March 21 - Events

Events

• 537 – Siege of Rome: King Vitiges attempts to assault the northern and eastern city walls, but is repulsed at the Praenestine Gate, known as the Vivarium, by the defenders under the Byzantine generals Bessas and Peranius.
• 717 – Battle of Vincy between Charles Martel and Ragenfrid.
• 1152 – Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.
• 1188 – Emperor Antoku accedes to the throne of Japan.
• 1413 – Henry V becomes King of England.
• 1556 – In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.
• 1788 – A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins.
• 1800 – With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché.
• 1801 – The Battle of Alexandria is fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis in Egypt.
• 1804 – Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law.
• 1814 – Napoleonic Wars: Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube.
• 1821 – Greek War of Independence: First revolutionary act in the monastery of Agia Lavra, Kalavryta.
• 1844 – The Bahá'í calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Bahá'í calendar. It is annually celebrated by members of the Bahá'í Faith as the Bahá'í New Year or Náw-Rúz.
• 1857 – An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan kills over 100,000.
• 1871 – Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire.
• 1871 – Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone.
• 1913 – Over 360 are killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio.
• 1918 – World War I: The first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, begins.
• 1919 – The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established becoming the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia.
• 1921 – The New Economic Policy is implemented by the Bolshevik Party in response to the economic failure as a result of War Communism.
• 1925 – Syngman Rhee is removed from office after being impeached as the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.
• 1928 – Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
• 1933 – Construction of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed.
• 1935 – Shah Reza Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, which means 'Land of the Aryans.'
• 1937 – Ponce Massacre: 18 people and a 7-year-old girl in Ponce, Puerto Rico, are gunned down by a police squad acting under orders of US-appointed Governor, Blanton C. Winship.
• 1943 – Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through. Von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.
• 1945 – World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma.
• 1945 – World War II: Operation Carthage – British planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also hit a school and 125 civilians are killed.
• 1945 – World War II: Bulgaria and the Soviet Union successfully complete their defense of the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes.
• 1946 – The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in the American football since 1933.
• 1952 – Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1960 – Apartheid: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
• 1963 – Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes.
• 1964 – In Copenhagen, Denmark, Gigliola Cinquetti wins the ninth Eurovision Song Contest for Italy singing "Non ho l'età" ("I'm not old enough").
• 1965 – Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9 which is the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes.
• 1965 – Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
• 1968 – Battle of Karameh in Jordan between Israeli Defense Forces and Fatah.
• 1970 – The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Mayor of San Francisco Joseph Alioto.
• 1980 – US President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
• 1989 – Sports Illustrated reports allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling.
• 1990 – Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule.
• 1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.