March 31

March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining, as the final day of March.

Events

• 307 – After divorcing his wife Minerva, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
• 1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
• 1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act.
• 1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
• 1866 – Spanish Navy bombs the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile
• 1885 – The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
• 1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.
• 1903 – Richard Pearse reportedly flies a heavier-than-air machine in powered flight near Pleasant Point, South Canterbury, New Zealand; some claim 1902
• 1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States.
• 1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• 1917 – The United States takes possession of the U.S. Virgin Islands after paying $25 million to Denmark.
• 1918 – Daylight Savings Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
• 1930 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next forty years.
• 1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
• 1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.
• 1949 – Newfoundland and Labrador joins Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
• 1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
• 1964 – The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco, begins.
• 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon.
• 1967 – Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar for the first time at London's Astoria Theatre. He is sent to the hospital afterwards for burns on his hands.
• 1968 – President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not run for re-election.
• 1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
• 1970- Eight terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.
• 1979 – In Jerusalem, Israel, Gali Atari & Milk and Honey win the twenth-fourth Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing "Hallelujah".
• 1979 – The last Bristish soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta is no longer a military base.
• 1985 – The first ever WrestleMania is held in New York City's Madison Square Garden.
• 1986 – A Mexicana Boeing 727 enroute to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 166
• 1986 – Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England
• 1990 – Boxer Julio César Chávez defeats Meldrick Taylor to unify the boxing's world junior welterweight title in a very controversial fight known as "Thunder Meets Lightning".
• 1991 – The Warsaw Pact comes to an end.
• 1992 – The television news program Dateline NBC premieres.
• 1993 – Actor Brandon Lee is accidentally killed during the filming of The Crow.
• 1994 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (see Human evolution).
• 1995 – Popular Tex-Mex singer Selena Quintanilla is murdered by her assistant Yolanda Saldivar in a Corpus Christi, Texas motel after a heated discussion where the latter was accused of ripping off the artist's fan club.
• 1998 – Netscape gives the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement, thus creating Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation to oversee the development of Mozilla.
• 2004 – Google announces Gmail, the first web-based mail service to offer 1 gigabyte of storage.
• 2004 – In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.
• 2004 – Sandton Square in Johannesburg, South Africa, is renamed Nelson Mandela Square.

Births

• 250 – Constantius Chlorus, Roman Emperor (d. 306)
• 1499 – Pope Pius IV (d. 1565)
• 1504 – Guru Angad Dev, second Sikh guru (d. 1552)
• 1519 – Henry II of France (d. 1559)
• 1536 – Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Japanese shogun (d. 1565)
• 1596 – René Descartes, French mathematician (d. 1650)
• 1621 – Andrew Marvell, English poet (d. 1678)
• 1675 – Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758)
• 1732 – Franz Josef Haydn, Austrian composer (d. 1809)
• 1809 – Edward FitzGerald, poet (d. 1883)
• 1809 – Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (d. 1852)
• 1811 – Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist and inventor (d. 1899)
• 1878 – Jack Johnson, American boxer (d. 1946)
• 1885 – Pascin, Bulgarian painter (d. 1930)
• 1900 – Richard Alexander Walter Windsor, Duke of Gloucester
• 1911 – Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (d. 1986)
• 1912 – Hermann Höcherl, German politician (d. 1989)
• 1914 – Octavio Paz, Mexican writer, diplomat, and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)
• 1915 – Albert Hourani, historian (d. 1993)
• 1922 – Richard Kiley, actor and singer (d. 1999)
• 1924 – Leo Buscaglia, American author (d. 1998)
• 1926 – John Fowles, author
• 1927 – César Chávez, American labor activist (d. 1993)
• 1927 – William Daniels, actor
• 1928 – Gordie Howe, hockey player
• 1928 – Lefty Frizzell, country music performer
• 1929 – Lucille Bliss, voice actress
• 1929- Liz Claiborne, Belgian fashion designer
• 1934 – Shirley Jones, singer, actress
• 1934- Richard Chamberlain, actor
• 1935 – Herb Alpert, musician
• 1935- Judith Rossner, American author
• 1939 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia, scientist, writer, and first President of the Republic of Georgia (d. 1993)
• 1939- Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
• 1940 – Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senator from Vermont
• 1943 – Christopher Walken, actor
• 1945 – Gabe Kaplan, American actor and comedian
• 1946 – Gonzalo Márquez, Major League Baseball player (d. 1984)
• 1948 – Al Gore, Vice President of the United States
• 1948 – Rhea Perlman, actress
• 1050 – Ed Marinaro, American football player, actor
• 1955 – Angus Young, British-Australian musician (AC/DC)
• 1957 – Marc McClure, American actor
• 1965 – William McNamara, American actor
• 1966 – Roger Black, British athlete
• 1971 – Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor
• 1971 – Pavel Bure, hockey player
• 1973 – Bold Forbes, racehorse (d. 2000)
• 1976 – Josh Saviano, actor

Deaths

• 1204 – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England (b. 1121)
• 1631 – John Donne, English writer and prelate (b. 1572)
• 1783 – Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman (b. 1718)
• 1837 – John Constable, English painter (b. 1776)
• 1855 – Charlotte Brontë, English author (b. 1816)
• 1880 – Henryk Wieniawski, Polish composer
• 1913 – John Pierpont Morgan, American financier and banker (b. 1837)
• 1917 – Emil Adolf von Behring, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1854)
• 1915 – Wyndham Halswelle, British runner
• 1931 – Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888)
• 1945 – Anne Frank, German-born diarist (b. 1929)
• 1952 – Wallace H. White, Jr., U.S. Senator from Maine (b. 1877)
• 1954 – Edwin Armstrong, electrical engineer
• 1956 – Ralph DePalma, race car driver (b. 1884)
• 1975 – Spider Sabich, American skier
• 1978 – Charles Best, medical scientist (b. 1899)
• 1980 – Jesse Owens, American athlete (b. 1913)
• 1981 – Enid Bagnold, British author, playwright
• 1985 – The Singing Nun, Belgian nun and singer
• 1986 – Jerry Paris, American actor
• 1988 – William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
• 1993 – Brandon Lee, actor (b. 1965)
• 1995 – Selena, Tejano singer (b. 1971)
• 1998 – Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920)
• 2002 – Barry Took, British comedian and writer
• 2003 – H.S.M. Coxeter, geometer and author
• 2003 – Anne Gwynne, American actress
• 2005 – Terri Schiavo, right-to-die and right-to-live symbol
• 2005 – Frank Perdue, poultry farmer (b. 1920)

Holidays and observances

• Easter Sunday observed in 1991, 2002, 2013, and 2024
• New Jersey – Thomas Mundy Peterson Day
• César Chávez Day – official holiday in five states and many cities across the US
• Freedom Day in Malta

External links

• BBC: On This Day

March 30 – April 1 – February 28 (February 29) – April 30 — listing of all days