01 March History
- 1642 - York, Maine becomes the first incorporated American city.
- 1692 - Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are arrested for the supposed practice of witchcraft in Salem, Mass.
- 1776 - French minister Charles Gravier advises his Spanish counterpart to support the American rebels against the English.
- 1780 - Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery.
- 1803 - Ohio becomes the 17th state to join the Union.
- 1808 - In France, Napoleon creates an imperial nobility.
- 1815 - Napoleon lands at Cannes, France, returning from exile on Elba, with a force of 1,500 men and marches on Paris.
- 1871 - German troops enter Paris, France, during the Franco-Prussian War.
- 1875 - Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which is invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883.
- 1912 - Albert Berry completes the first in-flight parachute jump, from a Benoist plane over Kinlock Field in St. Louis, Missouri.
- 1915 - The Allies announce their aim to cut off all German supplies and assure the safety of the neutrals.
- 1919 - The Korean coalition proclaims their independence from Japan.
- 1921 - The Allies reject a $7.5 billion reparations offer in London. German delegations decides to quit all talks.
- 1932 - The Lindbergh baby is kidnapped from the Lindbergh home near Princeton, New Jersey.
- 1935 - Germany officially establishes the Luftwaffe.
- 1941 - Bulgaria joins the Axis as the Nazis occupy Sofia.
- 1942 - Japanese troops land on Java in the Pacific.
- 1943 - The British RAF conducts strategic bombing raids on all European railway lines.
- 1960 - 1,000 Black students pray and sing the national anthem on the steps of the old Confederate Capitol in Montgomery, Ala.
- 1968 - Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara is replaced by Clark Clifford.
- 1969 - Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from baseball.
- 1974 - A grand jury indicts seven of President Nixon's aides for the conspiracy on Watergate.
- 1985 - The Pentagon accepts the theory that an atomic war would block the sun, causing a "nuclear winter."
- 1992 - Bosnian Serbs begin sniping in Sarajevo, after Croats and Moslems vote for Bosnian independence.
01 March Birthdays
- 1810 - Frédéric Chopin, composer and pianist.
- 1837 - William Dean Howells, novelist.
- 1904 - Glenn Miller, big band leader during the 1930s and '40s.
- 1914 - Ralph Waldo Ellison, African-American author (Invisible Man).
- 1917 - Robert Lowell, Jr., poet, won Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for Lord Weary's Castle.
- 1921 - Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator.
- 1921 - Howard Nemerov, writer, another Pulitzer Prize recipient.