This Week in History 3/13-3/19

This Week in History

March 13:

• US Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers (1865)
• Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the NY Lantern weekly (1852)
• Hernán Cortés lands in Mexico (1519)
• William Herschel sees what he thinks is a “comet” but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus (1781)
• Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory (1930)
• Senate begins US President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial (1868)
• WW2: Failed assassin attempt on Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight (1943)
• The Butler Law in Tennessee makes it unlawful to teach anything but creationism (1925)
• Great Blizzard of 1888 rages (1888)
• US adopts Standard Time (1884)
• American banks allowed to reopen after a government imposed bank holiday (1933)
• Cambridge College renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard (1639)

March 14:

• Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin (1794)
• Jack Ruby sentenced to death for murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the murderer of JFK (1964)
• JFK’s body moved from temporary grave to a permanent memorial (1967)
• On board HMS Monarch, his own flagship, British Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad for neglecting his duty (1757)
• War of 1812: Congress authorizes war bonds to finance the war (1812)
• African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded (1821)
• WW2: Nazi occupiers of Holland forbid Jewish owned companies (1941)
• By Presidential order, the US excludes Japanese laborers from entering the country (1907)
• John D. Rockefeller gives $100 million to Rockefeller Foundation (1913)
• FBI’s “10 Most Wanted Fugitives” program begins (1950)

March 15:

• US Revolutionary War: In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy; the threatened coup never takes place (1783)
• Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March (44 BC)
• First US presidential press conference by Woodrow Wilson (1913)
• The first Internet domain name, symbolics.com is registered (1985)
• Maine admitted as 23rd US state (1820)
• WW2: Hermann Goering says 100-200 church bells enough for Germany, smelt the rest (1940)
• Five research groups announce the discovery of anti-matter (1962)
• First escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno (1892)
• Cleveland establishes first small claims court (1913)
• First state contraceptive clinic opens in Raleigh NC (1937)
• Pluto again becomes outermost planet (1999)

March 16:

• Babylonians capture Jerusalem, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king (597 AD)
• WW2: Adolf Hitler orders German rearmament in violation of The Treaty of Versailles (1935)
• US Civil War: Edward Clark became Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who was evicted from the office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy (1861)
• First publication of an article by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery (1867)
• Law signed to establish US Military Academy in West Point, New York (1802)
• Native American chief visits colony of Plymouth Massachusetts (1621)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter published (1850)
• Mississippi House of Representatives formally abolishes slavery & ratifies 13th Amendment (1995)
• Barnum & Bailey Circus debuts (1881)
• US Senate ratifies treaty establishing the Red Cross (1882)
• Holy spirit glides above fire in “the miracle of Amsterdam” (1345)
• Dow-Jones hits record 4069.15 (1995)

March 17:

• Saint Patrick, missionary to Ireland, died (461 AD)
• Saint Patrick aged 16 is carried off to Ireland as a slave (432 AD)
• Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi when 20 African Americans are killed (1886)
• Golda Meir becomes Israel’s 4th Prime Minister (1969)
• Amanda Berry, evangelist and song writer who was born a slave, become a Christian (1856)
• Texas abolishes slavery for a short time (1836)
• John Philip Holland achieves successful test runs of the first modern submarine off Staten Island (1898)
• Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines (1521)
• Rubber band patented by Stephen Perry of London (1845)
• First St. Patrick’s Day celebration held in United States (1737)
• WW2: General Doug MacArthur arrives in Australia to become supreme commander (1942)
• At a show in Paris 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings cause a sensation, 11 years after his death (1901)
• Italy declares independence; Kingdom of Italy proclaimed (1861)

March 18:

• Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II crowns himself King of Jerusalem (1229)
• US Civil War: Congress of Confederate States of American adjourns for last time (1865)
• WW2: Benito Mussolini joins Hitler in Germany’s war against France & Britain (1940)
• Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space (1965)
• First free elections in East Germany, Conservatives beat Communists (1990)
• President Hayes appoints Frederick Douglass marshal of Washington DC (1875)
• 2 black players, Jackie Robinson & Nate Moreland, request a tryout with the Chicago White Sox (1942)
• Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights (1874)
• US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Hawaii statehood bill (1959)
• According to legend, Tenochtitlan is founded on this date (1325)
• Morgan Earp is assassinated by outlaws while playing billiards in Tombstone (1882)
• Phoebe, a moon of Saturn is discovered by William Pickering (1899)
• British magistrates in India sentence Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years imprisonment for disobedience (1922)
• Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France (1314)
• Largest art robbery in US history: 13 works of art worth over $500 million are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (1990)

March 19:

• US Congress authorizes time zones & approves daylight saving time (1918)
• Massachusetts Bay Colony granted land by England (1628)
• WW2: FDR orders men between 45 & 64 to register for non-military duty (1942)
• WW2: Adolf Hitler issues “Nero Decree” to destroy all German factories (1945)
• Boston, Massachusetts incorporated as a city (1822)
• Chicago 8 indicted in aftermath of Chicago Democratic convention (1969)
• Invasion of Iraq by American and British led coalition begins (2003)
• US Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles for 2nd time refusing to ratify League of Nations’ covenant (1920)
• WW2: 800 killed as Kamikaze attacked USS Franklin off Japan (1945)
• First US bank robbery (1831)
• 200 members of Peking imperial family/court commit suicide in loyalty to the Emperor (1644)
• Pluto photographed for first time (1915)
• 200 members of Peking imperial family/court commit suicide in loyalty to the Emperor (1644)
• US Civil War: 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 (1863)