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The most famous events that happened in the month of March:
The 20-month-old son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped from his crib and later found murdered. H.L. Mencken called it “the biggest story since the Resurrection.” A later trial convicted Bruno Richard Hauptmann despite lingering questions about his guilt.
The Battle of the Bismarck Sea was a decisive Allied victory where coordinated air attacks sank all eight Japanese transports and four destroyers attempting to reinforce New Guinea. It resulted in a horrible spectacle of Allied aircraft striking Japanese survivors floating in the water.
More than 5,000 suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. during the Woman Suffrage Procession. Police protection failed so dramatically that over 200 people were treated for injuries at local hospitals as hostile crowds overwhelmed the parade route.
Frances Perkins took office as Secretary of Labor in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet, becoming the first woman to serve in any U.S. presidential cabinet, despite facing opposition from labor leaders who questioned her credentials and senators who objected to her retaining her maiden name after marriage.
British soldiers fired into a crowd of harassing colonists during the Boston Massacre. They killed five people and ignited the American Revolution. Two soldiers were later convicted of manslaughter, receiving only the bizarre punishment of having their thumbs branded in open court.
The Battle of the Alamo ended. During the battle, Santa Anna’s Mexican forces overwhelmed approximately 200 Texian defenders after a 13-day siege.
“Bloody Sunday” occurred when Alabama state troopers violently attacked 600 civil rights marchers with tear gas and batons at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. It left 17 people hospitalized and 50 injured, including future Congressman John Lewis, who suffered a skull fracture.
The February Revolution erupted in Petrograd. The revolution overthrew Tsar Nicholas II after 300 years of Romanov rule when hungry protesters were joined by mutinous soldiers, including those from the Pavlovsky Reserve Regiment who broke out of their barracks and fired on mounted police.
Brigadier General Edwin H. Stoughton was captured in bed during John S. Mosby’s daring raid at Fairfax Court House—a humiliating incident that prompted President Lincoln to remark he cared less about losing the general than the horses, which “cost $125 apiece.”
Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant Thomas Watson with the words, “Mr. Watson, come here - I want to see you.”
The Great Blizzard of 1888 struck the eastern United States for three days. The storm paralyzed cities with up to 58 inches of snow and created 50-foot drifts so massive they completely buried three-story houses.
Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March through 387 kilometers of colonial India to protest British salt taxation. It ended with a remarkable spectacle at Dharasana Salt Works, where nonviolent protestors willingly stood still as police beat them unconscious—their bodies “quilting the ground” in pools of blood.
Astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus, the seventh planet in our solar system. He found that the planet rotates on its side with its axis nearly perpendicular to its orbital path.
Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad for “failing to do his utmost” in battle—the only British admiral ever executed for military failure. Voltaire would later satirize the event in Candide with the famous line about killing an admiral “to encourage the others.”
Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of approximately 60 Roman senators who stabbed him 23 times in the Theatre of Pompey.
U.S. Army soldiers massacred between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in My Lai village during the Vietnam War. One soldier photographed a four-year-old girl being saved from a ditch of corpses by a helicopter crewman who had intervened to stop the killings.
The British evacuated Boston with a fleet of 120 ships carrying 11,000 people, including 9,906 troops. They left behind wooden dummies on Bunker Hill to deceive the Americans.
The Arab oil embargo was lifted after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia ended the restrictions. It was the end of an economic crisis that had quadrupled global oil prices and dramatically reshaped international geopolitics.
Nevada legalized gambling, transforming Las Vegas from a dusty railroad town into America’s gambling mecca. In the coming years, mobsters like Bugsy Siegel violently seized control of the industry, culminating in his dramatic 1947 assassination after opening the Flamingo Hotel.
Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult executed a coordinated terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system, releasing sarin nerve gas during morning rush hour that killed 14 people and injured over 1,000. The cultist used sharpened umbrella tips to puncture plastic bags containing the deadly chemical.
The Moondog Coronation Ball, widely recognized as the first major rock and roll concert, ended in chaos. Approximately 20,000 people attempted to crowd into Cleveland Arena, which held only about half that capacity, forcing authorities to shut down the event after just one song.
The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by both houses of Congress. It had a seven-year deadline for ratification that was later extended to 1982, but despite reaching 35 state ratifications (three short of the required 38), it still remains unratified today. Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it in 2020, decades after the deadline expired.
Patrick Henry delivered his famous “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech at St. John’s Church in Richmond,Virginia, dramatically plunging a bone paper knife toward his chest in imitation of Roman patriot Cato the Younger to convince the Second Virginia Convention to prepare for war against Britain.
The Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck Alaska’s Bligh Reef and spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. The spill contaminated 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds. The captain—who was blamed for the disaster but later acquitted of three major charges—wasn’t even at the controls when the ship crashed.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women after they found exit doors deliberately locked by factory owners. The fire forced desperate victims to jump from ninth-floor windows while onlookers watched helplessly below.
Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in Palmyra, New York, a controversial religious text that he claimed was translated from golden plates shown to him by an angel named Moroni. It became the foundational scripture of what grew into the Mormon church (LDS).
Two Boeing 747 passenger jets collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, killing 583 people. It was aviation’s deadliest accident, which occurred partly because the KLM captain—whose photograph appeared in the airline’s in-flight magazine aboard his own doomed plane—attempted takeoff without clearance in dense fog.
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania experienced a partial meltdown. It was America’s worst commercial nuclear accident. The meltdown caused approximately 140,000 people to evacuate. The stuck-open relief valve was mistaken as closed by operators due to a misleading control panel light. It leaked 32,000 gallons of radioactive coolant.
A group of Chinese farmers digging a well near Mount Li in Lintong County accidentally discovered the Terracotta Army—an underground collection of over 8,000 life-sized ceramic soldiers created to guard Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife, with each warrior possessing a unique face.
President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by John Hinckley Jr. outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. The assassination attempt was motivated by Hinckley’s delusional obsession with actress Jodie Foster and his attempt to impress her after watching the film “Taxi Driver” at least 15 times.
President Lyndon B. Johnson shocked the nation during a televised address by announcing he would not seek reelection. He was influenced partly by CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s criticism of the Vietnam War, which prompted Johnson to reportedly lament, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
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