Monday, March 16:

1521: Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, arrived in the Philippines. Magellan later died there while fighting Indigenous people.

1802: President Thomas Jefferson signed a bill that Congress had passed to establish the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel 'The Scarlet Letter' was published.

1945: U.S. armed forces secured the invaded Japanese island of Iwo Jima, a key landing site for American B-29 bombers in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The Battle of Iwo Jima had lasted more than a month, resulting in the deaths of nearly 7,000 Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers.

1968: U.S. Army soldiers in Vietnam killed about 500 civilians at My Lai, a massacre that was covered up until journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about murder charges against Lt. William Calley, who later received a life sentence that President Richard Nixon commuted before it was reduced to 10 years.

1984: The Shiite militant group Hezbollah kidnapped and tortured William Buckley, chief of the CIA station in Beirut. Buckley died in 1985 after enduring 14 months in terrorist custody, according to the CIA.

1988: A grand jury indicted U.S. Marine veteran Lt. Col. Oliver North and his commander, Vice Adm. John Poindexter, on conspiracy and obstruction charges related to the Iran-Contra affair.

Sunday, March 15:

44 B.C.: Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by about 60 hopeful nobles on the Ides of March, a holiday that marked several religious observances. Instead of restoring the Roman Republic by ending Caesar’s reign, the fatal stabbing spawned civil war.

1917: Imperial rule under the Russian Romanov dynasty ended when Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne. The House of Romanov had reigned since 1613.

1965: President Lyndon Johnson called for equal voting rights legislation during a joint congressional session, a speech that led to the Voting Rights Act that Congress passed and he signed into law about five months later.

1972: 'The Godfather' premiered at Loew’s State Theatre in New York.

2020: States began to implement shutdowns to try to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Saturday, March 14:

1874: Frederick Douglass became president of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Co. He quickly realized it was failing, and trustees agreed in voting to shut down about three months later. Founded amid abolitionism in 1865, the bank aimed to help show former slaves 'how to rise in the world,' Douglass said. Instead, bank budgetary and U.S. economic woes helped lead to its demise with tens of thousands of depositors losing a total of nearly $3 million.

1903: President Theodore Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge, on Pelican Island in the Indian River Lagoon estuary along Florida’s eastern coastline.

1964: Jack Ruby was convicted of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating President John Kennedy. Nightclub owner Ruby received a death sentence, but he died of lung cancer in 1967 while awaiting a new murder trial after a successful appeal.

1995: Out Da Gutta Records, along with Interscope and Atlantic Records, released Tupac Shakur’s 'Me Against the World,' an album that made 2Pac the first male solo artist to top the chart while incarcerated. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 a couple of weeks later.

Friday, March 13:

1862: Congress forbade Union officers and soldiers from aiding in the capture and return of fugitive slaves, invalidating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and ending what amounted to a military slave hunt.

1961: The Temptations auditioned for Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, who initially signed the group to the label’s short-lived imprint Miracle Records.

2020: Louisville Metro Police fatally shot Breonna Taylor while serving a no-knock search warrant to her door while she and her boyfriend were inside her apartment. Months later, mass protests over her death broke out in Louisville.

Thursday, March 12:

1894: Coca-Cola sold its first Coke bottles nearly eight years after its first syrupy, carbonated fountain drinks – created by a pharmacist, Dr. John Pemberton – were served at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta.

1912: Juliette Gordon Low founded what became the Girl Scouts of the USA organization under the name Girl Guides in Savannah, Georgia. The first troop included 18 girls.

2009: Wall Street financier Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to fraud, money laundering and other charges stemming from a Ponzi scheme estimated at $65 billion that included fabricated gains. Three months later, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. He died in a prison medical facility in 2021 from kidney disease.

Wednesday, March 11:

1941: President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Act, which opened the door for American-made supplies to be shipped on loan to the Allies nearly nine months before the U.S. formally joined them by entering World War II.

1985: Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to lead the Soviet Union as head of the ruling Communist Party.

2004: Ten simultaneous explosions on four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killed nearly 200 people and injured over 2,000 more. Spanish investigators later determined 21 people opposed to Spain’s involvement with the 2003 invasion of Iraq carried out the 2004 attacks.

2011: Japan’s largest recorded earthquake spawned a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people and led to nuclear reactor meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi facility. It was the world’s second-largest nuclear disaster, forcing over 100,000 people to flee and about 2,300 related evacuee deaths.

Tuesday, March 10:

1876: Alexander Bell successfully completed the first test of the telephone he patented. Bell made the first telephone call to his assistant and fellow inventor Thomas Watson. 'Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you,' Bell said.

1922: Mahatma Gandhi, a spiritual leader, attorney and nonviolent political activist who later led India’s campaign for independence from the British empire, was arrested. He pleaded guilty to sedition and was sentenced to prison, from which he received early release in 1924.

1959: About 300,000 Tibetans, fearful that China would abduct the Dalai Lama, surrounded his palace in revolt against Chinese occupation that began with a 1950 invasion. A week later, the Buddhist spiritual leader was evacuated to India.

1969: James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to murdering the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in 1998 at age 70.

2022: The World Health Organization said the number of recorded deaths due to COVID-19 was over 6million and cases had surpassed 450million globally. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the actual worldwide death toll and case numbers are likely much higher.

Monday, March 9:

1907: Indiana Gov. J. Frank Hanly signed what’s thought to be the world’s first eugenic sterilization law, based on erroneous science that mandated vasectomies for 'confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists' in state custody. About 2,500 prisoners had been sterilized before Gov. Thomas Marshall halted sterilizations in 1909.

1959: Mattel debuted an 11.5-inch doll named Barbara Millicent Roberts, or Barbie, at the American Toy Fair in New York. The first Barbie dolls – which included a zebra-striped swimsuit – sold for $3. Mattel sold about 300,000 of them in the first year.

1997: Rap artist Christopher Wallace, known as The Notorious B.I.G., 24, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. LAPD accused a Bloods gang member of the fatal shooting.

2011: Space Shuttle Discovery landed for the last time after its 39th Earth-orbiting mission in 27 years. It spent a total of 365 days in space and traveled nearly 150million miles.

Sunday, March 8:

1936: Daytona Beach and Road Course had its first sanctioned oval beach-road stock car race. According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, '27 cars lined up at the starting line on the beach. Ten cars finished. Most got stuck in the sand.'

1950: German automaker Volkswagen began production of its Type 2 Microbuses also known as Transporters. The buses were embraced by the hippie counterculture in the 1960s.

1979: Phillips, a Dutch-based corporation, publicly revealed the compact disc it co-developed with Sony.

Saturday, March 7:

1876: The U.S. Patent Office granted Alexander Bell, of Salem, Massachusetts, a patent for the telephone.

1936: Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles in occupation of the Rhineland, an area of Germany bordering on France, Belgium and the Netherlands that had been ordered to be demilitarized by the 1919 pact ratified after World War I.

1965: State and local police near Selma, Alabama, injured dozens of protesters participating in a 600-person civil rights march that became known as Bloody Sunday.

Friday, March 6:

1820: President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. The law also banned slavery on other lands the United States bought from France in the Louisiana Purchase that were north of Missouri’s southern border.

1836: Mexican armed forces recaptured the Alamo after a 13-day battle in which they killed nearly all 200 defenders of the Texas fort. 'Remember the Alamo' became a rallying cry in subsequent battles of the Texas Revolution.

1857: The Dred Scott decision of the U.S. Supreme Court denied Black people citizenship and denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in any federal territory.

1970: Three people died in an accidental explosion at the New York City townhouse of the Weather Underground, a far-left militant organization founded at the University of Michigan.

2001: Online file-sharing network Napster began complying with a federal court order that required it to halt the peer-to-peer transfer of MP3 music files and other types of copyrighted materials on its network.

Thursday, March 5:

1770: Crispus Attucks, a multiracial escaped enslaved person, was among the first five Americans fatally shot by British sentries in the Boston Massacre, which helped galvanize the colonies against the empire ahead of the Revolutionary War.

1963: Country musicians Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and pilot Randy Hughes died in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.

1983: Michael Jackson’s hit 'Billie Jean' reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of seven consecutive weeks.

Wednesday, March 4:

1789: The U.S. Congress met at New York City’s Federal Hall for its first session, tasked with setting up rules for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to run the new branch of government.

1837: Chicago was incorporated as a city when Illinois legislators approved its charter.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln during his first inaugural address, said secession by Southern states was essentially anarchy, adding: 'You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.'

1918: Likely the first global case of the influenza pandemic – later called the Spanish flu – was reported by U.S. Army Pvt. Albert Gitchell, a cook at Fort Riley, Kansas. Estimates are that up to 100million people’s deaths were related to the virus that caused the pandemic from 1918-1920.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt detailed the 'New Deal' economic plan during his inaugural address to reinvigorate Americans amid the Great Depression, noting 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'

Tuesday, March 3:

1859: One of the largest sales of enslaved Africans in America concluded at Ten Broeck Race Course on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. The two-day sale of 436 men, women and children raised over $300,000 to help pay the debts of Pierce Butler, the owner of Butler Island Plantation near the track who had inherited and squandered much wealth. The sale became known as the Weeping Time.

1863: Congress adopted the Conscription Act for the first time, implementing the national draft system amid the Civil War that required the registration of every male citizen and immigrant who had applied for citizenship between the ages of 20 and 45. The law exempted men who paid a $300 fee.

1915: 'The Birth of a Nation,' a film that drew backlash for its negative depictions of Black people, opened in New York City. The silent film was first shown publicly in Riverside, California, earlier that year under the name, 'The Clansman.'

1931: 'The Star-Spangled Banner' became the national anthem after President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional act.

1991: Los Angeles police officers beat an intoxicated Rodney King after a high-speed chase initiated by California Highway Patrol. Four officers were later charged with assault and using excessive force; all four were acquitted of assault, while three of the four were acquitted of using excessive force and the fourth officer’s trial ended in a hung jury. The acquittals sparked six days of riots in 1992 that included 63 deaths, as well as thousands of costly fires, before state and federal military took control to restore peace.

Monday, March 2:

1807: Congress banned the slave trade, prohibiting 'the importation of slaves into the United States or the territories thereof' after Jan.1, 1808.

1836: Texas declared its independence from neighboring Mexico, which had gained its own independence from Spain in 1821. In 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States as the 28th state.

1861: Texas officially declared its independence from the Union, becoming the seventh state to secede.

1917: President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill into law granting U.S. citizenship to people who live in Puerto Rico.

1962: Philadelphia Warriors star Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points – the most of any NBA player in a single game – against the New York Knickerbockers in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Sunday, March 1:

1642: Georgeana (now York, Maine) was the first city to be incorporated in what became the United States.

1872: Yellowstone National Park, the first of its kind, was established on 2 million acres in parts of present-day Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as a federally protected natural reserve dedicated to the public for their enjoyment.

1932: Charles Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped. After the baby was found dead, Bruno Hauptmann was convicted and executed by electrocution for the kidnapping and murder.

1964: Rebecca Crumpler became the first Black woman to receive a doctoral degree in medicine after the board of trustees at the New England Female Medical College conferred her the title of M.D.

Saturday, Feb. 28:

1784: John Wesley chartered the United States’ first Methodist Church after the Church of England’s refusal to ordain priests for America.

1953: Scientists at Cambridge University announced the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.

1983: Setting the record for the largest audience share for a single TV episode, the 21/2-hour final episode of 'MAS*H' drew 77% of the viewing audience.

1993: An unsuccessful raid by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to investigate possible illegal possession of firearms at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, ended with four dead agents and six dead Branch Davidians. The ceasefire began a standoff lasting several weeks and ending with the deaths of leader David Koresh and at least 80 followers, including 22 children.

2013: Pope Benedict XVI resigned, becoming the first pope to step down since Pope Gregory XII in 1415.

Friday, Feb. 27:

1827: A group of students kicked off a tradition new to New Orleans of dancing through the streets in masks and costumes to celebrate Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, the last day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Christian observance of Lent.

1844: The Dominican Republic declared its independence and began its war to secure freedom from Haiti as roughly 100 men captured the fortress of Puerta del Conde in Santo Domingo.

1951: The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, limiting the number of terms a person can serve as president to two.

1973: Led by members of the American Indian Movement, some of them armed, about 200 Native Americans occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. During the 71-day occupation, federal agents shot and killed two men, and several others were injured before a surrender was secured in exchange for officials agreeing to investigate the group’s complaints.

Thursday, Feb. 26:

1815: The exiled Napoleon Bonaparte escaped his confinement on Elba. Bonaparte reached France and began his march toward Paris, gaining support along the way before briefly reclaiming control of his empire.

1919: Grand Canyon National Park was established in northwestern Arizona. Ten years later on the same date, Grand Teton National Park was established in Wyoming.

1938: The National Dollar Stores Strike began in San Francisco. Three months later, the Chinese Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union won a 5% raise, 40-hour workweek and agreement to enforce health and safety standards.

1993: A terrorist attack targeted the World Trade Center in New York City with a bomb delivered in a truck left in a parking garage, killing six and injuring more than 1,000 but not causing critical structural damage. The attack’s mastermind, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was captured in 1995 and later convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Wednesday, Feb. 25:

1570: Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England with a papal bull calling her 'the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime,' after the queen had in 1559 restored independence from papal authority to the Church of the England and Church of Ireland.

1862: To help finance the Civil War after gold and silver reserves had been diminished, Congress passed the Legal Tender Act, allowing the use of paper money to pay the federal government’s bills.

1919: For the first time, a state enacted a tax on gasoline as Oregon began charging 1cent per gallon.

2020: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the nation to prepare for mitigation efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19, including canceling of gatherings, as well as shutdowns of schools and workplaces.

Monday, Feb. 23:

1836: During the Texas Revolution, Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began the siege of the Alamo. Unprepared for the encounter and drastically outnumbered, the defenders of the fort lasted until March6, most of them dying in the engagement.

1885: A condemned 19-year-old man was spared from his execution when the gallows’ trap door malfunctioned and did not drop him to his death in Exeter, England. After the hanging was attempted two more times and failed, the incident was called an act of God and the prisoner, John Lee, had his sentence commuted, spending 22 more years in prison before being released.

1954: The first children to receive the new polio vaccine were inoculated at Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh. The vaccine, created by Dr. Jonas Salk, helped cut polio cases by 99% worldwide by the 21st century.

2000: Carlos Santana’s album 'Supernatural' won nine Grammy Awards, breaking a record previously set by Michael Jackson’s 'Thriller,' with Santana himself receiving eight of those awards to tie Jackson for the most in one night.

Sunday, Feb. 22:

1879: Frank Woolworth opened the first of his many Woolworth’s stores in Utica, New York. Before long, the store failed, but Woolworth tried again and found more lasting success with stores in Pennsylvania.

1974: While attempting to hijack a plane from Baltimore/Washington International Airport, Samuel Byck killed a police officer and a pilot but was shot and wounded, then took his own life. Byck had intended to crash a plane into the White House to kill President Richard Nixon.

1980: Amid Cold War tensions, the U.S. men’s hockey team defeated the Soviet Union in the medal round of the Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. The game became known as the 'Miracle on Ice,' as the Soviets had won the past four gold medals. The Americans went on to defeat Finland in the last game of the round-robin format to secure the gold.

1989: At the 31st Annual Grammy Awards, the first time an award was presented for Best Rap Performance, the Grammy went to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince for 'Parents Just Don’t Understand.'

Saturday, Feb. 21:

1437: Scotland’s King James I was assassinated, elevating James II, who was 6.

1848: Karl Marx published 'The Communist Manifesto,' characterizing society by 'class struggles' and predicting the working class would bring an end to the class structure.

1866: Lucy Hobbs Taylor became the first woman to earn a doctorate in dentistry, graduating from Ohio College of Dental Surgery.

1885: Fashioned after Egyptian obelisks, the Washington Monument was dedicated in Washington, DC, to honor the nation’s first president. It was, at the time, the tallest structure in the world at just over 555 feet.

1947: Edwin Land demonstrated his instant camera and its film for the Optical Society of America in New York. The invention was later marketed by Polaroid as the Land Camera.

1965: Civil rights leader Malcolm X, 39, was assassinated at a speaking engagement at the Audubon Ballroom in New York. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted in the fatal shooting, imprisoned and later paroled. In 2021, two of the men’s convictions were thrown out when an investigation found the FBI and New York Police Department had withheld evidence that might have helped their defense.

2021: The COVID-19 death toll in the United States officially passed 500,000.

2022: Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic as states separate from Ukraine, moving Russian troops into the eastern Ukrainian territories.

Friday, Feb. 20:

1816: Gioachino Rossini’s opera 'The Barber of Seville' premiered in Rome at the Teatro Argentina. Just like the French play on which it was based, Rossini’s opera was poorly received on its opening night but soon became a success.

1872: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was opened to the public.

1905: In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that upheld states’ authority to institute compulsory vaccination laws.

1939: A German American group hosted more than 20,000 people at a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden celebrating the rise of Nazis.

1962: John Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft and became the first American to orbit the Earth.

2003: A pyrotechnic display during a concert by the band Great White ignited a fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, killing 100 people and injuring nearly 200.

Thursday, Feb. 19:

1847: Rescuers reached the stranded Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Only 45 of the original 89 members who set out to California survived to reach their destination after the expedition became snowbound.

1878: Thomas Edison received a patent for the first device to both record and replay sound, the phonograph.

1942: President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order forcing Japanese Americans into internment camps.

1992: For his film 'Boyz N the Hood,' John Singleton became the first Black director to be nominated for an Academy Award. His screenplay for the film also was nominated for an Oscar.

2002: NASA’s Mars Odyssey probe began mapping the elements on the planet’s surface.