This Week in History 3/6 – 3/12

This Week in History

March 6:

• Missionary to India, Amy Carmichael committed her first of many kidnappings by sheltering a young girl dedicated to the Hindu gods and forced into prostitution (1901)
• US Supreme Court rules Africans cannot be US citizens in the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
• Battle of Alamo ends when 1,500-3,000 Mexicans overwhelm the Texans at the Alamo, killing 182-257 Texans including William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett (1836)
• First US alternating current power plant starts in Massachusetts (1886)
• Artist Michelangelo Buonarroti was born (1475)
• Acetylaslicylic acid, known as Aspirin, patented by Felix Hoffmann at German company Bayer (1899)
• After a meeting in Indianapolis, USA, a group forms the Social Democratic Party, later becoming the Socialist Party (1900)
• Silly Putty invented (1950)
• Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table of the elements to the Russian Chemical Society (1869)
• Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Allilujeva asks for political asylum in US (1967)
• In Germany, the Edict of Restitution ordered that all church property secularized since 1552 be restored to the Roman Catholic Church (1629)
• The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, alleged Soviet spies, begins (1951)
• Illinois passes first state vaccination legislation in US (1810)
• Magellan discovers Guam (1521)
• Edgar Allen Poe removed from West Point military academy (1831)
• Cassius Clay joins the Nation of Islam and is renamed Muhammad Ali (1964)

March 7:

• Christians Perpetua and Felicitas were martyred by being thrown to wild beast as they joyfully praised God and encouraged other believers (202 AD)
• Ohio Territory militiamen began a two-day massacre of the Moravian Indian town of Gnadenhutten killing 96 Christian Delaware Native Americans in retaliation for Indian raids made elsewhere (1782)
• Alexander Graham Bell patents telephone (1876)
• Alabama state troopers & 600 black protesters clash in Selma (1965)
• Cincinnati Mayor Mark Breith stood before city council & announces that, “women are not physically fit to operate automobiles” (1908)
• Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti, sun-day, is the day of rest in the Empire (321 AD)
• Colonial preacher Anne Hutchinson and nineteen other exiles from the Massachusetts Bay Colony settled in Rhode Island (1638)
• Russian February Revolution breaks out [OS=Feb 24] with strike at Putilov factory in Petrograd (1917)
• WW2: Hitler breaks Treaty of Versailles, sends troops to Rhineland (1936)
• Captain James Cook first sights Oregon coast at Yaquina Bay (1778)
• First jazz record record released on a 78 (1917)
• King Henry VIII’s divorce request is denied by the Pope; Henry then declares that he, not the Pope, is supreme head of England’s church (1530)
• US Navy issues first permanent order assigning women on combat ship (1994)
• Birth of Peter Cameron Scott, founder of the Africa Inland Mission (1867)
• In Washington, D.C., the first Baptist church was organized with six charter members (1802)
• Game of Monopoly invented (1933)

March 8:

• Great Awakening revivalist Gilbert Tennent preached a sermon, The Danger of An Unconverted Ministry, refuting church leaders who opposed the Great Awakening and starting the New Light movement of knowing God more intimately (1740)
• When the Communist Polish government banned public crosses, three thousand students protested, waving crucifixes in the air (1984)
• Gnadenhutten Massacre – Ohio militia kills 90 Indians (1782)
• The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic (1918)
• Susan B. Anthony addresses the U.S. House Judiciary Committee arguing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote (1884)
• Russian Revolution, also known as February Revolution, begans (1917)
• First flight of the Goodyear blimp (1972)
• US Supreme Court rules in McCollum v. Board of Education that religious instruction in public schools is unconstitutional (1948)
• Edwin Hubble photo shows as many galaxies as Milky Way has stars (1934)
• The first meeting of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698)
• New York Stock Exchange is founded (1817)
• In The Spectator, English essayist Joseph Addison wrote: “To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.” (1711)
• President Reagan first known use of term “Evil Empire” about the USSR in speech in Florida (1983)
• Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris becomes the 1st ever licensed female pilot (1910)
• Malcolm X resigns from the Nation of Islam (1964)
• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people loses contact and disappears, prompting the most expensive search effort in history (2014)

March 9:

• 40 Roman soldiers refused to denounce Christ and marched naked into ice cold water to be martyred praying 40 would receive crowns of life. When one lost his nerve, a guard took his place and received Christ as his savior (320 AD)
• WW1: Otterman Turks Interior Minister Talaat issued a directive to wipe out all Christian Armenians; one and a half million died in the next few months (1915)
• WW2: 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs in the single deadliest air raid of the war (1945)
• Russian Bolshevik Party becomes the Communist Party (1918)
• The first Barbie doll makes her debut at the American Toy Fair in New York City (1959)
• WW2: Last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in Philippines, surrenders, 29 years after World War II ended (1974)
• First Ford Mustang produced (1964)
• US Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant is appointed commander of Union Army (1894)
• First female cadets accepted to West Point Military Academy (1976)
• Phoebe Palmer Knapp, author of over 500 hymns, was born (1839)
• The World Radio Missionary Fellowship was incorporated in Lima, Ohio which today broadcasts the Gospel in 15 languages to South America and Europe (1931)
• Publication of the influential economics book The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1976)
• Supreme Court issues NY Times vs Sullivan decision, public officials must prove malice to claim libel & recover damages (1964)
• Marten Luther begins preaching his Invocavit Sermons in the German city of Wittenberg (1522)
• Publication of the influential economics book “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith (1776)
• US Congress is called into special session by FDR, beginning its “100 days” (1933)

March 10:

• Slave-ship Captain and author of Amazing Grace, John Newton, gave his life to Christ (1748)
• First telephone call made, Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Watson (1876)
• US Senate approves amendment lowering voting age to 18 (1971)
• Dante, author of Divine Comedy, was exiled out of Italy (1302)
• Anabaptist leader Balthasar Hubmaier was martyred by being burned at the stake (1528)
• Quaker William Penn received a charter from Charles II for the colonial American territory known today as the state of Pennsylvania (1681)
• A group of Salvation Army members invaded New York City as “missionaries to America” (1880)
• US Revolutionary War: USS Alliance under Captain Barry fights and wins last naval battle of US Revolutionary War off Cape Canaveral (1783)
• Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent, only US president to do so, for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions (1849)

March 11:

• US army Corps of Engineers established (1779)
• US Civil War: Confederate convention in Montgomery adopts constitution (1861)
• Benjamin Banneker and Pierre Charles L’Enfant begin to lay out Washington, D.C. (1789)
• Menachem Begin & Anwar Sadat sign peace treaty in Washington, D.C. (1982)
• Muslims hold 130 hostages in Washington DC (1977)
• WW2: First deportation train leaves Paris for Auschwitz Concentration Camp (1942)
• Great blizzard of ’88 strikes northeastern US (1888)
• 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 130 km east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people and causing the second worst nuclear accident in history (2011)
• US War Dept creates the Bureau of Indian Affair (1824)
• WW2: Hermann Goering officially creates German Air Force, the Luftwaffe (1935)
• New York’s English Deputies approved a new legal code, which guaranteed all Protestants the right to practice their religious observances unhindered (1665)
• US Civil War: Lincoln removes George McClellen as general-in-chief (1862)
• Woman’s Medical College of Penn becomes first female medical school (1850)
• A meteorite enters the earth’s atmosphere and explodes over New Martinsville, West Virginia (1897)
• Ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry are launched into space (1997)
• Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia (1918)
• Felix Mendelssohn arranged to have Bach’s St. Matthew Passion played March 11, almost exactly a century from the date of its first, long-forgotten performance (1829)
• Goths lay siege to Rome (537 AD)

March 12:

• After years in exile, Jews finish rebuilding the temple of God (515 BC)
• First record of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the bible printed a year before (1455)
• WW2: Nazi Germany invades Austria (1938)
• US lowers voting age from 21 to 18 (1970)
• US House joins Senate approving Hawaii statehood (1959)
• New Jersey becomes an English colony (1664)
• Girl Guides, now known as Girl Scouts, forms in Savannah, by Juliette Gordon Low (1912)
• Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi (1894)
• FDR conducts his first “fireside chat” (1933)
• President Harry Truman introduces Truman-doctrine to fight communism (1947)
• Congress accepts Pre-emption Bill: free land in West for colonists (1860)