Events in History
Historic Event
Mar 3 US Congress authorizes track width of 4'8½" for Union Pacific Railroad
- Mar 3 1st US wartime military conscription bill enacted
Historic Event
Mar 3 Abraham Lincoln approves charter for National Academy of Sciences
- Mar 3 Congress authorizes a US mint at Carson City, Nevada
- Mar 3 Federal ironclad ships bombard Fort McAllister, Georgia
- Mar 3 Free city delivery replaces zone postage; 449 letter carriers hired
- Mar 3 Gold certificates (currency) authorized by US Congress
- Mar 3 Idaho Territory forms
- Mar 4 Battle of Thompson's Station, Tennessee
- Mar 4 Territory of Idaho established
- Mar 17 Battle of Kelly's Ford, Virginia with 211 causalities
- Mar 19 Confederate cruiser SS Georgiana destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions, and medicines then valued over $1,000,000. Wreck discovered exactly 102 years later by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence.
- Mar 21 Naval Engagement at Havana, Cuba: USS Henrick Hudson vs Confederate blokcade runner Wild Pigeon
Historic Event
Mar 25 1st US Army Medal of Honor awarded to six army soldiers by US Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in Washington
Historic Event
Mar 27 American Confederate President Jefferson Davis calls for this to be a day of fasting & prayer
Birthdays in History
- Mar 1 Alexander Golovin, Russian painter (d. 1930)
- Mar 3 Arthur Machen, Welsh-born author (d. 1947)
- Mar 4 Reginald Innes Pocock, British zoologist (d. 1947)
- Mar 4 John Henry Wigmore, American jurist and expert in the law of evidence (d. 1943)
- Mar 11 Wobbe de Vries, Dutch linguist
- Mar 12 Adolf A Wolfschoon, Curacao, poet
- Mar 12 Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian poet, writer (Il fuoco, Intruder), playwright and military hero as part of the elite Arditi storm troops, born in Pescara, Italy (d. 1938)
- Mar 12 Vladimir Vernadsky, Russian mineralogist (d. 1945)
- Mar 17 Homer Plessy, American Creole shoemaker and civil rights pioneer (plaintiff in landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson 1896), born in New Orleans, Louisiana (d. 1925)
- Mar 21 George Owen Squier, American inventor and Major General in U.S. Signal Corp (d. 1934)
- Mar 23 Godfried CE van Daalen, Dutch general/governor of Atjeh
- Mar 25 Simon Flexner, American pathologist (d. 1946)
Henry Royce
Mar 27 Henry Royce, English industrialist and automobile founder (Rolls-Royce), born in Alwalton, England (d. 1933)
Weddings in History
Edward VII
Mar 10 Prince of Wales, Albert Edward (21) weds Princess Alexandra of Denmark (18) at Windsor Castle in St. George's chapel