March 15

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[edit] Births

• 1767 - Andrew Jackson, President of the United States
• 1990 - Collin Furniss, American swimmer

[edit] Deaths

• 44 BC - Julius Caesar, (b. 100 BC)
• 220 - Cao Cao, King of Wei
• 493 - Odoacer, King of Italy (murdered) (b. 435)
• 1311 - Walter V of Brienne, Duke of Athens
• 1820 - St Clemens Maria Hofbauer, patron saint of Vienna (b. 1751
• 1842 - Luigi Cherubini, Italian composer (b. 1760)
• 1849 - Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, cardinal and linguist
• 1891 - Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)
• 1891 - Sir Joseph Bazalgette, civil engineer (b. 1819)
• 1898 - Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist (b. 1813)
• 1937 - H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer (b. 1890)
• 1941 - Alexej von Jawlensky, Russian painter (b. 1864)
• 1959 - Lester Young, American jazz musician
• 1966 - Abe Saperstein, creator of the Harlem Globetrotters
• 1975 - Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate (b. 1906)
• 1980 - Robert Ritzenthaler, American ethnologist
• 1983 - Rebecca West, writer (b. 1892)
• 1990 - Farzad Bazoft, Iranian-born journalist (hanged)
• 1990 - Tom Harmon, American football player and broadcaster
• 1994 - Mai Zetterling, Swedish actress and director, (b. 1925)
• 1997 - Gail Davis, American actress
• 1998 - Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician and writer (b. 1903)
• 2001 - Ann Sothern, American actress (b. 1909)
• 2002 - Sylvester Weaver, television executive
• 2002 - William Scholl, American footwear designer
• 2003 - Dame Thora Hird, British actress (b. 1911)
• 2003 - Joseph Coors, American brewer
• 2004 - Sir William Pickering, head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (b. 1910)
• 2004 - John Pople, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1925)

[edit] Events

• 44 BC - Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
• 1311 - Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeats Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.
• 1493 - Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.
• 1545 - First meeting of the Council of Trent.
• 1672 - Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.
• 1781 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse - Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.
• 1783 - In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'etat never takes place.
• 1820 - Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state.
• 1827 - The University of Toronto is chartered.
• 1848 - Revolution breaks out in Pest. The Habsburg rulers are compelled to meet the demands of the Reform party.
• 1877 - The first Test cricket match begins, between England and Australia.
• 1906 - Rolls-Royce Ltd. is registered.
• 1909 - Selfridges department store opens in London.
• 1916 - President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa.
• 1917 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates himself and his son from the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar.
• 1919 - The American Legion forms in Paris.
• 1922 - After Egypt gains nominal independence from the United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt.
• 1939 - World War II: Nazi troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.
• 1943 - World War II: Third Battle of Kharkov - the Germans retook the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.
• 1944 - World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino - Allied aircraft bomb the Nazi-held monastery and stage an assault.
• 1952 - In Cilaos, Réunion, 73 inches (1,870mm) of rain falls in one day, setting a new world record.
• 1953 - World contact day
• 1956 - The Broadway musical My Fair Lady opens in New York City.
• 1961 - South Africa withdraws from the British Commonwealth.
• 1963 - Victor Feguer, a Federal prisoner, is put to death at the Fort Madison, Iowa prison. This would be the last execution of a Federal prisoner until the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001.
• 1970 - The Expo '70 world's fair opens in Osaka, Japan.
• 1972 - Denzel Q. Crocker 's life changed for the worst.
• 1976 - KISS releases the legendary album Destroyer.
• 1988 - Publication of Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind theory.
• 1988 - The Halabja poison gas attack of the Iran-Iraq War begins.
• 1989 - The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is established.
• 1990 - Gulf War: Iraq hangs British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying.
• 1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.
• 1990 - The Soviet Union announces that Lithuania's declaration of independence is invalid.
• 1990 - The ethnic clashes of Targu Mures begin on the anniversary of the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas.
• 1991 - Four Los Angeles, California police officers are indicted for the videotaped March 3, 1991 beating of motorist Rodney King during an arrest.
• 1991 - Germany formally regains complete independence after the four post-World War II occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union) relinquish all remaining rights.
• 2004 - Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed.