Events

• 1199 - Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France which leads to his death on April 6.
• 1306 - Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
• 1409 - The Council of Pisa opens.
• 1584 - Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to exploit Virginia.
• 1634 - The first settlers arrive in Maryland.
• 1655 - Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christian Huygens.
• 1802 - The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• 1807 - The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
• 1807 - The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world.
• 1811 - Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
• 1821 - (Julian Calendar) Greeks revolt against the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence.
• 1865 - American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman from the Union in a bloody battle.
• 1894 - Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
• 1903 - Racing Club de Avellaneda, one of the big five of Argentina, is founded.
• 1908 - Clube Atletico Mineiro, Founded in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
• 1911 - In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
• 1917 - The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.
• 1918 - The Belarusian People's Republic is established.
• 1931 - The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
• 1939 - Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII.
• 1941 - The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
• 1947 - An explosion in a coalmine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
• 1949 - The extensive deportation campaign known as March deportation is conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deported more than 92,000 people from Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
• 1955 - United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" as obscene.
• 1957 - The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).
• 1958 - Canada's Avro Arrow makes its first flight.
• 1965 - Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
• 1969 - During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace in the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
• 1971 - Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight of Pakistan Army against East Pakistani civilians.
• 1975 - Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
• 1979 - The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, The Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
• 1988 - The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
• 1990 - In The Bronx, a fire at an illegal social club called "Happy Land" kills 87 people.
• 1992 - Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station.
• 1996 - An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, begins.
• 1996 - The Labour Party is founded in Turkey.
• 1996 - The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (BSE).
• 2006 - Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
• 2006 - Protesters demanding a re-election in Belarus following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006 clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.
• 2006 - Reading Football Club are promoted to the English Premiership for the first time in their 135-year history. They are also the first post-war Football Club to be promoted to the English Premiership in March.

Births