March 10 is the 69th day of the year (70th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 296 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Christian Feast Day:
- Hote Matsuri (Shiogama, Japan)
- Tibetan Uprising Day (Tibetan independence supporters)
In 515, BC, The re-building of the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem was completed.
In 241 BC, First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands – The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end.
In 298, Roman Emperor Maximian concludes his campaign in North Africa against the Berbers, and makes a triumphal entry into Carthage.
In 418, Jews are excluded from public office in the Roman Empire.
In 947, The Later Han is founded by Liu Zhiyuan. He declares himself emperor and establishes the capital in Bian, present-day Kaifeng.
In 1535, Tomas de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, discovers the Galapagos Islands. He sailed to Peru to settle a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro over division of territory after the conquest of the Inca Empire. His ship stalled when the winds died and strong currents carried him out to the Galápagos Islands which he thus discovered on March 10, 1535. He sent an account of the adventure and discovery to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.
In 1607, Susenyos defeats the combined armies of Yaqob and Abuna Petros II at the Battle of Gol in Gojjam, making him Emperor of Ethiopia.
In 1624, England declares war on Spain.
In 1629, Charles I of England dissolves Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.
In 1735, An agreement between Nadir Shah and Russia is signed near Ganja and Russian troops are withdrawn from Baku.
In 1745, John Gunby, American soldier (d. 1807) was born. He was an American planter and soldier from Somerset County, Maryland who is considered by many to be “one of the most gallant officers of the Maryland Line under Gen. Smallwood“. He entered service volunteering as a minuteman in 1775 and fought for the American cause until the end earning praise as probably the most brilliant soldier whom Maryland contributed to the War of Independence. Gunby was also the grandfather of Senator Ephraim King Wilson II. After mustering out of the Continental Army, Gunby returned home to Somerset County, Maryland. His father, who died in 1788, bequeathed him a large farm in Worcester County, Maryland, two miles south of Snow Hill. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gunby avoided politics or using his fame from the war for personal gain. He kept to his farm devoting himself to agriculture. For some years he supported at least three families of Maryland officers killed during the Carolina Campaigns. Gunby was also known to help poor families build houses and awaiting their convenience for payment, promoting the construction of new roads, furnishing horse teams for those in need and contributing toward the maintenance of places of worship. He was an original member of the Maryland Chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati.
In 1762, French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
In 1775, The Transylvania Company sends Daniel Boone out to cut the Wilderness Road in Kentucky.
In 1785, Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.
In 1791, John Stone, Concord, Mass, John Stone patented the pile driver.
In 1797, The capital of New York State is moved from New York to Albany.
In 1804, Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.
In 1814, Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France.
In 1816, Crossing of the Andes: A group of royalist scouts is captured during the Action of Juncalito.
In 1830, The KNIL also known as the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army is created.
In 1831, The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis Philippe to support his war in Algeria.
In 1848, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican–American War.
In 1848, the Villanova University is chartered in Villanova, Pa. (It was founded in 1842 as Augustinian College of Villanova by the Order of St. Augustinian.).
In 1849, Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent, the only US president to do so, for a patent for an inflatable airbag to lift grounded boats off sandbars and shoals. Abe was was too busy with politics to pursue the invention and it never got off the … er … WATER.
In 1861, El Hadj Umar Tall seizes the city of Ségou, destroying the Bambara Empire of Mali.
In 1863, the first royal wedding took place at Windsor Castle in St. George’s chapel. Edward, Prince of Wales, married Alexandria, Princess of Denmark. Victoria was Queen at the time.
In 1864, President Lincoln appoints Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to command all of the Union armies of the United States. Gen. William T. Sherman succeeds Grant as commander in the west.
In 1868, Henry Ward Beecher pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., began selling printed copies of his sermons for five cents each. His sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
In 1874, Purdue University (Indiana) admits its first student.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
In 1880, the Salvation Army founded by William Booth arrived in the United States from England to begin welfare and religious activity here.
In 1888, Barry Fitzgerald, Irish actor (d. 1961) was born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland. He was the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He went to Skerry’s College, Dublin, before going on to work in the civil service, while also working at the Abbey Theatre. By 1929, he turned to acting full-time. He was briefly a roommate of famed playwright Sean O’Casey and starred in such plays as O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and the premiere of The Silver Tassie. Fitzgerald went to Hollywood to star in another O’Casey work, The Plough and the Stars (1936), directed by John Ford. He had a successful Hollywood career in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), And Then There Were None (1945), The Naked City (1948), and The Quiet Man (1952). Fitzgerald achieved a feat unmatched in the history of the Academy Awards: he was nominated for both the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the same performance, as “Father Fitzgibbon” in Going My Way (1944).
In 1891, Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
In 1893, New Mexico State University cancels it’s first graduation ceremony, its only graduate Sam Steele was robbed & killed the night before.
In 1894, New York Governor Roswell P. Flower signed the nation’s first dog-licensing law. The license fee for a dog was two dollars, renewable each year for one dollar. (Some sources give Mar 7 or 8, AP gives this date).
In 1903, Harry C. Gammeter of Cleveland, OH patented the multigraph duplicating machine.
In 1906, The Courrières mine disaster, Europe’s worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France.
In 1909, By signing the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, Thailand relinquishes its sovereignty over the Malay states of Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu, which become British protectorates.
In 1917, Some provinces and cities in the Philippines were incorporated due to the ratification of Act No. 2711 or the Administrative Code of the Philippines.
In 1922, Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.
In 1933, An earthquake in Long Beach, California kills 115 people and causes an estimated $40 million in damage.
In 1933, Nevada became the first state to adopt narcotics regulations.
In 1944, Greek Civil War: The Political Committee of National Liberation is established in Greece by the National Liberation Front.
In 1945, The U.S. Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting conflagration kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.
The bombing of Tokyo during the early hours of 10 March by the U.S. Army Air Forces was a devastating firebombing raid on the Japanese capital city. Bombs dropped from 279 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses burned out much of eastern Tokyo. More than 90,000 Japanese, mostly civilians, were killed and one million left homeless, making it the single most destructive air attack of World War II. The Japanese air and civil defenses proved inadequate, and only 14 American aircraft and 96 airmen were lost. The previous, generally unsuccessful, air raids on Japan had focused on industrial facilities. This was the first major firebombing raid against a Japanese city, and the tactics used became a standard part of the American strategic bombing campaign until the end of the war. The attack is commemorated at two official memorials, several neighborhood memorials and a privately run museum.
In 1948, The body of the anti-Communist foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, Jan Masaryk, was found in the garden of Czernin Palace in
Prague.
In 1948, Zelda Fitzgerald, American author, poet, and dancer (b. 1900) dies. On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out in Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina kitchen. Zelda was locked into a room, awaiting electroshock therapy. The fire moved through the dumbwaiter shaft, spreading onto every floor. The fire escapes were wooden, and caught fire as well. Nine women died, including Zelda. She was an American socialite and novelist, and the wife of American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose work she strongly influenced.
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she was noted for her beauty and high spirits, and was dubbed by her husband as “the first American Flapper”. She and Scott became the emblem of the Jazz Age, for which they are still celebrated. The immediate success of Scott’s first novel This Side of Paradise (1920) brought them into contact with high society, but their marriage was plagued by wild drinking, infidelity and bitter recriminations. Ernest Hemingway, whom Zelda disliked, blamed her for Scott’s declining literary output, though she has also been portrayed as the victim of an overbearing husband. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia (but possibly suffering from bipolar disorder), she was increasingly confined to specialist clinics, and the couple were living apart when Scott died suddenly in 1940. Zelda died later in a fire at her hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.
Recent writers and scholars have portrayed Zelda as a creative talent ignored by the patriarchal society of the day. A 1970 biography by Nancy Milford was on the short list of contenders for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1992, Zelda was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame.
In 1952, Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the “provisional president”.
In 1959, Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama‘s palace to prevent his removal.
In 1966, Military Prime Minister of South Vietnam Nguyen Cao Ky sacked rival General Nguyen Chanh Thi, precipitating large-scale civil and military dissension in parts of the nation.
In 1966, North Vietnamese capture US Green Beret Camp at A Shau Valley.
In 1968, Vietnam War: Battle of Lima Site 85, concluding the 11th with largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members (12) during that war.
In 1969, In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. He later unsuccessfully attempts to retract his plea.
In 1970, Vietnam War: Captain Ernest Medina is charged by the U.S. Military with My Lai war crimes.
In 1975, Vietnam War: North Vietnamese troops attack Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, on their way to capturing Saigon.
In 1977, Rings of Uranus: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus.
In 1980, Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shoots and kills Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower, Jean Harris was arrested and convicted of the crime; she was released from prison in 1993.
In 1980, Formation of the Irish Army Ranger Wing.
In 1989, One day after the Senate rejected the defense secretary nomination of John Tower, President Bush announced he would nominate Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney (CHAY’-nee), who was later confirmed.
In 1990, In Haiti, Prosper Avril is ousted 18 months after seizing power in a coup.
In 1995, The Clinton administration released three billion dollars to support Mexico’s faltering economy. Who’s your friend?
In 1998, Federal authorities announced that food stamps were issued to nearly 26,000 dead people in 1995-96. The General Accounting Office said in a report $8.5 million in food stamps were issued to 25,881 deceased people in the two-year period, based on a review after comparing food stamp rolls with death lists in the four most populous states, which account for one-third of the country’s 20.4 million food stamp recipients.
In 1998, Former White House aide Kathleen Willey, who was allegedly fondled by President Clinton in 1993, answered questions before a grand jury investigating the White House sex scandal. Willey, spent most of the day testifying behind closed doors.
In 2000, The NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaks at 5132.52, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom.
In 2005, Tung Chee Hwa resigns from his post as the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong after widespread public dissatisfaction of his tenure.
In 2006, The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
In 2017, The impeachment of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea in response to a major political scandal is unanimously upheld by the country’s Constitutional Court, ending her presidency.
In 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX, crashes, leading to all 737 MAX aircraft being grounded worldwide.