843 – Icon veneration officially re-instated in Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople
1502 – Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty, crowned Shah of Persia (rules till 1524)
1918 – Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia
1966 – Military coup led by Indonesian General Suharto breaks out
1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader
1988 – Utrecht conservatory destroyed by fire
1995 – President Nazarbajev disbands Kazakhstan parliament
1996 – The EU Database Directive is passed
1997 – Beatle Paul McCartney knighted by Queen Elizabeth II
2004 – Terrorists explode simultaneous bombs on Madrid’s rail network ripping through a commuter train and rocking three stations, killing 190
2009 – Winnenden school shooting – 17 people are killed at a school in Germany.
2011 – 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people and causing the second worst nuclear accident in history at Fukushima nuclear plant
2013 – European Union bans the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals
2013 – Falkland Islands’ sovereignty referendum: 99.8% choose to remain an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom
2018 – China’s National People’s Congress approves removal of term limits for a leader, will allow Xi Jinping presidency for life
2019 – Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, refutes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”
2020 – Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison for a criminal sex act and rape in New York
2020 – Smallest dinosaur ever discovered – skull preserved in piece of amber smaller than a fingertip from a mine in Myanmar, reported in “Nature”
2020 – COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, with 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths
More Historical Events
Film & TV:
1958 – Charles Van Doren finally loses on US TV game show “Twenty-One” after winning $129,000 – later revealed to be fixed
Music:
1851 – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” premieres in Venice
Sport:
1917 – 1st NHL championship game ever played, Toronto Arenas beats Montreal Canadiens 7-3 in 1st of 2 game set (second game on March 13)
