March 4 - Events

Events

• 51 – Nero, later to become Roman Emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth).
• 303 or 304 – Martyrdom of Saint Adrian of Nicomedia.
• 852 – Croatian Duke Trpimir I issues a statute, a document with the first known written mention of the Croatsname in Croatian sources.
• 932 – Translation of the relics of martyr Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, Prince of the Czechs.
• 1152 – Frederick I Barbarossa is elected King of the Germans.
• 1215 – King John of England makes an oath to Pope Innocent III as a crusader to gain his support.
• 1238 – The Battle of the Sit River is fought in the northern part of the present-day Yaroslavl Oblast of Russiabetween the Mongol Hordes of Batu Khan and the Russians under Yuri II of Vladimir-Suzdal during the Mongol invasion of Russia.
• 1351 – Ramathibodi becomes King of Siam.
• 1386 – Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) is crowned King of Poland.
• 1461 – Wars of the Roses in England: Lancastrian King Henry VI is deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then becomes King Edward IV.
• 1492 – King James IV of Scotland concludes an alliance with France against England.
• 1493 – Explorer Christopher Columbus arrives back in Lisbon, Portugal, aboard his ship Niña from his voyage to what is now The Bahamas and other islands in the Caribbean.
• 1519 – Hernan Cortes arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and their wealth.
• 1570 – King Philip II of Spain bans foreign Dutch students.
• 1611 – George Abbot is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 1621 – Jakarta, Java is renamed Batavia.
• 1629 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony is granted a Royal charter.
• 1665 – English King Charles II declares war on the Netherlands marking the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
• 1675 – John Flamsteed is appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England.
• 1681 – Charles II grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania.
• 1776 – The American War of Independence: The Americans capture Dorchester Heights dominating the port of Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1778 – The Continental Congress votes to ratify both the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance with France. The two treaties are the first entered into by the United States government.
• 1789 – In New York City, the first Congress of the United States meets, putting the United States Constitution into effect.
• 1790 – France is divided into 83 départements, cutting across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on ownership of land by the nobility.
• 1791 – Vermont is admitted as the 14th U.S. state.
• 1791 – A Constitutional Act is introduced by the British House of Commons in London which envisages the separation of Canada intoLower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario).
• 1793 – French troops conquer Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.
• 1794 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed by the U.S. Congress.
• 1797 – In the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, John Adams is sworn in as President of the United States, succeeding George Washington.
• 1804 – Castle Hill Rebellion: Irish convicts rebel against British colonial authority in the Colony of New South Wales.
• 1813 – Russian troops fighting the army of Napoleon reach Berlin in Germany and the French garrison evacuates the city without a fight.
• 1814 – Americans defeat the British at the Battle of Longwoods between London, Ontario and Thamesville, near present-day Wardsville,Ontario.
• 1824 – The "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck" is founded in the United Kingdom, later to be renamed TheRoyal National Lifeboat Institution in 1858.
• 1837 – Chicago is incorporated as a city.
• 1848 – Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia
• 1861 – First national flag of the Confederate States of America (the "Stars and Bars") is adopted.
• 1863 – The Idaho Territory is created as a political division of the United States.
• 1865 – Third (and last) national flag of the Confederate States of America is adopted.
• 1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its première performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
• 1882 – Britain's first electric trams run in east London.
• 1887 – Gottlieb Daimler unveils his first automobile which he test runs in Esslingen and Cannstatt, Germany.
• 1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, measuring 1,710 feet (520 m) long, is opened by the Prince of Wales, who later becomes King Edward VII.
• 1894 – Great fire in Shanghai. Over 1,000 buildings are destroyed.
• 1899 – Cyclone Mahina sweeps in north of Cooktown, Queensland, with a 12 metres (39 ft) wave that reaches up to 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) inland, killing over 300.
• 1902 – In Chicago, the American Automobile Association is established.
• 1904 – Russo-Japanese War: Russian troops in Korea retreat toward Manchuria followed by 100,000 Japanese troops.
• 1908 – The Collinwood School Fire, Collinwood near Cleveland, Ohio, kills 174 people.
• 1909 – U.S. President William Taft used what became known as a Saxbe fix, a mechanism to avoid the restriction of the U.S. Constitution's Ineligibility Clause, to appoint Philander C. Knox as U.S. Secretary of State
• 1911 – Victor Berger (Wisconsin) becomes the first socialist congressman in U.S..
• 1917 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.
• 1917 – Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia's renunciation of the throne is made public, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia publicly issues his abdication manifesto. The victory of the February Revolution.
• 1918 – The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic.
• 1925 – Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio.
• 1929 – Charles Curtis becomes the first native-American Vice President of the United States.
• 1930 – Floods hit Languedoc and the surrounding area in south-west France, resulting in twelve départements being submerged and causing the death of over 700 people.
• 1931 – The British Viceroy of India, Governor-General Edward Frederick Lindley Wood and Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) meet to sign an agreement envisaging the release of political prisoners and allowing salt to be freely used by the poorest members of the population.
• 1933 – Frances Perkins becomes United States Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the United States Cabinet.
• 1933 – The Parliament of Austria is suspended because of a quibble over procedure – Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss initiates anauthoritarian rule by decree.
• 1941 – World War II: The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands.
• 1943 – World War II: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea in the South West Pacific comes to an end.
• 1944 – World War II: After the success of Big Week, the USAAF begins a daylight bombing campaign of Berlin.
• 1945 – In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, later to become Queen Elizabeth II, joins the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service as a driver.
• 1945 – Lapland War: Finland declares war on Nazi Germany.
• 1954 – Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, announces the first successful kidney transplant.
• 1957 – The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90.
• 1960 – French freighter 'La Coubre' explodes in Havana, Cuba killing 100.
• 1962 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission announces that the first atomic power plant at McMurdo Station in Antarctica is in operation.
• 1966 – Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8-43 explodes on landing at Tokyo International Airport, killing 64 people.
• 1970 – French submarine Eurydice explodes.
• 1976 – The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland resulting in direct rule of Northern Irelandfrom London via the British parliament.
• 1976 – The first Cray-1 supercomputer is shipped to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
• 1977 – The 1977 Bucharest Earthquake in southern and eastern Europe kills more than 1,500.
• 1980 – Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister.
• 1982 – NASA launches the Intelsat V-508 satellite.
• 1983 – Bertha Wilson is appointed the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada.
• 1985 – The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States.
• 1986 – The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Comet Halley and the first images ever of its nucleus.
• 1990 – Loyola Marymount University, All-American basketball player Hank Gathers dies on the court of a heart attack during a conference semifinal game.
• 1991 – Sheikh Saad Al-Abdallah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, returns to his country for the first time since Iraq's invasion.
• 1994 – Space shuttle STS-62 (Columbia 16) launches into orbit.
• 1994 – Bosnia's Bosniaks and Croats sign an agreement to form a federation in a loose economic union with Croatia.
• 1997 – U.S. President Bill Clinton bans federally funded human cloning research.
• 1998 – Gay rights: Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex, although to strictly refer to this as "gay rights" is something of a misnomer.
• 2001 – 4 March 2001 BBC bombing: a massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring 1 person. The attack was attributed to the Real IRA.
• 2001 – Hintze Ribeiro disaster, a bridge collapses in northern Portugal, killing up to 70 people.
• 2002 – Canada bans human cloning but permits government-funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions.
• 2002 – Afghanistan: Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers are killed as they attempt to infiltrate the Shahi Kot Valley on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission.
• 2005 – The car of released Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena is fired on by US soldiers after it runs a roadblock in Iraq, causing the death of an Italian Secret Service Agent and injuring two passengers.
• 2006 – No response is received in the final attempt to contact Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network.
• 2007 – Estonian parliamentary election, 2007: Approximately 30,000 voters take advantage of electronic voting in Estonia, the world's first nationwide voting where part of the votecasting is allowed in the form of remote electronic voting via the Internet.
• 2009 – The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes andcrimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002.