Also on this day
Lead Story
1917
In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) begins when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd. One week later, centuries of czarist rule in Russia ended with the abdication of Nicholas II, and Russia took a dramatic...
American Revolution
1782
On this day in 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen murder 96 Christian Indians–39 children, 29 women and 28 men–by hammering their skulls with mallets from behind as they kneel unarmed, praying and singing, in their Moravian Mission at Gnadenhuetten in the Ohio Country. The Patriots then piled their victims’ bodies...
Automotive
1950
Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expands its product offerings to include a microbus, which goes into production on this day in 1950. Known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) or the Transporter, the bus was a favorite mode of transportation for hippies in...
Cold War
1982
The United States government issues a public statement accusing the Soviet Union of using poison gas and chemical weapons in its war against rebel forces in Afghanistan. The accusation was part of the continuing U.S. criticism of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.Since sending troops into Afghanistan in 1979 in an...
Crime
1951
The Lonely Hearts Killers, Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez Fernandez, are executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. The strange couple had schemed to seduce, rob and murder women who placed personal ads in newspapers. Beck and Fernandez boasted to killing as many as seventeen...
Disaster
1669
On this day in 1669, Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily in modern-day Italy, begins rumbling. Multiple eruptions over the next few weeks killed more than 20,000 people and left thousands more homeless. Most of the victims could have saved themselves by fleeing, but stayed, in a...
2014
On this day in 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, loses contact with air traffic control less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur then veers off course and disappears. Despite a massive air-and-sea search effort for the Beijing-bound Boeing 777, investigators...
General Interest
1801
During the Napoleonic Wars, combined British and Ottoman Empire forces successfully establish a foothold in French-occupied Egypt at Abukir Bay. In taking the strategic naval port, some 1,100 British soldiers perished, including Sir Ralph Abercromby, the commander of the amphibious operation.
In the summer of 1798, French General Napoleon Bonaparte and...
1957
Following Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Egyptian territory, the Suez Canal is reopened to international traffic. However, the canal was so littered with wreckage from the Suez Crisis that it took weeks of cleanup by Egyptian and United Nations workers before larger ships could navigate the waterway.
The Suez Canal, which connects...
Hollywood
1993
On this day in 1993, the Music Television Network (MTV) airs the first episode of the animated series Beavis and Butthead, which will go on to become the network’s highest-rated series up to that point.
Beavis and Butthead offered audiences rude and crude buddy humor in the tradition of The Three...
Literary
1935
Scribner’s publishes Thomas Wolfe’s second novel, Of Time and the River. Wolfe started the novel, a sequel to his highly acclaimed debut novel, Look Homeward, Angel, in 1931, but it took him and his editor, Maxwell Perkins, years to edit the work.
Wolfe was 6’5” and couldn’t sit comfortably at...
Music
1968
Bands like the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and Santana owe a great deal of their success to the business acumen of the legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, whose skill and creativity turned San Francisco into a musical Mecca for both fans and performers in the late 1960s. In 1966,...
Old West
1893
Emmet Dalton, the only survivor of the Dalton Gang’s disastrous attempt to rob two Kansas banks, begins serving a life sentence in the Kansas State Penitentiary.
Born in 1871, Emmet was the youngest of the three Dalton brothers, who banded together to pursue a life of crime. Initially, his brothers Bob...
Presidential
1983
Speaking to a convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Florida on this day in 1983, President Ronald Reagan publicly refers to the Soviet Union as an evil empire for the second time in his career. He had first used the phrase in a 1982 speech at the British...
Sports
1971
On March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier meet for the “Fight of the Century” at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The bout marked Ali’s return to the marquee three-and-a-half years after boxing commissions revoked his license over his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War. It...
Vietnam War
1965
The USS Henrico, Union, and Vancouver, carrying the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade under Brig. Gen. Frederick J. Karch, take up stations 4,000 yards off Red Beach Two, north of Da Nang.
First ashore was the Battalion Landing Team 3/9, which arrived on the beach at 8:15 a.m. Wearing full battle gear...
1975
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu orders the withdrawal of South Vietnamese forces from the Central Highlands. In late January 1975, just two years after the cease-fire had been established by the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese launched Campaign 275. The objective of this campaign was the capture of...
World War I
1917
In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) begins on this day in 1917, when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).
By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of the czarist...
World War II
1942
On this day, Dutch forces surrender to the Japanese after two months of fighting.
Java is an island of modern-day Indonesia, and it lies southeast of Malaysia and Sumatra, south of Borneo, and west of Bali. The Dutch had been in Java since 1596, establishing the Dutch East India Company, a...