March 31

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(Redirected from 31 March)

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.

Template:MarchCalendar2008

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and observances
5 External links

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 - The 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 - Richard Ray Brown of Ironton,Ohio was born.
1949 - Newfoundland and Labrador joins Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1957 - Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta. After the elctions PDU and MDV form a government.
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 British 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 en route 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 Saldívar 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 non-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.
2005- Terri Schiavo dies at the age of 41 after national controversy.

Births

250 - Constantius Chlorus, Roman Emperor (d. 306)
1499 - Pope Pius IV (d. 1565)
1504 - Guru Angad Dev, second Sikh guru (d. 1552)
1519 - King 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)
1651 - Karl II, Elector Palatine (d. 1685)
1675 - Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758)
1732 - Franz Josef Haydn, Austrian composer (d. 1809)
1806 - Benito Juarez, Mexican statesman (d. 1872)
1809 - Edward FitzGerald, English poet (d. 1883)
1809 - Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (d. 1852)
1811 - Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German chemist and inventor (d. 1899)
1878 - Jack Johnson, American boxer (d. 1946)
1885 - Pascin, Bulgarian painter (d. 1930)
1890 - William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
1891 - Victor Varconi, Hungarian film actor (d. 1976)
1906 - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979)
1911 - Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (d. 1986)
1914 - Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)
1915 - Albert Hourani, English historian (d. 1993)
1922 - Richard Kiley, American actor and singer (d. 1999)
1924 - Leo Buscaglia, American author (d. 1998)
1926 - John Fowles, English author
1927 - César Chávez, American labor activist (d. 1993)
1927 - William Daniels, American actor
1928 - Gordie Howe, Canadian hockey player
1928 - Lefty Frizzell, American singer and songwriter (d. 1975)
1929 - Lucille Bliss, American voice actress
1929 - Liz Claiborne, Belgian fashion designer
1934 - Richard Chamberlain, American actor
1934 - Shirley Jones, American singer and actress
1934 - Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1935 - Herb Alpert, American trumpeter and band leader
1935 - Judith Rossner, American author
1939 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia, first President of Georgia (d. 1993)
1939 - Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
1940 - Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senator from Vermont
1943 - Christopher Walken, American actor
1945 - Gabe Kaplan, American actor and comedian
1945 - Valerie Curtin, American actress, writer, and producer
1946 - Gonzalo Márquez, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player (d. 1984)
1947 - Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, President of Colombia
1948 - Al Gore, Vice President of the United States
1948 - Rhea Perlman, American actress
1950 - Ed Marinaro, American football player and actor
1955 - Angus Young, British-Australian musician (AC/DC)
1957 - Marc McClure, American actor
1966 - Roger Black, British athlete
1971 - Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor
1971 - Pavel Bure, Russian hockey player
1973 - Bold Forbes, Puerto Rican racehorse (d. 2000)
1976 - Josh Saviano, American actor
1980 - Chien-Ming Wang, Taiwanese Major League Baseball player

Deaths

1204 - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England (b. 1121)
1340 - Ivan I of Russia, Prince of Moscow (b. 1288)
1567 - Philipp I of Hesse (b. 1504)
1621 - Philip III of Spain (b. 1578)
1631 - John Donne, English writer and prelate (b. 1572)
1671 - Anne Hyde, queen of James II of England (b. 1637)
1703 - Johann Christoph Bach, German composer (b. 1642)
1723 - Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, British Governor of New York and New Jersey (b. 1661)
1727 - Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician and physicist (b. 1643)
1741 - Pieter Burmann the Elder, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1668)
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 (b. 1835)
1913 - John Pierpont Morgan, American financier and banker (b. 1837)
1917 - Emil Adolf von Behring, German physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1854)
1915 - Wyndham Halswelle, British runner (b. 1882)
1931 - Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888)
1945 - Hans Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
1945 - Anne Frank, German-born diarist (b. 1929)
1952 - Wallace H. White, Jr., U.S. Senator from Maine (b. 1877)
1954 - Edwin Armstrong, American electrical engineer and inventor (b. 1890)
1956 - Ralph DePalma, Italian-born race car driver (b. 1884)
1978 - Charles Best, Canadian medical scientist (b. 1899)
1980 - Vladimír Holan, Czech poet (b. 1905)
1980 - Jesse Owens, American athlete (b. 1913)
1981 - Enid Bagnold, British author and playwright (b. 1889)
1984 - Ronald Clark O'Bryan, American "Candyman" murderer (executed by lethal injection)
1985 - The Singing Nun, Belgian nun and singer (b. 1933)
1988 - William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
1993 - Brandon Lee, American actor (b. 1965)
1995 - Selena, American singer (b. 1971)
1998 - Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920)
1999 - Yuri Knorosov, Russian linguist and epigrapher (b. 1922)
2001 - Clifford Shull, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915)
2002 - Barry Took, British comedian and writer (b. 1928)
2003 - H.S.M. Coxeter, English-born geometer and author (b. 1907)
2005 - Terri Schiavo, Right to live and right to die symbol (b. 1963)
2005 - Frank Perdue, American poultry farmer (b. 1920)
2005 - Stanley J. Korsmeyer, American oncologist (b. 1951)

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