On March 22nd...

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Emancipation Day (Puerto Rico)

1599 Painter Anton Van Dyck was born.

1622 Powhattan Indians killed 347 colonists at Jamestown.

1630 Boston, Massachusetts, enacted the first colonial legislation prohibiting gambling.

1638 Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1765 The Stamp Act went into effect.

1775 Edmund Burke presented his 13 Articles to the Westminster Parliament.

1794 Congress banned U. S. vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.

1809 Charles XIII succeeded Gustav IV Adolf as King of Sweden.

1817 Confederate General Braxton Bragg was born.

1820 American naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel.

1822 The New York Horticultural Society was founded.

1829 Britain, France, and Russia established the borders of Greece.

1841 Orlando Jones patented cornstarch.

1846 Illustrator Randolph Caldecott was born.

1861 The first nursing school in the United States was chartered.

1862 San Marino and Italy concluded a treaty of friendship and cooperation.

1868 Physicist Robert Millikan was born.

1869 Emilio Aguinaldo, the first President of the Philippines, was born.

1871 William Holden of North Carolina became the first Governor to be removed from office by impeachment.

1872 Illinois became the first state to require sexual equality in employment.

1873 Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico.

1874 The Young Men's Hebrew Association was founded in New York City, New York..

1884 American politician Arthur Vandenberg was born.

1887 Comic actor Chico Marx was born.

1888 The English Football League was established.

1894 The Montreal Hockey Club defeated the Ottawa Generals to win the first ever Stanley Cup competition.

1895 Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed their first movie to an invited audience.

1908 Author Louis L'Amour was born.

1912 Actor Karl Malden was born.

1914 The world's first scheduled airline, St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line, began operations.

1919 Singer Lorenzo Dow Fuller, Jr. was born.

1920 Actor Werner Klemperer was born.

1922 The Rand Rebellion in South Africa was ended by the police.

1923 Performance artist Marcel Marceau was born.

1930 Evangelist Pat Robertson was born.
1930 Composer Stephen Sondheim was born.

1931 Actor William Shatner was born.

1933 U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill legalizing the sale of 3.2% beer and wine.

1934 Fire destroyed Hakodate, Japan, and killed about 1,500 people.
1934 U. S. Senator Orrin Hatch was born.

1935 Blood tests were authorized as evidence in court cases, in New York.

1936 Labor leader Ron Carey was born.

1941 Grand Coulee Dam began operating.

1943 Jazz musician George Benson was born.

1945 The Arab League was founded.
1945 John Hessin Clarke, former U. S. Supreme Court Justice, died.

1946 The United States launched its first rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere.
1946 The United Kingdom signed a treaty granting independence to Jordan.

1947 Author James Patterson was born.

1948 Journalist Wolf Blitzer was born.
1948 Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was born.

1952 A Dutch DC-6 crashed near Frankfurt, Germany, killing 44 persons.
1952 Sportscaster Bob Costas was born.

1954 The world's first shopping mall opened in Southfield, Michigan.

1957 An earthquake with an estimated 5.7 magnitude struck the San Francisco, California, area.

1958 The Greek coastal vessel Dodecanessos sank in a hurricane; all 20 persons aboard were presumed drowned.
1958 Xavier University won the 21st National Invitational Tournament in New York City, New York.
1958 Kentucky won the National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, with an 84-to-72 victory over Seattle.

1960 Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes were granted a patent for a laser.
1960 A ferry carrying school children capsized near Taipei, Taiwan, drowning 18.
1960 The newly born son of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh was registered as Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward.

1963 The Beatles released their first album, Please, Please Me.

1967 Canary Bird, the third in the second series of Intelsat satellites, was launched from Cape Kennedy.
1967 Muhammad Ali successfully defended his World Heavyweight Title for the ninth time by knocking out Zora Folley in seven rounds.

1968 Jarmila Novotna resigned as President of Czechoslovakia.

1969 UCLA defeated Purdue 92-72 to win its 5th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in six years.

1972 The U. S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification.
1972 The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people have the same right to contraception as married people.

1976 Actress Reese Witherspoon was born.

1978 The People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia unanimously reelected General Suharto to his third consecutive term as President.
1978 Twenty persons were killed when a boat capsized on the flooded Zambezi River in Mozambique.
1978 A train crash in Libiri, Zaire, killed 22 persons.
1978 Karl Wallenda died while trying to cross a 10-story-high tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1979 The Israeli Knesset approved the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

1990 A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found Captain Joseph Hazelwood innocent of all charges related to the Exxon Valdez accident.

1991 High school teacher Pamela Smart was found guilty of manipulating her student-lover to kill her husband.

1992 A U.S. Air New York, New York-to Cleveland, Ohio, flight crashed after taking off from LaGuardia Airport, killing 27 persons.

1995 Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov left the Mir Space Station after having spent a record 438 days in space.

1996 Shannon Lucid began what would become a U.S. record for long-duration spaceflight (179 days) aboard the Mir Space Station.

2001 Cartoonist William Hanna died.

2009 Mount Redoubt, in Alaska, began erupting after a prolonged period of unrest.

2014 A boat capsized in Lake Albert, Uganda, killing 251 persons.
2014 A mudlisde in Oso, Washington, killed 30 persons.

2016 Suicide bombings at Brussels, Belgium's, Zavantem Airport and Maelbeek Metro Station killed 28 persons and injuring 260.

2017 A terrorist attack on London, England's, Westminster Bridge and Houses of Parliament killed 4 persons, including a police officer, and injured 40.

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This page was last updated on March 21, 2018.