March 1, 1932 – The 20-month-old son of aviation pioneer Charles A. Lindbergh was kidnapped from his home in Hopewell, New Jersey. The Lindberghs then paid a $50,000 ransom. However, on May 12, the boy’s body was found in a wooded area a few miles from the house.
March 1, 1961 – President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps.
March 1, 1974 – Seven former high-ranking officials of the Nixon White House were indicted for conspiring to obstruct the investigation into the Watergate break-in.
March 3, 1913 – A women’s suffrage march in WashingtonD.C. was attacked by angry onlookers while police stood by. Many of the 5,000 women participating were spat upon and struck in the face as a near riot ensued.
March 3, 1831 – Railroad car builder George Pullman (1831-1897) was born in Brocton, New York. He improved railroad sleeping accommodations and his company went on to become the biggest railroad car building organization in the world.
March 13, 1847 – Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Bell and his father were involved in teaching deaf persons to speak. Bell developed an interest in the vibrating membrane as a method of electrically transmitting sounds. His very first sentence spoken on the newly invented telephone on March 10, 1876, was to his assistant, “Mister Watson, come here, I want you.”
March 4, 1789 – The first meeting of the new Congress under the new U.S. Constitution took place in New York City.
March 4, 1933 – Newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office and delivered his first inaugural address attempting to restore public confidence during the Great Depression, stating, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”
March 5, 1770 – The Boston Massacre occurred as a group of rowdy Americans harassed British soldiers who then opened fire, killing five and injuring six.
March 5, 1946 – The “Iron Curtain” speech was delivered by Winston Churchill at WestminsterCollege in Fulton, Missouri.
March 5, 1475 – Renaissance genius Michelangelo (1475-1564) was born in Caprese, Italy. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, poet and visionary best known for his fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and his sculptures “David” and “The Pieta.”
March 5, 1451 – Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512) was born in Florence, Italy. He explored South America and the Amazon River, believing he had discovered a new continent. In 1507, a German mapmaker first referred to the lands discovered in the New World as America.
March 5, 1934 – Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) was born in Gzhatsk, Russia. On April 12, 1961, he became the first human in space, orbiting in a capsule 187 miles above the Earth’s surface in a flight lasting 108 minutes. His space flight caused a worldwide sensation and marked the beginning of the space race as the U.S. worked to catch up to the Russians and launch an American into space.
March 10, 1862 – The first issue of U.S. government paper money occurred as $5, $10 and $20 bills began circulation.
March 12, 1609 – The island of Bermuda was colonized by the British after a ship on its way to Virginia was wrecked on the reefs.
March 12, 1938 – Nazis invaded Austria, and then absorbed the country into Hitler’s Reich.
March 12, 1879 – Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born in Ulm, Germany. His theory of relativity led to new ways of thinking about time, space, matter and energy. He received a Nobel Prize in 1921 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1933 where he was an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany.
March 17 – Celebrated as Saint Patrick’s Day commemorating the patron saint of Ireland.
March 18, 1974 – The five-month-old Arab oil embargo against the U.S. was lifted. In the U.S., the resulting embargo had caused long lines at gas stations as prices soared 300 percent amid shortages and a government ban on Sunday gas sales.
March 19, 2003 – The United States launched an attack against Iraq to topple dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
March 19, 1904 – American psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He pioneered theories of behaviorism and developed the Skinner box, a controlled environment for studying behavior.
March 23, 1775 – Patrick Henry ignited the American Revolution with a speech before the Virginia convention in Richmond, stating, “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
March 24, 1989 – One of the largest oil spills in U.S. history occurred as the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound off Alaska, resulting in 11 million gallons of oil leaking into the natural habitat over a stretch of 45 miles.
March 24, 1874 – Harry Houdini (1874-1926) was born (as Erik Weisz) in Budapest, Hungary. He began as a Coney Island magician, and then became a world famous escape artist, known for escaping from chains, handcuffs, straightjackets, locked boxes and milk cans filled with water. He died on Halloween 1926 from a burst appendix and was buried in Queens, NY.
March 28, 1979 – Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident occurred in which uranium in the reactor core overheated due to the failure of a cooling valve. A pressure relief valve then stuck causing the water level to plummet, threatening a catastrophic nuclear meltdown. The accident resulted in the release of radioactive steam into the atmosphere, and created a storm of controversy over the necessity and safety of nuclear power plants.
March 30, 1981 – Newly elected President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest while walking toward his limousine in Washington, D.C., following a speech inside a hotel. The president was then rushed into surgery to remove a 22-caliber bullet from his left lung. “I should have ducked,” Reagan joked.
