Events in History
Yalta Conference
Mar 1 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces success of Yalta Conference
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Meeting of Interest
Mar 3 Winston Churchill visits Field Marshal Montgomery's headquarters
Winston Churchill
Event of Interest
Mar 4 In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, joins the British Auxiliary Transport Service as a driver.
Elizabeth II
- Mar 5 Allies bombs The Hague, Netherlands
Event of Interest
Mar 5 Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Alexander Patch meet in Lunéville, France
Dwight D. Eisenhower
George S. Patton
Alexander Patch
- Mar 5 US 7th Army Corps captures Cologne
- Mar 5 US Ladies Figure Skating championship won by Gretchen Merrill
- Mar 5 World War II: The Battle of the Ruhr begins.
- Mar 6 117 SD-prisoners executed at Savage Farm
- Mar 6 Chinese 38th division occupies Lashio
- Mar 6 Erich Honnecker & Erich Hanke flee nazis
- Mar 6 Federico Garcia Lorca's "La Casa" premieres in Buenos Aires
Historic Invention
Mar 6 George Nissen of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, receives a patent for the first modern trampoline
George Nissen
- Mar 7 Attack on car of Netherlands SS Police Chief Hans Rauter by Dutch resistance, Rauter injured
- Mar 7 Cologne taken by allied armies
- Mar 7 US 9th Armoured Division attacks Remagen Germany, crosses Rhine
- Mar 7 Yugoslavia government of Tito forms
- Mar 8 "Kiss Me Kate" opens in Britain
- Mar 8 53 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
- Mar 8 International Women's Day is 1st observed
- Mar 8 Phyllis M Daley is 1st black nurse sworn in as US Navy ensign
Firebombing of Tokyo
Mar 9 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs
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- Mar 9 Japanese proclaim "independence" of Indo-China
Event of Interest
Mar 10 Fieldmarshal Albert Kesselring succeeds Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of German Army Command in the West
Albert Kesselring
Gerd von Rundstedt
George S. Patton
- Mar 10 Tokyo in fire after night time B-29 bombings, more than 100,000 people die, mostly civilians.
- Mar 10 US troops land in western Mindanao, Philippines in Operation VICTOR IV
- Mar 11 1,000 allied bombers harass Essen, 4,662 ton bombs
- Mar 11 Flemish nazi collaborator Maria Huygens sentenced to death
- Mar 12 30 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
- Mar 12 Italy's Communist Party (CPI) calls for armed uprising in Italy
- Mar 12 NY is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race & creed in employment
- Mar 12 USSR returns Transylvania to Romania
- Mar 13 Queen Wilhelmina returns to Netherlands
- Mar 13 Nazi Sicherheitsdienst arrests Dutch resistance fighter Henry Werkman
- Mar 14 RAF bomb cuts railway link Hannover-Hamm
- Mar 15 Catholic University of Nijmegen reopens
- Mar 16 Würzburg, Germany is 90% destroyed, with 5,000 dead, in only 20 minutes by British bombers
- Mar 17 Allied ships bomb North-Sumatra
- Mar 18 1,250 US bombers attacks Berlin
- Mar 18 US Task Force 58 attacks targets on Kiushu
- Mar 19 800 killed as Kamikaze attacked USS Franklin off Japan
Event of Interest
Mar 19 Adolf Hitler issues "Nero Decree" to destroy all German factories
Adolf Hitler
- Mar 19 British 36th division conquers Mogok (ruby mine)
- Mar 19 US Task Force 58 attacks ships near Kobe/Kure
- Mar 20 US 70th Infantry division and 7th Armour division attack Saar
- Mar 21 1st Japanese flying bombs (ochas) attack Okinawa
- Mar 21 During WW II Allied bombers begin 4-day raid over Germany
- Mar 21 Dutch Resistance fighter Hannie Schaft arrested by Nazi police
- Mar 22 Arab League forms with adoption of a charter in Cairo Egypt
- Mar 22 US 3rd Army crosses Rhine at Nierstein
- Mar 23 British 7th Black Watch crosses the Rhine into Germany
Battle of Okinawa
Mar 23 Battle of Okinawa: US Navy ships bomb the Japanese island of Okinawa in preparation for the Allied invasion; it would become the largest battle of the Pacific War in World War II
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- Mar 23 Premier Churchill visits Montgomery's headquarter in Straelen
Event of Interest
Mar 23 The Swallow Sidecar Company headed by William Lyons agrees to change its name to Jaguar
William Lyons
Event of Interest
Mar 23 Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey becomes the first British commander to cross the Rhine during the Allied invasion of Germany
Miles Dempsey
Event of Interest
Mar 24 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Montgomery and Omar Bradley discuss advance in Germany
Omar Bradley
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Bernard Montgomery
- Mar 24 Operation Varsity: In the largest one-day airborne operation of all time, British, US & Canadian paratroopers land east of the Rhine in Northern Germany
- Mar 24 US minesweepers reach Kerama Retto, South coast of Okinawa
- Mar 25 US 1st army breaks out bridgehead near Remagen
- Mar 25 US 4th Armored div arrives at Hanau & Aschaffenburg
- Mar 25 US Northern Tractor Flotilla departs Ulithi to Okinawa
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Mar 26 Allies led by US Marine Corps secure island of Iwo Jima from Imperial Japanese Army, after 18,000 Japanese & 6,000 Americans killed
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- Mar 26 British premier Winston Churchill looks over at the Rhine (near Ginsberg)
- Mar 26 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George S. Patton launch attack at Remagen on the Rhine
- Mar 26 Kamikaze attack on US battle fleet near Kerama Retto
- Mar 26 US 7th Army crosses Rhine at Worms
- Mar 27 British premier Winston Churchill sails to eastern banks of Rhine
- Mar 27 DePaul beats Bowling Green for NIT title
- Mar 27 General Eisenhower declares German defenses on Western Front broken
- Mar 27 US 20th Army corps captures Wiesbaden
- Mar 27 World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.
- Mar 28 Last German V-1 (buzz bomb) attack on London
- Mar 29 World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England
- Mar 30 289 anti-fascists murdered by nazis in Rombergpark Dortmund
- Mar 30 USSR invades Austria
- Mar 30 World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to Americans
- Mar 31 3rd Algerian division crosses the Rhine
- Mar 31 Sicherheitsdienst murders 10 political prisoners in Zutphen
Event of Interest
Mar 31 Tennessee Williams' "Glass Menagerie" premieres in NYC
Tennessee Williams
- Mar 31 US artillery lands on Keise Shima/begins firing on Okinawa
Birthdays in History
- Mar 4 Tara Browne, British socialite (d. 1966)
- Mar 8 Jim Chapman, American politician (Rep-D-TX, 1985-1997), born in Washington, District of Columbia
- Mar 8 Anselm Kiefer, German painter
- Mar 9 Dennis Rader, American serial killer who murdered ten people in Sedgwick County, Kansas, born in Pittsburg, Kansas
- Mar 10 Birgitta Sellén, Swedish politician
- Mar 10 Elizabeth Brumfiel, [Elizabeth Stern], American feminist archaeologist, former president of the American Anthropological Association
- Mar 11 Timothy Mason, consultant (British Arts Council)
- Mar 12 Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, American mobster who testified against John Gotti, born in Brooklyn, New York
- Mar 13 Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, Russian mathematician, born in Stalino, USSR
- Mar 15 Mark J Green, American lawyer/author (Closed Enterprise System), born in Brooklyn, New York
- Mar 15 A. K. Faezul Huq, Bengali lawyer and politician (d. 2007)
- Mar 17 Michael Hayden, General USAF, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
- Mar 18 Hiroh Kikai, Japanese photographer
- Mar 20 Larry Combest, (Rep-R-TX, 1985- )
- Mar 20 Tim Yeo, British MP/under-sect (State of Environment)
- Mar 20 Henry Bartholomay, American fighter pilot
- Mar 24 Robert T. Bakker, American paleontologist
- Mar 28 Hans Brunhart, Leader of Liechtenstein (1978-93), born in Balzers, Liechtenstein
- Mar 28 Count Björn Hamilton, Swedish politician, count and engineer, born in Gothenburg, Sweden
- Mar 28 Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines politician, President of the Philippines (2016-), born in Maasin, Leyte
- Mar 29 Hardy Fox, American member of avant-garde band The Residents, born in Longview, Texas (d. 2018)
- Mar 30 Johnnie Walker [Peter Dingley], British radio DJ, born in Birmingham
Deaths in History
- Mar 2 Emily Carr, Canadian painter, dies at 73
- Mar 3 Arthur Vanderpoorten, Flemish Internal minister (1940), dies at 61
- Mar 5 Lena Baker, American murderer, convicted of capital murder of her employer, Ernest Knight, dies at 44
- Mar 6 Jan Thijssen, Dutch resistance fighter, executed at Savage Farm
- Mar 7 Adolf Bartels, German writer/racist, dies at 82
- Mar 8 H J Jamin, Dutch resistance fighter, dies in Buchenwald
- Mar 8 Jan Beekes, resistance fighter, executed at 26
Anne Frank
Mar 12 Anne Frank, Dutch diarist and Jewish victim of the Nazi Holocaust (Diary of Anne Frank), dies of typhus in the Belsen concentration camp at 15
Anne Frank
- Mar 15 Herman Bernard Wiardi Beckman, Dutch resistance fighter and politician (SDAP), dies at 41
- Mar 16 Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, French writer/poet, commits suicide at 52
- Mar 16 Börries von Münchhausen, German poet (b. 1874)
- Mar 19 Fritz Fromm, German supreme commander of Reserve army, executed
- Mar 21 J Woortman, Dutch resistance fighter, dies in Bergen-Belsen at 39
- Mar 21 Arthur Nebe, German SS officer, dies at 50
- Mar 22 J Postuma, Dutch resistance fighter, dies
- Mar 24 J S Nicklin, Lt-Col/Canada's 1st parachutist, dies
- Mar 24 Thomas Rennie, Gen-Maj (Dutch command 51st Highland Division), dies
David Lloyd George
Mar 26 David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister (Liberal: 1916-22), dies of cancer at 82
David Lloyd George
Hans Fischer
Mar 31 Hans Fischer, German organic chemist (Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1930), commits suicide at 63
Hans Fischer