1425 BC – Thutmose III, Pharaoh of Egypt, dies (according to the Low Chronology of the 18th Dynasty).
417 – Zosimus becomes bishop of Rome
537 – Goths lay siege to Rome
1513 – Giovanni de’ Medici chosen Pope Leo X
1669 – Volcano Etna in Italy erupts killing 15,000
1702 – First English daily newspaper “Daily Courant” publishes
1789 – Benjamin Banneker with L’Enfant begin to lay out Washington DC
1824 – US War Dept creates the Bureau of Indian Affair
1851 – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” premieres in Venice
1867 – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Don Carlos” premieres in Paris
1867 – Great Mauna Loa eruption (Hawaiian volcano)
1888 – Great blizzard of ’88 strikes northeastern US
1897 – A meteorite enters the earth’s atmosphere and explodes over New Martinsville, West Virginia. The debris causes damage but no human injuries are reported.
From the front page of The New York Times, March 11 1897
EXPLOSION OF A METEOR
One Man Rendered Unconscious and the Head of a Horse Crushed
Parkersburg, West Va.
A meteor burst over the town of New Martinsville yesterday. The noise
of the explosion resembled the shock of a heavy artillery salute, and
was heard for twenty miles. The cylindrical shaped ball of fire was
forging along in a southwesterly direction when first discovered. The
hissing sound of the fire could be heard for miles, and the smoke gave
the meteor the appearance of a burning balloon.
When the meteor exploded the pieces flew in all directions, like a
volcanic upheaval, and solid walls were pierced by the fragments.
David Leisure was knocked down by the force of the air caused by the
rapidity with which the body passed, before it broke. The blow
rendered him unconscious. One horse had its head crushed and nearly
torn from the trunk by a fragment of the meteor, and another horse in
the next stall was discovered to be stone deaf.
The coming of the meteor was heralded by a rumbling noise, followed in
an instant by the hissing sound, and immediately the ball of fire,
spitting and smoking, burst into full view, and before the people had
time to collect their senses, the explosion occurred.
1918 – Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia
1927 – First armored commercial car hold-up in US, Pittsburgh
1941 – FDR signs Lend-Lease Bill (lends money to Britain)
1942 – First deportation train leaves Paris for Auschwitz Concentration Camp
1953 – American B-47 accidentally drops a nuclear bomb 15,000 feet on Mars Bluff, South Carolina; it created a crater 75 feet acrosss, but the nuclear core did not detonate, due to 6 safety catches
1982 – Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat sign peace treaty in Washington DC
1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader
1988 – British pound note ceases to be legal tender, replaced by one pound coin
2004 – Terrorists explode simultaneous bombs on Madrid’s rail network ripping through a commuter train and rocking three stations, killing 190
2011 – An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
2013 – North Korea cuts the phone line with South Korea, breaching the 1953 armistice
2013 – Falkland Islands’ sovereignty referendum: 99.8% choose to remain an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom
