March 8 in history

On March 8:

1126 Alfonso VII was proclaimed king of Castile and Leon, after the death of his mother Urraca.

1495 John of God, Portuguese-born friar and saint, was born.

1655 John Casor becomes the first legally-recognized slave in what became the United States.

1702 Anne Stuart, sister of Mary II, became Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

1722 The Safavid Empire of Iran was defeated by an army from Afghanistan at The Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.

1775 Thomas Paine’s “African Slavery in America,” the first article in the U.S. calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery was published.

1777 Regiments from Ansbach and Bayreuth, sent to support Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, mutinied in the town of Ochsenfurt.

1782 Gnadenhütten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity were killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.

 

1817 The New York Stock Exchange was founded.

1844 King Oscar I ascended to the throne of Sweden-Norway.

1856 Bramwell Booth, the 2nd General of The Salvation Army, was born.

1859 Kenneth Grahame, English author, was born.

1911 International Women’s Day was launched in Copenhagen by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

 

1917 The U.S. Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.

1921 Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier was assassinated.

1924 The Castle Gate mine disaster killed 172 coal miners near Castle Gate, Utah.

1929 Frank Borzage’s Street Angel, a silent picture with a recorded musical soundtrack, screened at Wellington’s Paramount Theatre – before this silent movies had been accompained by live music.

1936 Daytona Beach Road Course holds their first oval stock car race.

1937 Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda, was born.

1942 The Dutch surrender to Japanese forces on Java.

1943 Lynn Redgrave, English actress, was born.

1945 Micky Dolenz, American musician (The Monkees), was born.

1946 Randy Meisner, American musician (The Eagles)

 

1947 Mike Allsup, American musician (Three Dog Night), was born.

1957 Egypt re-opened the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.

1963 The Ba’ath Party came to power in Syria in a Coup d’état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.

1966 – A bomb planted by young Irish protesters destroyed Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin.

1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opened in Paris.

1978 The first-ever radio episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, was transmitted on BBC Radio 4.

1979 – Philips demonstrated the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.

1980 The first festival of rock music kicked off in the Soviet Union.

1985 A failed assassination attempt on Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut killed at least 45 and injured 175 others.

2004  A new constitution was signed by Iraq’s Governing Council.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia