Historical Events on 8 Mar

Historical Events on 8 Mar

1618 - Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
1702 - Anne Stuart, the sister of the childless Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland after the death of William III of Orange.
1765 - The British House of Lords passes the Stamp Act to tax the American colonies.
1775 - Thomas Paine's African Slavery in America was published. It was the first article in the United States calling for the emancipation of all slaves and the abolition of slavery.
1782 - Gnadenhütten massacre: Some 90 Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity were killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.
1817 - The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
1844 - King Oscar I ascends to the throne of Sweden-Norway.
1854 - U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry makes his second landing in Japan, where he would conclude a treaty with the Japanese within a month.
1861 - St. Augustine, Florida, surrenders to Union forces.
1862 - American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
1884 - Susan B. Anthony addresses the U.S. House Judiciary Committee arguing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. Anthony's argument came 16 years after legislators had first introduced a federal women's suffrage amendment.
1894 - The state of New York enacts the nation's first dog-licensing law.
1911 - International Women's Day is launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
1913 - The Internal Revenue Service begins to levy and collect federal income taxes, as provided for under the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Federal income taxes had previously been collected from 1864-1872.
1917 - Riots and strikes break out in St. Petersburg, Russia, marking the start of the Russian Revolution.
1917 - The U.S. Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
1918 - The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic.
1921 - Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid.
1924 - The Castle Gate mine disaster kills 172 coal miners near Castle Gate, Utah.
1930 - Mahatma Gandhi starts civil disobedience in India.
1934 - A photograph by astronomer Edwin Hubble shows there are as many galaxies in the universe as there are stars in the Milky Way.
1936 - The first stock car race is held in Daytona Beach, Florida.
1942 - World War II: The Dutch surrender to Japanese forces on Java.
1942 - World War II: Japan captures Rangoon, Burma.
1942 - World War II: British bombers begin a new style of air raid, using incendiary bombs to light the way for a nighttime attack on the Krupp armament works in Essen. The long series of attacks reduce the city to ruins.
1943 - World War II: Japanese troops counter-attack American forces on Hill 700 in Bougainville in a battle that would last five days.
1945 - Allied forces move large numbers of troops across the Rhine River to significantly reinforce and expand their tenuous hold on the captured Ludendorff Bridge (Bridge at Remagen), allowing them to push armor across the river and better secure the nascent lo
1957 - The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitions the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th & 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, is adopted by the state of Georgia.
1957 - Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.
1963 - The Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a Coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.
1965 - Vietnam War: 3,500 United States Marines arrive in South Vietnam, becoming the first American combat troops in Vietnam.
1966 - A bomb planted by young Irish protesters destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.
1966 - Vietnam War: Australia announces it is going to substantially increase its number of troops in Vietnam.
1971 - Joe Frazier becomes the undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion by winning a unanimous 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
1974 - Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.
1979 - The first extraterrestrial volcano is discovered on Io, a satellite of the planet Jupiter.
1980 - The first festival of rock music kicks off in the Soviet Union.
1983 - The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee endorses a nuclear weapons freeze with the Soviet Union, a move denounced by President Ronald Reagan.
1983 - President Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "evil empire."
1985 - A failed assassination attempt on Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in a car-bombing in Beirut kills 85 people and injures 175.
1991 - The first U.S. troops arrive home from the Gulf War; Iraq hands over 40 foreign journalists and two American soldiers it had captured.
1999 - The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing.
2004 - A new constitution is signed by Iraq's Governing Council.