March 12
1912: Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia, founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides, the beginning of the Girl Scouts of the USA.
1928: The St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles failed, sending more than 12 billion gallons of water into San Francisquito Canyon and killing more than 400 people.
1930: Mohandas Gandhi began his 24-day, 240-mile Salt March to the Indian village of Dandi, launching a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience against Britain’s salt tax.
March 13
1781: The seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel.
1925: The Tennessee General Assembly approved the Butler Act, banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. The law was challenged later that year in the Scopes “Monkey Trial” and repealed in 1967.
1954: The pivotal Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War.
March 14:
1794: Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that transformed the American cotton industry.
1879: Albert Einstein, who would revolutionize physics and the human understanding of the universe, was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany.
1964: A Dallas jury found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, and sentenced him to death. The conviction and sentence were later overturned.
March 15
44 B.C: Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in on the “Ides of March” by senators including Brutus and Cassius.
1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson, addressing a joint session of Congress, called for federal legislation guaranteeing every American’s right to vote, leading to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
1972: “The Godfather,” Francis Ford Coppola’s film based on the Mario Puzo novel and starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, premiered in New York.
March 16
1802: President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation authorizing the establishment of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
1935: Adolf Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by ordering Germany to rearm and resume military conscription.
1968: During the Vietnam War, U.S. Army troops searching for Viet Cong fighters killed as many as 500 unarmed villagers in the hamlets of Son My village in 1968, in what became known as the My Lai massacre.
March 17
1762: New York held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1762.
1776: The Revolutionary War Siege of Boston ended as British forces evacuated the city.
1959: The nuclear-powered USS Skate became the first submarine to break through the ice and surface at the North Pole.
March 18
1922: Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced in India to six years in prison for civil disobedience.
1925: Nearly 700 people were killed in 1925 when the Tri-State Tornado tore through southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, the deadliest single tornado in U.S. history.
1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II.
