March 14

March 14 is the 73rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (74th in Leap years) with 292 days remaining in the year.

Events

• 1489 – The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice.
• 1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille orders her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
• 1590 – Battle of Ivry: Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots defeat the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne during the French Wars of Religion.
• 1647 – Thirty Years War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm.
• 1757 – On-board the HMS Monarch, Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad for neglecting his duty.
• 1794 – Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin.
• 1800 – Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti is elected Pope Pius VII
• 1869 – Defeat of Titokowaru.
• 1900 – The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.
• 1903 – The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Columbian Senate would later reject the treaty.
• 1903 – Theodore Roosevelt issues an executive order making Pelican Island, in Florida, a “preserve and breeding ground for native birds,” marking the birth of the National Wildlife Refuge System.
• 1915 – World War I: Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the disastrous Battle of the Falkland Islands, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden is abandoned and scuttled by her crew.
• 1923 – Pete Parker does the first-ever complete radio broadcast of a hockey game in the world, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
• 1939 – German troops fully occupy the Czechoslovak provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.
• 1951 – Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul.
• 1964 – A jury in Dallas, Texas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
• 1967 – The body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
• 1978 – The Israeli Defense Force, in retaliation for a terrorist attack three days earlier, invades and occupies southern Lebanon, under codename Operation Litani, resulting in the evacuation of at least 100,000 Lebanese, approximately 2,000 deaths, as well as the creation of United Nations Interim Forces In Lebanon (UNIFIL).
• 1979 – In China, a Hawker-Siddeley Trident crashes into a factory near Beijing, killing at least 200.
• 1980 – In Poland, a plane crashes during an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing a 14-man American boxing team and 73 others.
• 1984 – Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.
• 1989 – Gun control: President George H. W. Bush bans the importation of assault rifles into the United States.
• 1991 – After 16 years in prison for allegedly bombing a pub in an Irish Republican Army attack, the "Birmingham Six" are freed when a court determines that the police fabricated evidence.
• 1994 – Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released.
• 1995 – Manned space mission: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle.
• 1996 – American President Bill Clinton commits $100 million to an anti-terrorism agreement with Israel to track down and root out terrorists.
• 1997 – The Chinese city of Chongqing (formerly Chunking) is upgraded to a centrally administered municipality
• 1998 – An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
• 2004 – Pope John Paul II becomes the second-longest serving pope in history.
• 2004 – Vladimir Putin is re-elected president of Russia, while the PSOE wins elections in Spain just days after terrorist attacks in Madrid.
• 2005 – The online statistics service SOTKAnet is opened for the public in Finland.

Births

• 1681 – Georg Philipp Telemann, German composer (d. 1767)
• 1804 – Johann Strauß, Sr., Austrian composer (d. 1849)
• 1813 – Joseph Philo Bradley, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (d. 1892)
• 1823 – Théodore de Banville, French writer (d. 1891)
• 1835 – Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer (d. 1910)
• 1853 – Ferdinand Hodler, Swiss painter (d. 1918)
• 1854 – Paul Ehrlich, physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1915)
• 1869 – Algernon Blackwood, British writer (d. 1951)
• 1879 – Albert Einstein, German-born physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics (d. 1955)
• 1882 – Waclaw Sierpinski, Polish mathematician (d. 1969)
• 1885 – Raoul Lufbery, American World War I flying ace (d. 1918)
• 1887 – Sylvia Beach, American expatriate publisher (d. 1962)
• 1903 – Mustafa Barzani, leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party, (d. 1979)
• 1912 – Les Brown, band leader (d. 2001)
• 1914 – Bill Owen, British actor (d. 1999)
• 1914 – Lee Petty, American stock car driver (d. 2000)
• 1915 – Alexander Brott, Canadian conductor and composer (d. 2005)
• 1916 – Horton Foote, American writer
• 1918 – Dennis Patrick, American actor (d. 2002)
• 1920 – Hank Ketcham, cartoonist (Dennis the Menace) (d. 2001)
• 1923 – Diane Arbus, American photographer (d. 1971)
• 1928 – Frank Borman, astronaut and former Eastern Airlines president
• 1933 – Michael Caine, British actor
• 1933 – Quincy Jones, music producer, composer
• 1934 – Eugene Cernan, Gemini and Apollo astronaut, last human to leave his footprints on the moon
• 1941 – Wolfgang Petersen, German director, Das Boot
• 1943 – Anita Morris, American actress (d. 1994)
• 1945 – Jasper Carrott (born Bob Davies), British comedian
• 1946 – Steve Kanaly, actor
• 1947 – Billy Crystal, American actor, comedian
• 1947 – Pam Ayres, British poet
• 1950 – Rick Dees, American disk jockey
• 1958 – Albert II of Monaco
• 1961 – Kirby Puckett, baseball player
• 1961 – Penny Johnson Jerald, American actress
• 1963 – Bruce Reid, Australian cricketer
• 1965 – Aamir Khan, Bollywood actor
• 1965 – Kevin Brown, American baseball player
• 1965 – Kevin Williamson, American screenwriter
• 1976 – Merlin Santana, American actor (d. 2002)
• 1979 – Chris Klein, American actor
• 1979 – Trip Ross (American Director), head of Empty Noggin Entertainment
• 1983 – Taylor Hanson, musician in the group Hanson, record producer
• 1986 – Jamie Bell, British actor

Deaths

• 752 – Pope Zacharias
• 1471 – Sir Thomas Malory, English author
• 1757 – John Byng, admiral
• 1883 – Karl Marx, German political theorist (b. 1818)
• 1932 – George Eastman, American inventor (b. 1854)
• 1973 – Rafael Godoy, Colombian composer (b. 1907)
• 1973 – Chic Young, American cartoonist (b. 1901)
• 1973  – Howard H. Aiken, engineer (b. 1900)
• 1975 – Susan Hayward, American actress (b. 1917)
• 1976 – Busby Berkeley, choreographer, director (b. 1895)
• 1977 – Fannie Lou Hamer, American civil rights activist (b. 1917)
• 1989 – Edward Abbey, American author
• 1991 – Doc Pomus, composer (b. 1925)
• 1991  – Howard Ashman, lyricist (b. 1950)
• 1997 – Fred Zinnemann, director (b. 1907)
• 2002 – Cherry Wilder, author (b. 1930)
• 2002 – Hans-Georg Gadamer, German philosopher
• 2003 – Jack Goldstein, artist (b. 1945)
• 2003 – Jean-Luc Lagardère, French publisher (b. 1928)

Holidays and observances

• Commonwealth Day (2005, second Monday in March)
• Japan – White Day: Japanese holiday similar to Valentines Day.
• Pi Day – unofficial holiday
• Roman Empire – Equirria, horse races in honor of Mars were held.

Other notes

• Microsoft Excel, a popular spreadsheet program, uses March 14th, 2001, in many recent versions as the sample date when editing date formatting.

External links

• BBC: On This Day

March 13 – March 15 – February 14 – April 14 — listing of all days