Historical Events on Tuesday, 31st March

31/03/2023

A historic tornado outbreak occurs in the American Midwest and South.

A widespread, deadly, and historic tornado outbreak affected large portions of the Midwestern, Southern and Eastern United States on March 31 and April 1, 2023, the result of an extratropical cyclone that also produced blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest. The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) issued a rare high risk for severe weather in two areas of the Mississippi Valley on March 31, the first high risk issuance since March 25, 2021. Approximately 28 million people were placed under tornado watches, including multiple PDS tornado watches, from the evening of March 31 through the overnight hours into the morning of April 1. This included the Little Rock, St. Louis, Chicago, and Memphis metropolitan areas, all of which were hit by multiple rounds of severe squall lines and supercell thunderstorms that produced damaging winds, large hail, and tornadoes. EF3 tornadoes in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Illinois prompted the issuance of tornado emergencies and multiple mass casualty incidents were declared for some of the hardest hit areas. One of these tornadoes was a high-end EF3 tornado that passed through the northern Little Rock metro, causing extensive damage and dozens of injuries. The strongest tornado was a low-end EF4 tornado that swept away homes on the west side of Keota, Iowa. The Apollo Theatre in Belvidere, Illinois collapsed during a concert due to an EF1 tornado, injuring up to 40 concertgoers and killing one. Severe and tornadic weather also affected the Northeastern United States in the afternoon and evening of April 1, including a rare EF3 tornado that caused a death in Sussex County, Delaware. At certain points of the outbreak, over 20 simultaneous tornado warnings were active, with a total of 175 tornado warnings issued on March 31 with an additional 51 issued on April 1.

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31/03/2018

Start of the 2018 Armenian revolution.

The 2018 Armenian Revolution, most commonly known in Armenia as #MerzhirSerzhin, was a series of anti-government protests in Armenia from April to May 2018 staged by various political and civil groups led by a member of the Armenian parliament – Nikol Pashinyan. Protests and marches took place initially in response to Serzh Sargsyan's third consecutive term as the most powerful figure in the government of Armenia, later broadening against the ruling Republican Party, who were in power since 1999. Pashinyan declared it a Velvet Revolution.

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31/03/2016

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko return to Earth after a yearlong mission at the International Space Station.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and space exploration. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the US and is organized into mission directorates for Science, Space Operations, Exploration Systems Development, Space Technology, Aeronautics Research, and Mission Support. Established in 1958, NASA succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the American space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo program missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle.

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31/03/2005

The dwarf planet Makemake is discovered by a team led by astronomer Michael E. Brown at the Palomar Observatory.

A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto, which for decades was regarded as a planet before the "dwarf" concept was adopted in 2006. Many planetary geologists consider dwarf planets and planetary-mass moons to be planets, but since 2006 the IAU and many astronomers have excluded them from the roster of planets.

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31/03/2004

Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.

The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

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31/03/1998

Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license.

Netscape Communications Corporation was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A founding engineer of Netscape, Lou Montulli, created HTTP cookies. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications and was later renamed to TLS.

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31/03/1995

Selena is murdered by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was an American singer-songwriter. Known as the "Queen of Tejano Music", she is known for her contributions to popular music and fashion, which made her one of the most celebrated Mexican-American entertainers of the late 20th century. Media outlets called her the "Tejano Madonna" for her clothing choices. She also ranks among the most influential Latin artists of all time and is credited for catapulting the Tejano genre into the mainstream market.

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TAROM Flight 371, an Airbus A310-300, crashes near Balotesti, Romania, killing all 60 people on board.

TAROM Flight 371 was a scheduled international passenger flight, with an Airbus A310 from Otopeni International Airport in Romania's capital Bucharest to Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium. The flight was operated by TAROM, the flag carrier of Romania. On 31 March 1995, the Airbus A310-324, registered as YR-LCC, entered a nose-down dive after takeoff and crashed near Balotești in Romania, killing all 60 people on board.

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31/03/1993

The Macao Basic Law is adopted by the Eighth National People's Congress of China to take effect December 20, 1999. Resumption by China of the Exercise of Sovereignty over Macao

The Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is the organic law that establishes the Macau Special Administrative Region, replacing the Estatuto Orgânico de Macau. It was adopted on 31 March 1993 by China's National People's Congress and promulgated by President Jiang Zemin; it came into effect on 20 December 1999, following the handover of Macau from Portugal to China.

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31/03/1992

The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

USS Missouri (BB-63) is an Iowa-class battleship built for the United States Navy (USN) in the 1940s and is now a museum ship. Completed in 1944, she is the last battleship commissioned by the United States. The ship was assigned to the Pacific Theater during World War II, where she participated in the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands. Her quarterdeck was the site where the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed, officially ending World War II.

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The Treaty of Federation is signed in Moscow.

The Treaty of Federation was a treaty signed on 31 March 1992 in Moscow between the Russian government and 86 of 89 federal subjects of Russia.

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31/03/1991

Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.

An independence referendum was held in the Republic of Georgia on 31 March 1991. It was approved by 99.5% of voters.

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The Warsaw Pact formally disbands.

The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics in Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant military alliance, the Warsaw Pact Organisation. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the economic organization for the Eastern Bloc states.

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31/03/1990

Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.

The poll tax riots were a series of riots in British towns and cities during protests against the Community Charge, introduced by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The largest protest occurred in central London on Saturday 31 March 1990, shortly before the tax was due to come into force in England and Wales.

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31/03/1986

Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 crashes into the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range near the Mexican town of Maravatío, killing 167.

Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 was a scheduled international flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles with stopovers in Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán. On March 31, 1986, the aircraft serving the route, a Boeing 727-200 registered as XA-MEM, crashed into El Carbón, a mountain in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range northwest of Mexico City, killing everyone on board. With 167 deaths, the crash of Flight 940 is the deadliest aviation disaster ever on Mexican soil, and the deadliest involving a Boeing 727.

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31/03/1980

The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.

The original Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock.

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31/03/1970

Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.

Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites, both launched by the Soviet Union during the previous year, Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2. This began a Space Race during the Cold War between the two nations.

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31/03/1968

American President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to the nation of "Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam" in a television address. At the conclusion of his speech, he announces: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

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31/03/1966

The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, largest by area, and bordered twelve countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

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The Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins the 1966 United Kingdom general election.

The Labour Party, commonly Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum, and has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. It has been the governing party since the 2024 general election. Keir Starmer has been Leader of the Labour Party since 2020 and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024. There have been twelve Labour governments and seven Labour prime ministers. The party meets annually during Autumn for the Labour Party Conference, during which delegates from local parties and trade unions vote on party policy, and senior figures address the audience from the Conference platform.

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31/03/1964

Brazilian General Olímpio Mourão Filho orders his troops to move towards Rio de Janeiro, beginning the coup d'état and 21 years of military dictatorship.

Olímpio Mourão Filho was a Brazilian military officer known as the author of the Cohen Plan, a forged document used to justify the Estado Novo coup in 1937, and, as head of the 4th Military Region/Infantry Division, as the precipitator of the 1964 coup d'état that installed the military dictatorship in Brazil. He reached the rank of army general and ended his career presiding over the Superior Military Court (STM) from 1967 to 1969.

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31/03/1959

The 14th Dalai Lama crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.

The 14th Dalai Lama is the incumbent Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. He served as the resident spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet before 1959 and subsequently led the Tibetan government in exile represented by the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India.

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31/03/1958

In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.

The 1958 Canadian federal election was held to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 24th Parliament of Canada on March 31, 1958, just nine months after the 23rd election. It transformed Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's minority into the largest majority government in Canadian history and the second-largest percentage of the popular vote; only Unionist Prime Minister Robert Borden’s triumph in the 1917 federal election, at 56.93 percent, was higher. Although the Tories would surpass their 1958-seat total in the 1984 election, the 1958 result remains unmatched both in terms of percentage of seats (78.5%) and the size of the government majority over all opposition parties. Voter turnout was 79.4%, the highest percentage of eligible electors to cast a ballot in Canadian federal election history.

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31/03/1957

Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.

Territorial Assembly elections were held in French Upper Volta on 31 March 1957. The result was a victory for the Unified Democratic Party, which won 33 of the 68 seats in the Assembly.

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31/03/1951

Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.

Remington Rand, Inc. was an early American business machine manufacturer, originally a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers. Formed in 1927 following a merger, Remington Rand was a diversified conglomerate making other office equipment, electric shavers, etc. The Remington Rand Building at 315 Park Avenue South in New York City is a 20-floor skyscraper completed in 1911. After 1955, Remington Rand had a long series of mergers and acquisitions that eventually resulted in the formation of Unisys.

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31/03/1949

The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.

Newfoundland was a British Dominion in eastern North America, today the modern Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It included the island of Newfoundland, and Labrador on the continental mainland. Newfoundland was one of the original dominions under the Balfour Declaration of 1926, and accordingly enjoyed a constitutional status equivalent to the other dominions of the time. Its dominion status was confirmed by the Statute of Westminster, 1931, although the statute was not otherwise applicable to Newfoundland.

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31/03/1945

World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.

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31/03/1942

World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

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31/03/1939

Events preceding World War II in Europe: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pledges British military support to the Second Polish Republic in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany.

The events preceding World War II in Europe are closely tied to the bellicosity of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union, as well as the Great Depression. The peace movement led to appeasement and disarmament.

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31/03/1933

The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28, who volunteered amid widespread unemployment. The CCC was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that supplied manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state, and local governments. The CCC was designed to supply jobs for young men and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. There was a smaller counterpart program for unemployed women called the She-She-She Camps, which were championed by Eleanor Roosevelt.

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31/03/1931

An earthquake in Nicaragua destroys Managua; killing 2,000.

The 1931 Nicaragua earthquake devastated Nicaragua's capital city of Managua on 31 March 1931. It had a moment magnitude of 6.1 and a maximum MSK intensity of VI (Strong). Between 1,000 and 2,450 people were killed. A major fire started and destroyed thousands of structures, burning into the next day. At least 45,000 were left homeless and losses of $35 million were recorded.

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A Transcontinental & Western Air airliner crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.

On March 31, 1931, a Fokker F-10 belonging to Transcontinental and Western Air crashed near Bazaar, Kansas after taking off from Kansas City Municipal Airport, Kansas City, Missouri.

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31/03/1930

The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty-eight years.

The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. The code spelled out unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States, such as drugs, profanity, and sex. Under Hays's leadership, the MPPDA, later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began rigidly enforcing it in 1934.

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31/03/1921

The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is the principal aerial warfare force of Australia, a part of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Army. Constitutionally the governor-general of Australia is the de jure commander-in-chief of the Australian Defence Force. The Royal Australian Air Force is commanded by the Chief of Air Force (CAF), who is subordinate to the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF). The CAF is also directly responsible to the Minister for Defence, with the Department of Defence administering the ADF and the Air Force.

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31/03/1918

Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.

The March Days or March Events was a period of inter-ethnic strife and clashes which took place between 30 March – 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Transcaucasian Commissariat.

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Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.

Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time, or summer time, is the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the longer daylight available during summer so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The typical implementation of DST is to adjust clocks ahead of standard time by one hour in spring or late winter, and to set clocks back by one hour in the autumn.

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31/03/1917

According to the terms of the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, the islands become American possessions.

The Treaty of the Danish West Indies, officially the Convention between the United States and Denmark for cession of the Danish West Indies, was a 1916 treaty transferring sovereignty of the Danish West Indies from Denmark to the United States in exchange for a sum of US$25,000,000 in gold, and agreement to cede US interest in Greenland. It is one of the most recent permanent expansions of United States territory.

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31/03/1913

The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.

In music, modernism is an aesthetic stance underlying the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories of music, innovations that led to new ways of organizing and approaching aspects of music such as harmony, melody, sound, and rhythm, and changes in aesthetic worldviews in close relation to the larger identifiable period of modernism in the arts of the time. The operative word most associated with it is "innovation". Its leading feature is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one musical language, or modernist style, ever assumed a dominant position.Inherent within musical modernism is the conviction that music is not a static phenomenon defined by timeless truths and classical principles, but rather something which is intrinsically historical and developmental. While belief in musical progress or in the principle of innovation is not new or unique to modernism, such values are particularly important within modernist aesthetic stances.

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31/03/1909

Serbia formally withdraws its opposition to Austro-Hungarian actions in the Bosnian Crisis.

The Bosnian Crisis, also known as the Annexation Crisis or the First Balkan Crisis, erupted on 5 October 1908 when Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, territories formerly within the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire but under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878.

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31/03/1906

The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and 1 in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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31/03/1905

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany declares his support for Moroccan independence in Tangier, beginning the First Moroccan Crisis.

Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. His fall from power marked the end of the German Empire as well as the Hohenzollern dynasty's 500-year rule over Prussia.

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31/03/1901

Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák premieres at the National Opera House in Prague.

Rusalka, Op. 114, is an opera by Antonín Dvořák. His ninth opera (1900–1901), it became his most successful, frequenting the standard repertoire worldwide. Jaroslav Kvapil wrote the libretto on Karel Jaromír Erben's and Božena Němcová's fairy tales. The rusalka is a water sprite from Slavic mythology; it usually inhabits a lake or river.

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31/03/1899

Philippine–American War: Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.

The Philippine–American War, known alternatively as the Filipino–American War, Philippine Insurrection, or Tagalog Insurgency, emerged in early 1899 following the United States' annexation of the former Spanish colony of the Philippine Islands under the terms of the December 1898 Treaty of Paris following the Spanish–American War. Philippine nationalists had proclaimed independence in June 1898 and constituted the First Philippine Republic in January 1899. The United States did not recognize either event as legitimate, and tensions escalated until fighting commenced on February 4, 1899, in the Battle of Manila.

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31/03/1889

The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.

The Eiffel Tower is a lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889.

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31/03/1885

The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established by the Acts of Union in 1801 that united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into one sovereign state. It continued in this form until 1927, when it evolved into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, after the Irish Free State gained a degree of independence in 1922.

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31/03/1854

Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.

Commodore was an early title and later a rank in the United States Navy, United States Coast Guard and also has been a rank in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps and its ancestor organizations. For over two centuries, the designation has been given varying levels of authority and formality.

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31/03/1814

The Sixth Coalition occupies Paris after Napoleon's Grande Armée capitulates.

In the War of the Sixth Coalition, sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and a number of German States defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia of 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Portugal, and the rebels in Spain who were already at war with France. The invasion of Russia cost the French many seasoned soldiers, so Napoleon took action to engage "Marie-Louises", young conscripts who were barely familiar with military affairs; they were called up from October 1813 to 1815. However, the constant warfare weakened the Coalition nations as well. The Russian military was particularly depleted after 1812, and Prussia also suffered a significant downgrade as a result of its losses in 1806–1807; nevertheless, it carried out large-scale reforms to improve the situation in the Prussian Army. Later, having encountered the Prussians in the Battle of Lützen, Napoleon would say: "These animals have learned something."

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31/03/1774

American Revolution: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.

The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a political movement in the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain and the United States which the colonies founded. The movement began as a rebellion demanding reform and evolved into a revolution resulting in a complete separation that entirely replaced the social and political order. These changes were the outcome of the associated American Revolutionary War and the consequential sovereign independence of the former colonies as the United States. The Second Continental Congress, as the provisional government, established the Continental Army and appointed George Washington as its commander-in-chief in 1775. The following year, the Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. Throughout most of the war, the outcome appeared uncertain. However, in 1781, a decisive victory by Washington and the Continental Army in the Siege of Yorktown led King George III and the Fox–North coalition in government to negotiate the cessation of colonial rule and the acknowledgment of American sovereignty, formalized in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The Constitution took effect in 1789 and the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791.

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31/03/1761

The 1761 Lisbon earthquake strikes off the Iberian Peninsula with an estimated magnitude of 8.5, six years after another quake destroyed the city.

The 1761 Lisbon earthquake and its subsequent tsunami occurred in the north Atlantic Ocean and south of the Iberian Peninsula. This violent shock which struck just after noon on 31 March 1761, was felt across many parts of Western Europe and in Morocco. Its direct effects were observed even far north in Scotland and Amsterdam, and to the south in the Canary Islands of Spain. The estimated surface-wave magnitude 8.5 event was the largest in the region, and the most significant earthquake in Europe since the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

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31/03/1717

A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, preached in the presence of King George I of Great Britain, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.

Benjamin Hoadly was an English clergyman, who was successively Bishop of Bangor, of Hereford, of Salisbury, and finally of Winchester. He is best known as the initiator of the Bangorian Controversy.

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31/03/1706

The last session of history of the Catalan Courts, the parliamentary body of the Principality of Catalonia, ends. Catalonia's constitutional modernisation passed by the Courts aims to improve the guarantee of individual, political and economic rights (among them, the secrecy of correspondence).

The Catalan Courts or General Court of Catalonia were the parliamentary body of the Principality of Catalonia from the 13th to the 18th century. The Catalan Courts were the result of the territorial and institutional evolution of the Comital Court of Barcelona, and took its definitive institutional form in 1283, according to historian Thomas Bisson.

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31/03/1657

The Long Parliament presents the Humble Petition and Advice offering Oliver Cromwell the British throne, which he eventually declines.

The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which nominally lasted from 1640 until 1660, making it the longest-lasting Parliament in English and British history. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In September 1640, King Charles I issued writs summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640. He intended it to pass financial bills, a step made necessary by the costs of the Bishops' Wars against Scotland. The Long Parliament received its name from the fact that, by an act of Parliament, the Parliament Act 1640, it stipulated it could be dissolved only with agreement of the members; and those members did not agree to its dissolution until 16 March 1660, after the English Civil War and near the close of the Interregnum.

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31/03/1521

Ferdinand Magellan and fifty of his men came ashore to present-day Limasawa to participate in the first Catholic mass in the Philippines.

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he discovered the Strait of Magellan, performed the first European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and made the first known European contact with the Philippines. Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, but his crew, commanded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522, achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.

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31/03/1492

Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile sign the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, ordering all Jews in their kingdoms to either convert to Christianity or leave the country.

Ferdinand II was King of Aragon from 1479 until his death in 1516. As the husband and co-ruler of Queen Isabella I of Castile, he was also King of Castile from 1475 to 1504. He reigned jointly with Isabella over a dynastically unified Spain; together, they are known as the Catholic Monarchs. Ferdinand is considered the de facto first king of Spain, and was described as such during his reign, even though, legally, Castile and Aragon remained two separate kingdoms until they were formally united by the Nueva Planta decrees issued between 1707 and 1716.

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31/03/1272

Pope Gregory X calls for a General Church Council to discuss reunion of Churches, Crusade to the Holy Land and Church reform.

Pope Gregory X was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1 September 1271 to his death and was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. He was elected at the conclusion of a papal election that ran from 1268 to 1271, the longest papal election in the history of the Catholic Church.

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31/03/1174

A conspiracy against Saladin, aiming to restore the Fatimid Caliphate, is revealed in Cairo, involving senior figures of the former Fatimid regime and the poet Umara al-Yamani. Modern historians doubt the extent and danger of the conspiracy reported in official sources, but its ringleaders will be publicly executed over the following weeks.

In 1173–1174, a conspiracy took place in Cairo in favour of restoring the Isma'ili Shi'a Fatimid Caliphate, which had been abolished in 1171 by Saladin, the first Ayyubid ruler of Egypt. The conspiracy, which is known only from sources favourable to Saladin, was led by elites of the fallen Fatimid regime, and aimed to seize control over Cairo by taking advantage of Saladin's absence from the city on campaign. To this end, they are alleged to have contacted the Crusaders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, inviting them to invade Egypt in order to lure Saladin away. The conspirators are also said to have contacted the Nizari Isma'ili Order of Assassins to assassinate Saladin. The veracity of these claims is disputed by modern historians, who consider them inventions aimed to discredit the conspirators. In the event, the conspiracy was betrayed to Saladin, although the sources differ on how exactly. Some even hold that the conspiracy was precipitated by Saladin as a political purge, or as a means of demonstrating to his increasingly hostile nominal master, the emir of Aleppo and Damascus, Nur al-Din Zengi, that Egypt was still unruly and that Saladin was indispensable to keep the opposition in check. The Ayyubid ruler struck on 31 March 1174 and arrested the ringleaders, among them the celebrated poet Umara al-Yamani. The chief conspirators were executed at the Bayn al-Qasrayn square from 6 April until 23 May, while others were exiled. A pro-Fatimid revolt in Upper Egypt followed, but was suppressed in September by Saladin's brother, al-Adil.

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31/03/1146

Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.

Bernard of Clairvaux, O.Cist., venerated as Saint Bernard, was an abbot, mystic, co-founder of the Knights Templar, and a major leader in the reform of the Benedictines through the nascent Cistercian Order.

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31/03/0307

After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, daughter of the retired Roman emperor Maximian.

Minervina was either the first wife or concubine of Constantine I, and the mother of his eldest son and future caesar Crispus. Little is known of her life. Her birth and death dates are unknown.

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