March
Music in Our Schools Month
National Middle Level Education Month
National Reading Month
Read Across America Day:
Easy Ideas for Read Across America Day: https://www.ssww.com/blog/easy-ideas-read-across-america-day/
Women's History Month
15 Children's Books to Celebrate Women's History Month: www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/childrens-books-to-celebrate-womens-history-month
Celebrating Women's History: Rebel Girls: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/rebel-girls/
Discovering New York Suffrage Stories: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/discovering-new-york-suffrage-stories/
Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rise of Social Reform in the 1930s: https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/eleanor-roosevelt-and-rise-social-reform-1930s
How Outstanding Women in STEM Overcame Obstacles: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/women-in-stem-newshour/women-in-stem-newshour/
International Women's Day - All About Holidays: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/4008054f-3b25-41af-be78-bdd79afddff2/international-womens-day-all-about-the-holidays/
The Long & Winding Road to Women's Rights: www.middleweb.com/6023/the-road-to-womens-rights/
National Register of Historic Places Program: Women's History Month: https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/wom/
National Women's hall of Fame: https://www.womenofthehall.org/
National Women's History Project - Writing Women Back Into History: http://www.nwhp.org/
Nineteenth Century Women: Struggle and Triumph: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/triumph/index.html
Quotes by Women: Index A to Z: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/essentials/ss/Quotes-by-Women-Index-A-to-Z.htm
Unladylike2020: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/unladylike2020/
Upstate, Downstate: The Women's Movement: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/nyh17.socst.elem.suffrage/upstate-downstate-the-womens-movement/
SciGirls: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/scigirls/
Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage: https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/voting-rights-women-pro-and-anti-suffrage
Women @NASA: http://women.nasa.gov/
Women's History Scavenger Hunt: https://www.weareteachers.com/online-activity-womens-history-scavenger-hunt/
"Online Activity....Celebrating Women's History, one search at a time"
March 2:
Theodor Geisel's (Dr. Suess) birthday
Dr. Seuss Birthday Activities and Ideas for Your Classroom: http://k6educators.about.com/od/marchholidaylessons/a/Dr-Seuss-Birthday-Activities-And-Ideas-For-Your-Classroom.htm
Suessville: http://www.seussville.com/#/home
Teaching phonographs by using the book The Sneetches: http://lessonplanspage.com/laphonogramssneeches1.htm/
March 3:
Read-Aloud Day
Read-Alouds: http://k6educators.about.com/od/ReadingStrategies/a/Read-Alouds.htm
"A Quick Guide for Elementary Educators"
-1878: The Russo-Turkish War ended with the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano, which called for a large independent Bulgaria.
-1922: F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Beautiful and the Damned" was published to mixed reviews.
March 4
-1675 John Flamsteed was awarded the position of Astronomer Royal.
-1861 Abraham Lincoln took the US presidential oath of office.
-1933:During a period of economic recession and massive unemployment, Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the US presidency.
-1975 British comedian Charlie Chaplin was knighted at Buckingham Palace in London.
-1979 Voyager 1 spacecraft sent back a notable image of Jupiter.
March 5
-1770 The "Boston Massacre" took place.
-1856 London's Theatre Royal was destroyed in a fire.
-1922 F. W. Murnau's film "Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror" premiered in Berlin.
-1946 Winston Churchill spoke of an "iron curtain".
-1963 Country music performers Patsy Cline, "Cowboy" Copas, and "Hawkshaw" Hawkins were killed in a plane crash.
March 7
National Cereal Day
March 8
-1817: Beginning for New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtBko1DcnF4&feature=youtu.be
March 10:
Harriet Tubman Day
Harriet Tubman Facts: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/harriettubman/p/harriet_tubman.htm
Underground Railroad Conductor
March 11
-1931: Rupert Murdoch, media mogul was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
March 11 or 18
Johnny Appleseed Day: http://k6educators.about.com/od/september/qt/Johnny-Appleseed.htm
March 12
National Plant a Flower Day
-1664: New Jersey became a British colony as King Charles II granted land to his brother James, the Duke of York.
-1831: Pioneer automaker Clement Studebaker
-1858: New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs
-1912: Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scouts of America troop in Savannah, Ga.
-1921: Actor/singer Gordon MacRae
-1922: Novelist Jack Kerouac was born
-1922: Union leader Lane Kirkland was born
-1923: Astronaut Wally Schirra was born
-1925: Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen died
-1928: Playwright Edward Albee was born
-1930: Mahatma Gandhi began a campaign of civil disobedience against British rule in India. by beginning a 200-mile march to protest a British tax on salt.
-1932: Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young was born
-1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first of his Sunday evening "fireside chats" -- informal radio addresses from the White House -- to the American people telling them what was being done to deal with the nation's economic crisis.
-1938: German troops entered Austria as part of the Anschluss, or union of the two countries.
-1939: Pope Pius XII was crowned in ceremonies at the Vatican.
-1940: Singer/songwriter Al Jarreau was born.
-1940: Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice during World War II. (Fighting between the two countries flared again the following year.)
-1941: Actress Barbara Feldon was born
-1946: Liza Minnelli singer/dancer/actress was born to actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli.
-1947: In a speech to Congress, President Truman outlined what became known as the Truman Doctrine, calling for U.S. aid to help Greece and Turkey resist communism.
-1948: Singer/songwriter James Taylor was born
-1962: Baseball player Darryl Strawberry was born
-1963: The House of Representatives voted to grant former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship.
-1969: Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman in London.
-1990: The Food and Drug Administration approved a nationwide test of a post-exposure AIDS vaccine developed by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk.
-1990: Exxon pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay $100 million fine in a $1.1 billion settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
-1990: Kuwait City reopened its port for the first time since the Persian Gulf War.
-1990: South African President F.W. de Klerk introduced legislation to revise land tenure laws and end racial discrimination in land ownership.
-1990: Vice President Quayle met in Santiago, Chile, with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who promised to peacefully relinquish power to Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate who had won Nicaragua's presidential election.
-1992: Jim and Tammy Bakker, who ran a multi million-dollar television evangelism empire before he went to prison for fleecing his flock, announced they were divorcing.
-1993: Defense Secretary Aspin recommended closing 31 more major military bases around the country.
-1993: More than 250 people were killed when a wave of bombings rocked Bombay, India, the country's business capital.
-1994: The Church of England ordained its first women priests.
-1995: World leaders wound up a week-long summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, committing themselves to fighting poverty but differing on how to do so.
-1996: Republican president hopeful Bob Dole swept the Super Tuesday GOP primaries.
-1999: The former Soviet allies -- the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland -- joined NATO.
-2000: Pope John Pail II apologized for the errors of his church during the past 2,000 years.
March 13
1781: Astronomer William Herschel discovered the Georgian Planet.
1947: "Brigadoon" opened at the Ziegfeld in New York.
1881: (March 1st in the Julian calendar) Russian Czar Alexander II was killed in St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary group, "The National Will."
1925: The State of Tennessee prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools and universities.
1988: Japan's underwater Seikan Tunnel was opened.
March 14
National Potato Chip Day
Pi Day
Celebrate Pi Day: http://www.mathgoodies.com/Webquests/pi_day/
Making a Pi Necklace: http://mathforum.org/teachers/middle/activities/pi_day.html
March 15
The Ides of March form Julius Ceasar
March 16
-1926: Robert Goddard launched the first successful rocket using liquid fuel. This and his other discoveries are the basis for today's space flights.
March 17:
St. Patrick's Day:
Creative Writing Prompts and Ideas for St. Patrick's Day: http://k6educators.about.com/od/marchholidaylessons/a/Creative-Writing-Prompts-And-Ideas-For-St-Patricks-Day.htm
St. Patrick's Day: http://lessonplanspage.com/stpatricksday.htm/
St. Patrick's Day Sight Word Activity: https://www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/st-patricks-day-sight-words.shtml
March 18
-1949: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was officially formed.
-1965: The first person to leave a spacecraft and take a walk in space was Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. He stayed outside for 12 minutes.
March 19
-721 B.C.: According to the Roman historian Ptolemy, Babylonian astronomers noted history's first recorded eclipse: an eclipse of the moon.
-1589: Plymouth Colony Gov. William Bradford was born
-1813: Scottish explorer of Africa David Livingstone was born
-1848: Marshal Wyatt Earp was born
-1860: Jurist William Jennings Bryan was born
-1891: Chief Justice Earl Warren was born
-1904: "Watergate" Judge John Sirica was born
-1918: Congress passed the Standard Time Act, which authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to establish standard time zones in the United States.
-1920: The Treaty of Versailles, establishing the League of Nations, was rejected by the U.S. Senate.
-1928: Actor Patrick McGoohan was born
-1933: Author Philip Roth was born
-1936: Actress Ursula Andress was born
-1942: With World War II under way, all men in the United States between the ages of 45 and 64, about 13 million, were ordered to register with the draft boards for non-military duty.
-1947: Actress Glenn Close was born
-1955: Actor Bruce Willis was born
-1987: South Carolina televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as head of the PTL Club, saying he was blackmailed after a sexual encounter with former church secretary Jessica Hahn.
-1992: Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew and his wife, the duchess of York, were separating.
-1993: Justice Byron White, the only member of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by a Democrat, announced he would retire, opening the way for President Clinton to make his first high judicial nomination.
-1996: Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole won primaries in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
-1997: A federal judge in Phoenix, Az., began sentencing 10 members of a paramilitary group to prison after they pleaded guilty to various counts, including conspiracy to make and possess destructive devices.
-1997: President Clinton nominated acting CIA director George Tenet to head the agency.
March 20
First day of spring
March 21
World Poetry Day
World Poetry Day: March 21: https://poets.org/text/world-poetry-day-march-21
-1962 Rosie O' Donnell Comedienne, actress was born in Commack, NY
March 22
World Water Day
Interactive Notebook to Use with Kids: http://www.educationworld.com/blog/world-water-day-march-22ndpossible-interactive-notebook-use-kids
-1622: Settlers around Jamestown, Virginia were massacred by Algonquian Indians.
-1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
-1765: Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies. (The Act was repealed the next year.)
-1791: Congress enacted legislation forbidding slave trading with foreign nations.
-1820: U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington D.C.
-1846: Illustrator Randolph Caldecott was born in Chester, England. The Caldecott Medal, awarded every year to an outstanding illustrator of children's literature, was named after Randolph Caldecott.
-1873: The Spanish Crown finally ended slavery in Puerto Rico.
-1882: Congress outlawed polygamy.
-1894: Hockey's first Stanley Cup championship was played. The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association defeated the Ottawa Capitals.
-1895: The brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere made the first demonstration of a motion picture using celluloid film at a private session in Paris.
-1913: Karl Malden was born
-1931: William Shatner Actor was born in Montreal, Canada
-1933: During Prohibition, President Roosevelt signed a measure to legalize wine and beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol.
-1945: Seven countries formed the League of Arab States in Cairo.
-1946: The first American-built rocket left the Earth's atmosphere.
-1946: The British mandate in Transjordan came to an end.
-1948: British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was born
-1952: Sportscaster Bob Costas was born
-1959: Actor Matthew Modine was born
-1968: President Johnson recalled Gen. William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. troops in Vietnam and made him Army chief of staff. Gen. Creighton Abrams took over in Saigon.
-1972: Canadian skater Elvis Stojko was born
-1972: The Senate passed and sent to the states for ratification the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a measure popularly known as the Equal Rights Amendment. However, the required number of states -- 38 -- failed to ratify it before the deadline.
-1976: Actress Reese Witherspoon was born
-1978: Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of The Flying Wallendas high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
-1987: Chad troops drove Libyan forces from a key airstrip in northern Chad, apparently ending Moammar Gadhafi's seven-year occupation.
-1990: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood innocent of three major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but convicted him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.
-1992: 27 people were killed when a US Air plane bound for Cleveland skidded off a runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport during a snowstorm and landed in the bay.
-1993: A U.S. nuclear submarine collided with a Russian nuclear sub in a Russian training area in the Barents Sea. There were no casualties.
-1995: Brian "Kato" Kaelin, a houseguest at O-J Simpson's estate, testified at the former athlete's double murder trial in Los Angeles.
-1997: Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth -- about 122 million miles.
-1999: Dr. Jack Kevorkian went on trial on murder charges, telling a jury in Pontiac, Mich., he was merely carrying out his professional duty in a videotaped assisted death. (Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder.)
-2000: Pope John Paul II visited a Palestinian refugee camp and declared the conditions there to be "degrading."
March 23
-1765: the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act for taxing the American colonies, an action that became a major grievance for rebellious colonials
-1775: In a speech supporting the arming of the Virginia militia, Patrick Henry declared, "Give me liberty or give me death" from Britain
-1806: Explorers Lewis and Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east
-1857: Culinary expert Fannie Farmer was born
-1900: Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm was born
-1908: Actress Joan Crawford was born
-1910: Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was born
-1912: Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was born
-1919: Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy
-1929; Roger Bannister, athlete and neurologist was born in Harrow, England
-1933; German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial legislative powers
-1938; Former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson Jr. was born
-1942; Japanese-Americans were forcibly moved from their homes along the Pacific Coast to inland internment camps during World War II
-1950; At the Academy Awards, "All The King's Men" won best picture of 1949. Its star, Broderick Crawford, won best actor. Olivia de Havilland won best actress for "The Heiress."
-1953; Comedian Louie Anderson was born
-1953; Singer Chaka Khan was born
-1956; Pakistan became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth.
-1957; Actresses Amanda Plummer was born
-1965; America's first two-person space flight began as Gemini 3 blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young aboard
-1966: Pope Paul VI met Britain's archbishop of Canterbury at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, the first meeting between the heads of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in 400 years
-1976: Keri Russell ("Felicity") was born
-1983; The world's first recipient of a permanent artificial heart, Barney Clark of Seattle, died in at the University of Utah Medical Center after 112 days with the device.
-1985: The United States completed the secret air evacuation of 800 Ethiopian Jews to Israel
-1990: Former Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood was sentenced by a judge in Anchorage, Alaska, to help clean up Prince William Sound and paid $50,000 for his role in the oil spill
-1993: President Clinton held his first full-blown White House news conference on his 62nd day in office
-1994: The nominee of the ruling party in Mexico was shot to death just after delivering a campaign speech in Tijuana. A suspect believed to be the gunman was arrested immediately.
-1995: Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in Geneva. Afterward, Kozyrev said the U.S.-Russia "honeymoon has come to an end," referring to disagreements over Chechnya and nuclear sales to Iran.
-1996: Taiwan elected Lee Teng-hui in the island nation's first direct presidential election.
-1998: Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his entire cabinet.
-1998: "Titanic" won 11 Academy Awards, tying the record total won by "Ben-Hur" in 1959.
-1999: The vice president of Peru was assassinated.
-1999: NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana gave the formal go-ahead for air strikes against Serbian targets following the failure of Kosovo peace talks.
March 24
-1874 Harry Houdini Magician was born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary.
March 25
-1911: In a tragedy that galvanized America's labor movement, 146 immigrant workers were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York.
-1634: Maryland was founded by English colonists sent by the second Lord Baltimore.
-1865: During the Civil War, Confederate forces captured Fort Stedman in Virginia.
-1894: Jacob Coxey began leading an army of unemployed from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington D.C., to demand help from the federal government.
-1913: The home of Vaudeville, the Palace Theatre, opened in New York City.
-1918: French composer Claude Debussy died in Paris.
-1947: A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., killed 111.
-1957: The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community.
-1965: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
-1975: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness. The nephew was beheaded the following June.
-1982: Canada officially became an independent nation. Canada had been unofficially governing herself since 1867 but on March 25, 1982 Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain signed the Canada Act which ratified the Canadian Constitution and made the country officially independent.
-1994: American troops completed their withdrawal from Somalia.
-1990: Eighty-seven people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed when fire raced through an illegal social club in New York City.
-1995: Mike Tyson was released from the Indiana Youth Center after serving three years for the 1992 rape of Desiree Washington, a beauty pageant contestant.
-1999: NATO aircraft and missiles blasted targets in Yugoslavia for a second night, directing much of their fire on Kosovo, where fighting raged between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
March 28
-AD 193: After three months in power, Roman Emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax was murdered by the Praetorian Guard.
-1910: The first seaplane took off from water and flew for 1,650 feet.
-1930: The Turkish cities of Constantinople and Angora changed their names to Istanbul and Ankara, respectively.
-1939: The Nationalist forces of Gen. Francisco Franco occupied Madrid, virtually ending the Spanish Civil War and starting a fascist dictatorship in Spain.
-1979: The most serious nuclear accident in the US occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania.
March 29
-1945: Basketball legend Walt Frazier was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
March 30
-1746: Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goya was born
-1820: English author Anna Sewell ("Black Beauty") was born
-1822: Florida became a U.S. territory.
-1840: English social reformer Charles Booth was born
-1842: Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia first used ether as an anesthetic during a minor operation.
-1853: Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland
-1867: U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, two cents and acre, a deal roundly ridiculed as "Seward's Folly" , convinced it was a waste of even that much money. But just 13 years later, gold was discovered in Juneau.
-1870: The 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving black men the right to vote, was declared in effect.
-1870: Texas was readmitted to the Union.
-1880: Irish dramatist Sean O'Casey was born
-1909: The Queensboro Bridge, linking the New York boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, opened.
-1913: Former CIA Director Richard Helms was born
-1913: Singer Frankie Laine were born
-1923: The Cunard liner "Laconia" arrived in New York City, becoming the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world, a cruise of 130 days.
-1927: TV host Peter Marshall was born
-1929: Actor Richard Dysart was born
-1930: Actor John Astin was born
-1937: Actor Warren Beatty was born
-1945: The Soviet Union invaded Austria during World War II.
-1945: British blues/rock guitarist Eric Clapton was born.
-1957: Actor Paul Reiser was born
-1963: Singer Hammer was born
-1964: "Jeopardy!", the "thinking person's game show," premiered on television.
-1964: Singer Tracy Chapman was born.
-1968: Singer Celine Dion was born.
-1975: The South Vietnamese city of Da Nang fell to North Vietnamese forces.
-1979: Airey Neave, a leading member of the British parliament, was killed by a bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army.
- 1981: President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.
-1989: "The Heidi Chronicles" by Wendy Wasserstein won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In the journalism category, the Anchorage Daily News won the public service award for its reports on alcoholism and suicide among native Alaskans.
-1990: Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus vetoed a restrictive abortion bill ending the anti-abortion forces' goal of giving Supreme Court a chance to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
-1992: "The Silence of the Lambs" swept the 64th annual Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, best actor for Anthony Hopkins and best actress for Jodie Foster.
-1993: A two-state custody battle over a 2-year-old girl took a dramatic turn when the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered the child who'd been living with her custodial parents in Michigan since shortly after birth returned to her biological parents in Iowa.
-1993: After 43 years, the unthinkable happened on the comic pages -- Charlie Brown was a hero when he hit a homerun and his baseball team won for the first time.
-1994: Serbs and Croats signed a cease-fire to end their war in Croatia while Bosnian Muslims and Serbs continued to battle each other.
-1994: The Clinton administration announced it was lifting virtually all export controls on non-military products to China and the former Soviet bloc.
-1995: The compromise "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy allowing homosexuals to serve in the military under certain conditions was struck down by a federal judge in New York as unconstitutional.
-1995: In 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he warned Chinese leaders that the United States would intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan.
-1998: Rolls-Royce was purchased by German automaker BMW in a $570 million deal.
-1998: Armenian Premier Robert Kocharian was elected president in a run-off election in the former Soviet republic.
-1998: The University of Kentucky Wildcats won the NCAA basketball title for the second time in three years and the seventh time overall.
-1999: A jury in Oregon awarded $81 million dollars in damages to the family of a smoker who had died from lung cancer. The plaintiff in the case, tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris, promised to appeal. A state judge later reduced the punitive portion of the judgment to $32 million.
March 31
-1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued an edict expelling those Jews unwilling to convert to Christianity.
-1889: French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.
-1917: The U.S. took possession of the Virgin Islands from Denmark.
-1923: The first U.S. dance marathon, held in New York City, ended with Alma Cummings setting a world record of 27 hours on her feet.
-1933: Congress authorized the Civilian Conservation Corps.
-1943: Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical "Oklahoma!" opened on Broadway.
-1945: The Tennessee Williams play "The Glass Menagerie" opened on Broadway.
-1949: Newfoundland entered confederation as Canada's 10th province.
-1968: President Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not run for another term of office.
-1976: The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator.
-1986: 167 people died when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a remote mountainous region of Mexico.
-1989: The FBI announced it would conduct a criminal investigation into the massive oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
-1994: The PLO and Israel agreed to resume talks on Palestinian autonomy, more than a month after the Hebron mosque massacre.
-1995: Mexican-American singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club.
-1998: For the first time in history, the Clinton administration released a detailed financial statement for the federal government showing its assets and liabilities.
-1998: The U.N. Security Council imposed a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia to pressure the Serbs into concessions concerning ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
-1998: Former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug died at age 77.
National Middle Level Education Month
National Reading Month
Read Across America Day:
Easy Ideas for Read Across America Day: https://www.ssww.com/blog/easy-ideas-read-across-america-day/
Women's History Month
15 Children's Books to Celebrate Women's History Month: www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/childrens-books-to-celebrate-womens-history-month
Celebrating Women's History: Rebel Girls: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/rebel-girls/
Discovering New York Suffrage Stories: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/discovering-new-york-suffrage-stories/
Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rise of Social Reform in the 1930s: https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/eleanor-roosevelt-and-rise-social-reform-1930s
How Outstanding Women in STEM Overcame Obstacles: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/women-in-stem-newshour/women-in-stem-newshour/
International Women's Day - All About Holidays: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/4008054f-3b25-41af-be78-bdd79afddff2/international-womens-day-all-about-the-holidays/
The Long & Winding Road to Women's Rights: www.middleweb.com/6023/the-road-to-womens-rights/
National Register of Historic Places Program: Women's History Month: https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/wom/
National Women's hall of Fame: https://www.womenofthehall.org/
National Women's History Project - Writing Women Back Into History: http://www.nwhp.org/
Nineteenth Century Women: Struggle and Triumph: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/triumph/index.html
Quotes by Women: Index A to Z: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/essentials/ss/Quotes-by-Women-Index-A-to-Z.htm
Unladylike2020: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/unladylike2020/
Upstate, Downstate: The Women's Movement: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/nyh17.socst.elem.suffrage/upstate-downstate-the-womens-movement/
SciGirls: ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/scigirls/
Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage: https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/voting-rights-women-pro-and-anti-suffrage
Women @NASA: http://women.nasa.gov/
Women's History Scavenger Hunt: https://www.weareteachers.com/online-activity-womens-history-scavenger-hunt/
"Online Activity....Celebrating Women's History, one search at a time"
March 2:
Theodor Geisel's (Dr. Suess) birthday
Dr. Seuss Birthday Activities and Ideas for Your Classroom: http://k6educators.about.com/od/marchholidaylessons/a/Dr-Seuss-Birthday-Activities-And-Ideas-For-Your-Classroom.htm
Suessville: http://www.seussville.com/#/home
Teaching phonographs by using the book The Sneetches: http://lessonplanspage.com/laphonogramssneeches1.htm/
March 3:
Read-Aloud Day
Read-Alouds: http://k6educators.about.com/od/ReadingStrategies/a/Read-Alouds.htm
"A Quick Guide for Elementary Educators"
-1878: The Russo-Turkish War ended with the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano, which called for a large independent Bulgaria.
-1922: F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Beautiful and the Damned" was published to mixed reviews.
March 4
-1675 John Flamsteed was awarded the position of Astronomer Royal.
-1861 Abraham Lincoln took the US presidential oath of office.
-1933:During a period of economic recession and massive unemployment, Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the US presidency.
-1975 British comedian Charlie Chaplin was knighted at Buckingham Palace in London.
-1979 Voyager 1 spacecraft sent back a notable image of Jupiter.
March 5
-1770 The "Boston Massacre" took place.
-1856 London's Theatre Royal was destroyed in a fire.
-1922 F. W. Murnau's film "Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror" premiered in Berlin.
-1946 Winston Churchill spoke of an "iron curtain".
-1963 Country music performers Patsy Cline, "Cowboy" Copas, and "Hawkshaw" Hawkins were killed in a plane crash.
March 7
National Cereal Day
March 8
-1817: Beginning for New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtBko1DcnF4&feature=youtu.be
March 10:
Harriet Tubman Day
Harriet Tubman Facts: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/harriettubman/p/harriet_tubman.htm
Underground Railroad Conductor
March 11
-1931: Rupert Murdoch, media mogul was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
March 11 or 18
Johnny Appleseed Day: http://k6educators.about.com/od/september/qt/Johnny-Appleseed.htm
March 12
National Plant a Flower Day
-1664: New Jersey became a British colony as King Charles II granted land to his brother James, the Duke of York.
-1831: Pioneer automaker Clement Studebaker
-1858: New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs
-1912: Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scouts of America troop in Savannah, Ga.
-1921: Actor/singer Gordon MacRae
-1922: Novelist Jack Kerouac was born
-1922: Union leader Lane Kirkland was born
-1923: Astronaut Wally Schirra was born
-1925: Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen died
-1928: Playwright Edward Albee was born
-1930: Mahatma Gandhi began a campaign of civil disobedience against British rule in India. by beginning a 200-mile march to protest a British tax on salt.
-1932: Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young was born
-1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first of his Sunday evening "fireside chats" -- informal radio addresses from the White House -- to the American people telling them what was being done to deal with the nation's economic crisis.
-1938: German troops entered Austria as part of the Anschluss, or union of the two countries.
-1939: Pope Pius XII was crowned in ceremonies at the Vatican.
-1940: Singer/songwriter Al Jarreau was born.
-1940: Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice during World War II. (Fighting between the two countries flared again the following year.)
-1941: Actress Barbara Feldon was born
-1946: Liza Minnelli singer/dancer/actress was born to actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli.
-1947: In a speech to Congress, President Truman outlined what became known as the Truman Doctrine, calling for U.S. aid to help Greece and Turkey resist communism.
-1948: Singer/songwriter James Taylor was born
-1962: Baseball player Darryl Strawberry was born
-1963: The House of Representatives voted to grant former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship.
-1969: Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman in London.
-1990: The Food and Drug Administration approved a nationwide test of a post-exposure AIDS vaccine developed by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk.
-1990: Exxon pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay $100 million fine in a $1.1 billion settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
-1990: Kuwait City reopened its port for the first time since the Persian Gulf War.
-1990: South African President F.W. de Klerk introduced legislation to revise land tenure laws and end racial discrimination in land ownership.
-1990: Vice President Quayle met in Santiago, Chile, with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who promised to peacefully relinquish power to Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate who had won Nicaragua's presidential election.
-1992: Jim and Tammy Bakker, who ran a multi million-dollar television evangelism empire before he went to prison for fleecing his flock, announced they were divorcing.
-1993: Defense Secretary Aspin recommended closing 31 more major military bases around the country.
-1993: More than 250 people were killed when a wave of bombings rocked Bombay, India, the country's business capital.
-1994: The Church of England ordained its first women priests.
-1995: World leaders wound up a week-long summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, committing themselves to fighting poverty but differing on how to do so.
-1996: Republican president hopeful Bob Dole swept the Super Tuesday GOP primaries.
-1999: The former Soviet allies -- the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland -- joined NATO.
-2000: Pope John Pail II apologized for the errors of his church during the past 2,000 years.
March 13
1781: Astronomer William Herschel discovered the Georgian Planet.
1947: "Brigadoon" opened at the Ziegfeld in New York.
1881: (March 1st in the Julian calendar) Russian Czar Alexander II was killed in St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary group, "The National Will."
1925: The State of Tennessee prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools and universities.
1988: Japan's underwater Seikan Tunnel was opened.
March 14
National Potato Chip Day
Pi Day
Celebrate Pi Day: http://www.mathgoodies.com/Webquests/pi_day/
Making a Pi Necklace: http://mathforum.org/teachers/middle/activities/pi_day.html
March 15
The Ides of March form Julius Ceasar
March 16
-1926: Robert Goddard launched the first successful rocket using liquid fuel. This and his other discoveries are the basis for today's space flights.
March 17:
St. Patrick's Day:
Creative Writing Prompts and Ideas for St. Patrick's Day: http://k6educators.about.com/od/marchholidaylessons/a/Creative-Writing-Prompts-And-Ideas-For-St-Patricks-Day.htm
St. Patrick's Day: http://lessonplanspage.com/stpatricksday.htm/
St. Patrick's Day Sight Word Activity: https://www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/st-patricks-day-sight-words.shtml
March 18
-1949: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was officially formed.
-1965: The first person to leave a spacecraft and take a walk in space was Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. He stayed outside for 12 minutes.
March 19
-721 B.C.: According to the Roman historian Ptolemy, Babylonian astronomers noted history's first recorded eclipse: an eclipse of the moon.
-1589: Plymouth Colony Gov. William Bradford was born
-1813: Scottish explorer of Africa David Livingstone was born
-1848: Marshal Wyatt Earp was born
-1860: Jurist William Jennings Bryan was born
-1891: Chief Justice Earl Warren was born
-1904: "Watergate" Judge John Sirica was born
-1918: Congress passed the Standard Time Act, which authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to establish standard time zones in the United States.
-1920: The Treaty of Versailles, establishing the League of Nations, was rejected by the U.S. Senate.
-1928: Actor Patrick McGoohan was born
-1933: Author Philip Roth was born
-1936: Actress Ursula Andress was born
-1942: With World War II under way, all men in the United States between the ages of 45 and 64, about 13 million, were ordered to register with the draft boards for non-military duty.
-1947: Actress Glenn Close was born
-1955: Actor Bruce Willis was born
-1987: South Carolina televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as head of the PTL Club, saying he was blackmailed after a sexual encounter with former church secretary Jessica Hahn.
-1992: Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew and his wife, the duchess of York, were separating.
-1993: Justice Byron White, the only member of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by a Democrat, announced he would retire, opening the way for President Clinton to make his first high judicial nomination.
-1996: Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole won primaries in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
-1997: A federal judge in Phoenix, Az., began sentencing 10 members of a paramilitary group to prison after they pleaded guilty to various counts, including conspiracy to make and possess destructive devices.
-1997: President Clinton nominated acting CIA director George Tenet to head the agency.
March 20
First day of spring
March 21
World Poetry Day
World Poetry Day: March 21: https://poets.org/text/world-poetry-day-march-21
-1962 Rosie O' Donnell Comedienne, actress was born in Commack, NY
March 22
World Water Day
Interactive Notebook to Use with Kids: http://www.educationworld.com/blog/world-water-day-march-22ndpossible-interactive-notebook-use-kids
-1622: Settlers around Jamestown, Virginia were massacred by Algonquian Indians.
-1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
-1765: Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies. (The Act was repealed the next year.)
-1791: Congress enacted legislation forbidding slave trading with foreign nations.
-1820: U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington D.C.
-1846: Illustrator Randolph Caldecott was born in Chester, England. The Caldecott Medal, awarded every year to an outstanding illustrator of children's literature, was named after Randolph Caldecott.
-1873: The Spanish Crown finally ended slavery in Puerto Rico.
-1882: Congress outlawed polygamy.
-1894: Hockey's first Stanley Cup championship was played. The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association defeated the Ottawa Capitals.
-1895: The brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere made the first demonstration of a motion picture using celluloid film at a private session in Paris.
-1913: Karl Malden was born
-1931: William Shatner Actor was born in Montreal, Canada
-1933: During Prohibition, President Roosevelt signed a measure to legalize wine and beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol.
-1945: Seven countries formed the League of Arab States in Cairo.
-1946: The first American-built rocket left the Earth's atmosphere.
-1946: The British mandate in Transjordan came to an end.
-1948: British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was born
-1952: Sportscaster Bob Costas was born
-1959: Actor Matthew Modine was born
-1968: President Johnson recalled Gen. William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. troops in Vietnam and made him Army chief of staff. Gen. Creighton Abrams took over in Saigon.
-1972: Canadian skater Elvis Stojko was born
-1972: The Senate passed and sent to the states for ratification the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a measure popularly known as the Equal Rights Amendment. However, the required number of states -- 38 -- failed to ratify it before the deadline.
-1976: Actress Reese Witherspoon was born
-1978: Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of The Flying Wallendas high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
-1987: Chad troops drove Libyan forces from a key airstrip in northern Chad, apparently ending Moammar Gadhafi's seven-year occupation.
-1990: A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood innocent of three major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but convicted him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.
-1992: 27 people were killed when a US Air plane bound for Cleveland skidded off a runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport during a snowstorm and landed in the bay.
-1993: A U.S. nuclear submarine collided with a Russian nuclear sub in a Russian training area in the Barents Sea. There were no casualties.
-1995: Brian "Kato" Kaelin, a houseguest at O-J Simpson's estate, testified at the former athlete's double murder trial in Los Angeles.
-1997: Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth -- about 122 million miles.
-1999: Dr. Jack Kevorkian went on trial on murder charges, telling a jury in Pontiac, Mich., he was merely carrying out his professional duty in a videotaped assisted death. (Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder.)
-2000: Pope John Paul II visited a Palestinian refugee camp and declared the conditions there to be "degrading."
March 23
-1765: the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act for taxing the American colonies, an action that became a major grievance for rebellious colonials
-1775: In a speech supporting the arming of the Virginia militia, Patrick Henry declared, "Give me liberty or give me death" from Britain
-1806: Explorers Lewis and Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east
-1857: Culinary expert Fannie Farmer was born
-1900: Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm was born
-1908: Actress Joan Crawford was born
-1910: Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was born
-1912: Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was born
-1919: Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy
-1929; Roger Bannister, athlete and neurologist was born in Harrow, England
-1933; German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial legislative powers
-1938; Former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson Jr. was born
-1942; Japanese-Americans were forcibly moved from their homes along the Pacific Coast to inland internment camps during World War II
-1950; At the Academy Awards, "All The King's Men" won best picture of 1949. Its star, Broderick Crawford, won best actor. Olivia de Havilland won best actress for "The Heiress."
-1953; Comedian Louie Anderson was born
-1953; Singer Chaka Khan was born
-1956; Pakistan became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth.
-1957; Actresses Amanda Plummer was born
-1965; America's first two-person space flight began as Gemini 3 blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young aboard
-1966: Pope Paul VI met Britain's archbishop of Canterbury at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, the first meeting between the heads of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in 400 years
-1976: Keri Russell ("Felicity") was born
-1983; The world's first recipient of a permanent artificial heart, Barney Clark of Seattle, died in at the University of Utah Medical Center after 112 days with the device.
-1985: The United States completed the secret air evacuation of 800 Ethiopian Jews to Israel
-1990: Former Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood was sentenced by a judge in Anchorage, Alaska, to help clean up Prince William Sound and paid $50,000 for his role in the oil spill
-1993: President Clinton held his first full-blown White House news conference on his 62nd day in office
-1994: The nominee of the ruling party in Mexico was shot to death just after delivering a campaign speech in Tijuana. A suspect believed to be the gunman was arrested immediately.
-1995: Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in Geneva. Afterward, Kozyrev said the U.S.-Russia "honeymoon has come to an end," referring to disagreements over Chechnya and nuclear sales to Iran.
-1996: Taiwan elected Lee Teng-hui in the island nation's first direct presidential election.
-1998: Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his entire cabinet.
-1998: "Titanic" won 11 Academy Awards, tying the record total won by "Ben-Hur" in 1959.
-1999: The vice president of Peru was assassinated.
-1999: NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana gave the formal go-ahead for air strikes against Serbian targets following the failure of Kosovo peace talks.
March 24
-1874 Harry Houdini Magician was born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary.
March 25
-1911: In a tragedy that galvanized America's labor movement, 146 immigrant workers were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York.
-1634: Maryland was founded by English colonists sent by the second Lord Baltimore.
-1865: During the Civil War, Confederate forces captured Fort Stedman in Virginia.
-1894: Jacob Coxey began leading an army of unemployed from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington D.C., to demand help from the federal government.
-1913: The home of Vaudeville, the Palace Theatre, opened in New York City.
-1918: French composer Claude Debussy died in Paris.
-1947: A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., killed 111.
-1957: The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community.
-1965: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
-1975: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness. The nephew was beheaded the following June.
-1982: Canada officially became an independent nation. Canada had been unofficially governing herself since 1867 but on March 25, 1982 Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain signed the Canada Act which ratified the Canadian Constitution and made the country officially independent.
-1994: American troops completed their withdrawal from Somalia.
-1990: Eighty-seven people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed when fire raced through an illegal social club in New York City.
-1995: Mike Tyson was released from the Indiana Youth Center after serving three years for the 1992 rape of Desiree Washington, a beauty pageant contestant.
-1999: NATO aircraft and missiles blasted targets in Yugoslavia for a second night, directing much of their fire on Kosovo, where fighting raged between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
March 28
-AD 193: After three months in power, Roman Emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax was murdered by the Praetorian Guard.
-1910: The first seaplane took off from water and flew for 1,650 feet.
-1930: The Turkish cities of Constantinople and Angora changed their names to Istanbul and Ankara, respectively.
-1939: The Nationalist forces of Gen. Francisco Franco occupied Madrid, virtually ending the Spanish Civil War and starting a fascist dictatorship in Spain.
-1979: The most serious nuclear accident in the US occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania.
March 29
-1945: Basketball legend Walt Frazier was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
March 30
-1746: Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goya was born
-1820: English author Anna Sewell ("Black Beauty") was born
-1822: Florida became a U.S. territory.
-1840: English social reformer Charles Booth was born
-1842: Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia first used ether as an anesthetic during a minor operation.
-1853: Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland
-1867: U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, two cents and acre, a deal roundly ridiculed as "Seward's Folly" , convinced it was a waste of even that much money. But just 13 years later, gold was discovered in Juneau.
-1870: The 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving black men the right to vote, was declared in effect.
-1870: Texas was readmitted to the Union.
-1880: Irish dramatist Sean O'Casey was born
-1909: The Queensboro Bridge, linking the New York boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, opened.
-1913: Former CIA Director Richard Helms was born
-1913: Singer Frankie Laine were born
-1923: The Cunard liner "Laconia" arrived in New York City, becoming the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world, a cruise of 130 days.
-1927: TV host Peter Marshall was born
-1929: Actor Richard Dysart was born
-1930: Actor John Astin was born
-1937: Actor Warren Beatty was born
-1945: The Soviet Union invaded Austria during World War II.
-1945: British blues/rock guitarist Eric Clapton was born.
-1957: Actor Paul Reiser was born
-1963: Singer Hammer was born
-1964: "Jeopardy!", the "thinking person's game show," premiered on television.
-1964: Singer Tracy Chapman was born.
-1968: Singer Celine Dion was born.
-1975: The South Vietnamese city of Da Nang fell to North Vietnamese forces.
-1979: Airey Neave, a leading member of the British parliament, was killed by a bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army.
- 1981: President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.
-1989: "The Heidi Chronicles" by Wendy Wasserstein won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In the journalism category, the Anchorage Daily News won the public service award for its reports on alcoholism and suicide among native Alaskans.
-1990: Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus vetoed a restrictive abortion bill ending the anti-abortion forces' goal of giving Supreme Court a chance to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
-1992: "The Silence of the Lambs" swept the 64th annual Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, best actor for Anthony Hopkins and best actress for Jodie Foster.
-1993: A two-state custody battle over a 2-year-old girl took a dramatic turn when the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered the child who'd been living with her custodial parents in Michigan since shortly after birth returned to her biological parents in Iowa.
-1993: After 43 years, the unthinkable happened on the comic pages -- Charlie Brown was a hero when he hit a homerun and his baseball team won for the first time.
-1994: Serbs and Croats signed a cease-fire to end their war in Croatia while Bosnian Muslims and Serbs continued to battle each other.
-1994: The Clinton administration announced it was lifting virtually all export controls on non-military products to China and the former Soviet bloc.
-1995: The compromise "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy allowing homosexuals to serve in the military under certain conditions was struck down by a federal judge in New York as unconstitutional.
-1995: In 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he warned Chinese leaders that the United States would intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan.
-1998: Rolls-Royce was purchased by German automaker BMW in a $570 million deal.
-1998: Armenian Premier Robert Kocharian was elected president in a run-off election in the former Soviet republic.
-1998: The University of Kentucky Wildcats won the NCAA basketball title for the second time in three years and the seventh time overall.
-1999: A jury in Oregon awarded $81 million dollars in damages to the family of a smoker who had died from lung cancer. The plaintiff in the case, tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris, promised to appeal. A state judge later reduced the punitive portion of the judgment to $32 million.
March 31
-1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued an edict expelling those Jews unwilling to convert to Christianity.
-1889: French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.
-1917: The U.S. took possession of the Virgin Islands from Denmark.
-1923: The first U.S. dance marathon, held in New York City, ended with Alma Cummings setting a world record of 27 hours on her feet.
-1933: Congress authorized the Civilian Conservation Corps.
-1943: Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical "Oklahoma!" opened on Broadway.
-1945: The Tennessee Williams play "The Glass Menagerie" opened on Broadway.
-1949: Newfoundland entered confederation as Canada's 10th province.
-1968: President Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not run for another term of office.
-1976: The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator.
-1986: 167 people died when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a remote mountainous region of Mexico.
-1989: The FBI announced it would conduct a criminal investigation into the massive oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
-1994: The PLO and Israel agreed to resume talks on Palestinian autonomy, more than a month after the Hebron mosque massacre.
-1995: Mexican-American singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club.
-1998: For the first time in history, the Clinton administration released a detailed financial statement for the federal government showing its assets and liabilities.
-1998: The U.N. Security Council imposed a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia to pressure the Serbs into concessions concerning ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
-1998: Former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug died at age 77.