March 8 - Events

Events

• 1010 – Ferdowsi completes his epic poem Shāhnāmeh.
• 1126 – Following the death of his mother Urraca, Alfonso VII is proclaimed king of Castile and León.
• 1576 – Spanish explorer Diego García de Palacio first sights the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán.
• 1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
• 1655 – John Casor becomes the first legally-recognized slave in England's North American colonies.
• 1702 – Anne Stuart, sister of Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
• 1722 – The Safavid Empire of Iran is defeated by an army from Afghanistan at The Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.
• 1736 – Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.
• 1775 – An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes "African Slavery in America", the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.
• 1777 – Regiments from Ansbach and Bayreuth, sent to support Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, mutiny in the town of Ochsenfurt.
• 1782 – Gnadenhütten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity are killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.
• 1817 – The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
• 1844 – King Oscar I ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
• 1862 – American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
• 1868 – Sakai incident: Japanese samurai kill 11 French sailors in the port of Sakai near Osaka.
• 1910 – French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot's license.
• 1911 – International Women's Day is launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
• 1916 – World War I: A British force unsuccessfully attempts to relieve the siege of Kut (present-day Iraq) in the Battle of Dujaila.
• 1917 – International Women's Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (so named because it was February on the Julian calendar).
• 1917 – The United States Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
• 1920 – The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.
• 1921 – Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid.
• 1924 – The Castle Gate mine disaster kills 172 coal miners near Castle Gate, Utah.
• 1936 – Daytona Beach Road Course holds its first oval stock car race.
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The Battle of Guadalajara begins.
• 1942 – World War II: The Dutch surrender to Japanese forces on Java.
• 1949 – Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") is condemned to prison for treason.
• 1957 – Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.
• 1957 – The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitions the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th & 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, is adopted by the U.S. state of Georgia.
• 1957 – Ghana joins the United Nations.
• 1963 – The Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.
• 1966 – A bomb planted by Irish Republicans destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.
• 1974 – Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.
• 1977 – The Parliament of Australia is opened by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia.
• 1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4.
• 1979 – Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.
• 1983 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "evil empire".
• 1985 – A failed assassination attempt on Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.
• 1999 – The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing.
• 2004 – A new constitution is signed by Iraq's Governing Council.