March 15 - Events

Events

• 44 BC – Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
• 221 – Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself emperor of Shu-Hanand claims his legitimate succession to the Han Dynasty.
• 351 – Constantius II elevates his cousin Gallus to Caesar, and puts him in charge of the Eastern part of theRoman Empire.
• 933 – After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeats a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade near theUnstrut river.
• 1311 – Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeats Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.
• 1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.
• 1514 – Jodocus Badius Ascensius publishes Christiern Pedersen's Latin version of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum,the oldest known version of that work.
• 1545 – First meeting of the Council of Trent.
• 1564 – Mughal Emperor Akbar abolishes jizya (per capita tax) .
• 1672 – Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.
• 1776 – South Carolina becomes the first American colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and set up its own government.
• 1781 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse – Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.
• 1783 – In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'état never takes place.
• 1820 – Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state.
• 1848 – A revolution breaks out in Hungary. The Habsburg rulers are compelled to meet the demands of the Reform party.
• 1877 – The first Test cricket match begins between England and Australia.
• 1906 – Rolls-Royce Limited is incorporated.
• 1916 – President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.
• 1917 – Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar.
• 1922 – After Egypt gains nominal independence from the United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt.
• 1926 – The dictator Theodoros Pangalos is elected President of Greece without opposition.
• 1931 – SS Viking explodes off Newfoundland, killing 27 of the 147 on board.
• 1933 – Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the austrofascistdictatorship.
• 1939 – World War II: German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.
• 1943 – World War II: Third Battle of Kharkov – the Germans retake the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.
• 1952 – In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in one day, setting a new world record.
• 1961 – South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, tells U.S. Congress "We shall overcome" while advocating theVoting Rights Act.
• 1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).
• 1989 – The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is established.
• 1990 – Iraq hangs British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying.
• 1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.