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-Han and 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 the Roman Empire.
• 933 - After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeats a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade near the Unstrut 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.
• 1545 - First meeting of the Council of Trent.
• 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'etat 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.
• 1873 - The Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity is founded at Massachusetts Agricultural College.
• 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 - Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar.
• 1919 - The American Legion forms in Paris.
• 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.
• 1933 - Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the austrofascist dictatorship.
• 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.
• 1944 - World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino - Allied aircraft bomb the German-held monastery and stage an assault.
• 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 the Voting Rights Act.
• 1970 - The Expo '70 world's fair opens in Osaka, Japan.
• 1985 - The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).
• 1988 - The Halabja poison gas attack of the Iran-Iraq War begins.
• 1989 - The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is established.
• 1990 - Gulf War: Iraq hangs British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying.
• 1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.
• 1990 - The ethnic clashes of Târgu Mureş begin on the anniversary of the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas.
• 1991 - Germany formally regains complete independence after the four post-World War II occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union) relinquish all remaining rights.
• 2003 - Hu Jintao takes over presidency for the People's Republic of China.
• 2004 - Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed.

Births