Historical Events on March 20

Events 1 - 200 of 201

• 141 6th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

• 1525 Paris' parliament begins pursuit of Protestants
• 1569 Duke of Alva leads "tenth penning" in Les Ponts de Cé

• 1600 The Linköping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden
• 1602 United Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) forms

• 1627 France & Spain sign accord for fighting protestantism

• 1697 Dutch sea captain Willem de Vlamingh returns to Batavia after exploring "South Land" (west coast of Australia)
• 1703 Akō incident: 46 of the 47 surviving Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master's death in Edo
• 1739 Iranian ruler Nadir Shah occupies Delhi in India and sacks the city, stealing the jewels of the Peacock Throne
• 1760 Great Fire of Boston destroys 349 buildings

• 1800 French army defeats Turks at Helipolis & advance to Cairo
• 1813 Lady Hester Stanhope sets out for ancient city of Palmyra, the first western woman to visit
• 1814 Prince Willem Frederik becomes monarch of Netherlands

• 1816 US Supreme Court affirms its right to review state court decisions

• 1833 US & Siam sign commercial treaty

• 1854 Boston Public Library opens in Boston, Massachusetts as the first large free municipal library in the US [1]
• 1854 Republican Party formally organized in Ripon, Wisconsin
• 1861 An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, Argentina
• 1865 2nd day of Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina
• 1865 Michigan authorizes workers' cooperatives

• 1883 Jan Matzeliger receives his 1st patent (number 274,207) for shoe lasting machine which mechanized shoe production
• 1883 Unity treaty of Paris signed: protects industrial property
• 1885 Yiddish theater opens in New York City with an operetta by Abraham Goldfaden
• 1886 1st AC power plant in US begins commercial operation in Massachusetts
• 1888 Premiere of the very first Romani language operetta staged in Moscow, Russia
• 1890 General Federation of Women's Clubs founded in the United States
• 1896 Marines land in Nicaragua to protect US citizens
• 1896 Uprising in Matabeleland
• 1897 1st US orthodox Jewish Rabbinical seminary (RIETS) incorporates in NY

• 1900 US Secretary of State John Hay announces that all nations to whom he sent notes calling for an 'open door' policy in China have essentially accepted his stand
• 1902 France and Russia issue a joint declaration that approves the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but stipulates that they have the right to protect interests in China and Korea

• 1911 National Squash Tennis Association forms (NYC)
• 1911 Winter Garden Theater opens at 1634 Broadway NYC
• 1914 1st international figure-skating tournament held in US, New Haven
• 1916 Allies attack Zeebrugge Belgium

• 1920 1st flight from London to South Africa lands (took 1½ months)
• 1921 Upper Silesia votes for amalgamation with Germany in a plebiscite that is 63% in favor
• 1922 USS Langley is commissioned, US Navy's 1st aircraft carrier
• 1922 WIP-AM in Philadelphia PA begins radio transmissions
• 1923 Bavarian minister of interior refuses to forbid Nazi Sturm Abteilung
• 1923 Belgian Senate rejects Dutch University in Ghent
• 1924 Finnair begins scheduled flight of Helsinki-Tallinn
• 1930 American engine builder Clessie Cummins sets diesel engine speed record of 80.4 mph (129.39 kph)

• 1931 Bishop Schreiber warns against national-socialism in Berlin
• 1932 Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Region in RSFSR becomes Kara-Kalpak ASSR
• 1933 Dachau the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed

• 1934 Rudolf Kuhnold demonstrates radar in Kiel Germany

• 1939 7,000 Jews flee German occupied Memel Lithuania
• 1940 Paul Reynoud becomes French premier
• 1941 Exhibition "Planning and Construction in the East" opens in Berlin to showcase Generalplan Ost (plan for the East) German rural settlements after planned deportation of millions of Slavs [1]
• 1941 Nazi German-Yugoslav pact drawn
• 1942 Convoy PQ13 departs Reykjavik Iceland to Russia

• 1942 Major German assault on Malta
• 1943 German U-384 bombed & sinks
• 1944 2,500 women trample guards and floorwalkers to purchase 1,500 alarm clocks announced for sale in a Chicago Illinois department store
• 1944 Bus falls off bridge into Passaic River NJ, killing 16
• 1945 US 70th Infantry Division captures Saarbrucken, immediately prior the invasion of Germany by the western Allies
• 1947 180 tonne blue whale (record) caught in South Atlantic

• 1951 Fujiyoshida, a city located in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in the center of the Japanese main island of Honshū is founded
• 1951 Indonesian army offensive against Darul Islam on Java

• 1952 Final ratification of peace treaty restoring sovereignty to Japan by US Senate
• 1954 1st newspaper vending machine used (Columbia Pennsylvania)
• 1955 KXTV TV channel 10 in Sacramento, CA (CBS) begins broadcasting
• 1956 Edward Ochab succeeds Bolesław Bierut as 1st secretary of the Polish Communist Party
• 1956 Mount Bezymianny on Kamchatka Peninsula (USSR) erupts
• 1956 Tunisia gains independence from France when the Protocol agreement signed between the two countries
• 1956 Union workers ended a 156-day strike at Westinghouse Electric Corp
• 1956 USSR performs nuclear test
• 1957 Britain accepts NATO offer to mediate in Cyprus, but Greece rejects it
• 1958 50 inches of snow falls across the Mason–Dixon line
• 1958 Clandestine Burasi Bizim Radio (communist) begins transmitting
• 1958 Greek Clandestine Radio (communist), Voice of Truth 1st transmission
• 1962 Sjoukje Dijkstra becomes world champion figure skater
• 1963 1st "Pop Art" exhibition (NYC)
• 1964 ESRO established, European Space Research Organization

• 1965 Venkataraghavan takes 8-72 v NZ at Delhi

• 1967 WOET (now WPTD) TV channel 16 in Dayton, OH (PBS) begins broadcasting

• 1968 Military intervene in South-Yemen (leftist ministers resign)
• 1971 Boston Bruins win 13th straight NHL game

• 1972 19 mountain climbers killed on Japan's Mount Fuji during an avalanche
• 1972 Donegall Street bombing: the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonate its first car bomb on Donegall Street in Belfast; four civilians, two RUC officers and a UDR soldier killed while 148 people were wounded
• 1972 S Mansholt succeeds Malfatti as chairman of European Committee
• 1973 NBC TV premiere of pilot episode of "Police Story", based on Los Angeles Police Dept. Joseph Wambaugh's writings

• 1974 "The Super Cops" directed by Gordon Parks premieres in NYC, New York

• 1976 Jevgeni Kulikov skates world record 1000m (1:15.70)
• 1977 Communists and socialists win French municipal elections

• 1978 Flyers' Rick MacLeash scores on 6th penalty shot against Islanders
• 1980 The Mi Amigo ship containing England's pirate radio Caroline sinks
• 1980 US appeals to International Court on hostages in Iran
• 1981 Argentine ex-president Isabel Peron sentenced to 8 years
• 1981 Jean Harris sentenced 15-to-life for slaying of Scarsdale Diet Dr
• 1982 France performs nuclear test
• 1982 Joan Jett & Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" goes #1 for 7 weeks
• 1982 Rev Andries Treurnicht forms Conservative Party of South Africa

• 1984 Andy Kaufman and Fred Blassie's film "My Breakfast With Blassie" premieres
• 1984 Nigerian Major-General Babatunde Idiagbon launches a campaign on ‘National Consciousness and Enlightenment’
• 1984 US Senate rejects amendment to permit spoken prayer in public schools
• 1985 Libby Riddles is 1st woman to win Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race
• 1986 228 KPH gust of wind strikes Cairngorm (UK record)
• 1986 Jacques Chirac forms French government
• 1986 New York City passes its first lesbian and gay rights legislation
• 1987 FDA approves sale of AZT (AIDS treatment)
• 1987 NASA launches Palapa B2P
• 1987 Soap opera "Capitol" final episode
• 1987 Soviet filmmakers arrive in Hollywood for an entertainment summit

• 1988 David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly," premieres in NYC

• 1988 Eritrean War of Independence: Having defeated the Nadew Command, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front enters the town of Afabet, victoriously concluding the Battle of Afabet.

• 1989 Richard J Kerr replaces Robert M Gates as deputy director of CIA

• 1991 Supreme Court rules unanimously employers can't exclude women from jobs where exposure to toxic chemicals could potentially damage fetus
• 1991 US forgives $2 billion in loans to Poland
• 1992 Janice Pennington is awarded $1.3M for accident on Price is Right set

• 1993 IRA-bomb kills 3-year-old in Warrington, England
• 1994 El Salvador's 1st presidential election following 12-year-old civil war
• 1994 Mashonaland U-24 beat Matabeleland on 1st inning to win Logan Cup
• 1994 Zulu-king Goodwill Zwelithini founds realm in South Africa

• 1995 Dow-Jones hits record 4083.68
• 1995 Members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo release sarin gas on three lines of the Tokyo subway, killing 13 people and injuring over 1,000
• 1996 "Love Thy Neighbor" opens at Booth Theater NYC
• 1996 Erik & Lyle Menendez found guilty of killing their parents
• 1996 UK admits humans can catch CJD (Mad Cow Disease)
• 1997 Liggett admits cigarettes are addictive
• 1999 Legoland, California, the first Legoland outside of Europe, opens in Carlsbad, California
• 2000 Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a former Black Panther once known as H. Rap Brown, is captured after a gun battle that leaves a Georgia sheriff's deputy dead

• 2001 Petrobras 36 Oil Platform, the world's largest oil rig, sinks with 400,000 US gallons of fuel and crude oil aboard, after suffering three explosions on March 15

• 2005 A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits Fukuoka, Japan, its first major quake in over 100 years. One person is killed, hundreds are injured and evacuated.
• 2006 Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country's banana crop.

• 2012 50 people are killed and 240 injured in a wave of terror attacks across 10 cities in Iraq
• 2012 Disney movie John Carter records one of the largest losses in cinema history with a $200 million dollar write down
• 2013 First Breakthrough Prizes, world's most generous science prize worth $3 million, awarded in Mathematics, Life Sciences and Physics established by Julia and Yuri Milner
• 2013 Pierre Deligne wins the 2013 Abel Prize in mathematics

• 2017 Indian rivers Yamuna and the Ganges declared "living entities" by court in the state of Uttarakhand

• 2019 A woman who can smell Parkinson's disease has helped researchers identify molecules on the skin of people with the disease in Manchester, England
• 2019 Finland is the world's happiest country, South Sudan is world's least happy, according to annual World Happiness Report
• 2019 Four men arrested in South Korea for secretly filming 1,600 hotel guests and selling the footage via a website
• 2019 Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts calls the state's flooding "the most widespread destruction we have ever seen in our state's history"

• 2020 India hangs four men for 2012 gang rape and murder of woman on a bus in New Delhi, country's first hanging since 2013
• 2020 Smoke from Australian bushfires killed more people than the fires - 417 vs 33 according to new study published in "Medical Journal of Australia"
• 2021 Miami Beach imposes a state of emergency and a curfew as large crowds descend on the area for spring break
• 2021 Overseas spectators will not be allowed to attend the Tokyo Summer Olympics due to the pandemic Japanese organizers confirm
• 2021 Severe one-in-a-hundred-year flooding in Sydney and the surrounding state of New South Wales prompts evacuation orders
• 2022 Intense fighting in Ukrainian city of Mariupol continues as Russian forces encircle the city, trapping 300,000 people [1]

• 2023 Somalian drought may have killed 43,000 people in 2022, half of them children under five, according to new research presented by UNICEF in Mogadishu [1]
• 2023 Sri Lanka receives bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) worth $2.9bn, amid its worst financial crisis since independence in 1948 [1]
• 2023 UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says world has less than a decade to stop catastrophic warming: must reduce greenhouse gases by half by 2030, and cease adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by early 2050s [1]

• 2024 French mathematician Michel Talagrand awarded 2024 Abel prize for his work on probability theory and describing randomness [1]
• 2024 Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, the country's first gay and biracial taoiseach, announces he is stepping down after serving 2017-2020 and since December 2022 [1]

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