537 – The Goths began their siege on Rome.

1302 – The characters Romeo and Juliet were married this day according to William Shakespeare.

1649 – The peace of Rueil was signed between the Frondeurs (rebels) and the French government.

1665 – A new legal code was approved for the Dutch and English towns, guaranteeing religious observances unhindered.

1702 – The Daily Courant, the first regular English newspaper was published.

1791 – Samuel Mulliken became the first person to receive more than one patent from the U.S. Patent Office.

1810 – The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.

1824 – The U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Seneca Indian Ely Parker became the first Indian to lead the Bureau.

1845 – Seven hundred Maoris led by their chief, Hone-Heke, burned the small town of Kororareka. The act was in protest to the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans, which was a breach of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

1861 – A Confederate Convention was held in Montgomery, Alabama, where a new constitution was adopted.

1865 – Union General William Sherman and his forces occupied Fayetteville, NC.

1867 – In Hawaii, the volcano Great Mauna Loa erupted.

1882 – The Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association was formed in Princeton, NJ.

1888 – The “Blizzard of ’88” began along the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard shutting down communication and transportation lines. More than 400 people died.(March 11-14)

1900 – British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejected the peace overtures offered from the Boer leader Paul Kruger.

1901 – Britain rejected an amended treaty to the canal agreement with Nicaragua.

1901 – U.S. Steel was formed when industrialist J.P. Morgan purchased Carnegie Steep Corp. The event made Andrew Carnegie the world’s richest man.

1904 – After 30 years of drilling, the north tunnel under the Hudson River was holed through. The link was between Jersey City, NJ, and New York, NY.

1905 – The Parisian subway was officially inaugurated.

1907 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt induced California to revoke its anti-Japanese legislation.

1907 – In Bulgaria, Premier Nicolas Petkov was killed by an anarchist.

1909 – The first gold medal to a perfect-score bowler was awarded to A.C. Jellison by the American Bowling Congress.

1927 – Samuel Roxy Rothafel opened the famous Roxy Theatre in New York City.

1930 – Babe Ruth signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees for the sum of $80,000.

1930 – U.S. President Howard Taft became the first U.S. president to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

1935 – The German Air Force became an official department of the Reich.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the act of providing war supplies to the Allies.

1946 – Communists and Nationalists began fighting as the Soviets pulled out of Mukden, Manchuria.

1946 – Pravda denounced Winston Churchill as anti-Soviet and a warmonger.

1947 – The DuMont network aired “Movies For Small Fry.” It was network television’s first successful children’s program.

1948 – Reginald Weir became the first black tennis player to participate in a U.S. Indoor Lawn Tennis Association tournament.

1959 – The Lorraine Hansberry drama A Raisin in the Sun opened at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theater.

1964 – U.S. Senator Carl Hayden broke the record for continuous service in the U.S. Senate. He had worked 37 years and seven days.

1965 – The American navy began inspecting Vietnamese junks in an effort to end arms smuggling to the South.

1969 – Levi-Strauss started selling bell-bottomed jeans.

1978 – Bobby Hull (Winnipeg Jets) joined Gordie Howe by getting his 1,000th career goal.

1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev was named the new chairman of the Soviet Communist Party.

1986 – Popsicle announced its plan to end the traditional twin-stick frozen treat for a one-stick model.

1988 – A cease-fire was declared in the war between Iran and Iraq.

1990 – Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. It was the first Soviet republic to break away from Communist control.

1990 – In Chile, Patricio Aylwin was sworn in as the first democratically elected president since 1973.

1992 – Former U.S. President Nixon said that the Bush administration was not giving enough economic aid to Russia.

1993 – Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first female attorney general.

1993 – North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty refusing to open sites for inspection.

1994 – In Chile, Eduardo Frei was sworn in as President. It was the first peaceful transfer of power in Chile since 1970.

1997 – An explosion at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant caused 35 workers to be exposed to low levels of radioactivity. The incident was the worst in Japan’s history.

1998 – The International Astronomical Union issued an alert that said that a mile-wide asteroid could come very close to, and possibly hit, Earth on Oct. 26, 2028. The next day NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that there was no chance the asteroid would hit Earth.

2002 – Two columns of light were pointed skyward from ground zero in New York as a temporary memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.