-year history, Judge Ciparick ruled that the San Diego Yacht Club flouted rules, in the two-race sweep, last September, by sailing a catamaran, while the New Zealanders used a traditional monohulled craft. Pending possible appeals, SDYC was ordered to forfeit the Cup to the MBBC.

2009: The first cases of H1N1 swine flu in the United States, occur in two people in California.
In March 2009, a new strain of H1N1 influenza virus began circulating in Mexico. From there the virus rapidly spread around the world. The World Health Organization declared on 11 June 2009 that swine flu was the first pandemic of the 21st century. Between 10-200 million people were infected with this particular strain of flu, and about 18,500 lab confirmed deaths occurred, and possibly as meany as 150,000 people died.

2019: European parliament bans single-use plastics, including cutlery and straws by 2021.

2020: US President Donald Trump makes grim projection, that 240,000 American could die from COVID-19, even with restrictions in place. In fact, well over 500,000 Americans have died, of Covid-19, to date.

[GordMay]

March 29

0845: Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collects a huge ransom, in exchange for leaving.

1792: King Gustav III, of Sweden, dies, after being shot in the back, at a midnight masquerade ball, at Stockholm's Royal Opera, 13 days earlier.

1848: Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam.

1849: Great Britain formally annexes Punjab, after defeat of Sikhs in India.

1867: British North America Act [Canadian constitution] is given Royal Assent.
1867: The United States purchases Alaska from Russia, for $7.2 million dollars.

1886: Coca-Cola goes on sale for the first time at a drugstore in Atlanta. Its inventor, Dr. John Pemberton, claims it can cure anything from hysteria to the common cold.

1901: Edmund Barton is elected Prime Minister, in Australia's first parliamentary election.

1912: Captain Robert Falcon Scott, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole, makes last entry in his diary: “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.”

1942: British cruiser HMS “Trinidad” torpedoes itself in the Barents Sea.

1951: American citizens, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, are convicted and sentenced to deat,h for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.

1961: After a 4½ year trial, Nelson Mandela is acquitted of treason, in Pretoria.

1962: Cuba opens the trial of the 1,179 csptured [CIA Operation ‘Pluto/Zapata’] Bay of Pigs invaders. Brigade 2506 lost 80 men killed in the combat on land, and another 40 during disembarkation.
All were convicted of treason, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
On 21 December 1962, Castro and James B. Donovan, a U.S. lawyer aided by Milan C. Miskovsky, a CIA legal officer, signed an agreement to exchange 1,113 prisoners for US$53 million in food and medicine, sourced from private donations, and from companies expecting tax concessions. On 24 December 1962, some prisoners were flown to Miami, others following on the ship African Pilot, plus about 1,000 family members also allowed to leave Cuba.

1967: France launches its first nuclear submarine.

1971: Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is found guilty for his actions in the My Lai massacre.
1971: Development of a serum hepatitis vaccine for children announced.

1973: The last U.S. troops withdraw from South Vietnam.

1974: Chinese farmers discover the Terracotta Army, near Xi'an; 8,000 clay warrior statues buried to guard the tomb of China's 1st emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

1975: Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, declares that he will reopen the Suez Canal on June 5, 1975.

1986: Beatles records officially go on sale, in Russia.

1994: Serbs & Croats sign a cease-fire, to end the war in Croatia.

2017: UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, sends a letter to the EU, invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally triggering Brexit.

[GordMay]

March 30

240 BC: 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.

1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sign a decree, expelling all Jews from Spain.

1796: Carl Friedrich Gauss [19 y/o], German mathematician, discovers/proves the construction of the heptadecagon [a seventeen-sided polygon]. This proof represented the first progress in regular polygon construction in over 2000 years.

1856: Russia signs the Treaty of Paris, ending the Crimean War. Russia lost the war to a coalition of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain, and Sardinia.

1858: Hyman L. Lipman, of Philadelphia, patents the pencil, with an eraser attached on one end.

1945: Eric Clapton born.

1950: Phototransistor, invented by Dr. John Northrup Shive, of Bell Laboratorires, announced in Murray Hill, New Jersey.

1953: Albert Einstein announces revised unified field theory.

1959: Dalai Lama flees China, and is granted political asylum in India.

1980: The “Alexander Kielland”, a floating apartment for oil workers [for the production platform Edda 2/7C] in the North Sea, collapses [structural failure], killing 123 people. A total of 89 people survived.
“Broken Chain”, the monument to the Alexander L Kielland disaster, at Smiodden in Kvernevik, outside Stavanger
➥ https://youtu.be/MRgpiPdAVNk

1981: U.S. President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded, in Washington, D.C., by John W. Hinckley Jr. Three others are also wounded, including Jim Brady.
Hinckley was found not guilty, by reason of insanity, but was committed to psychiatric care, until his release in September 2016.

2002: England’s Queen Mother died in her sleep, at the age of 101.

2020: Moscow Russia begins a city-wide lockdown, after 4 hours notice, due to COVID-19.