02 March History
- 1776 - Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston.
- 1781 - Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.
- 1797 - The Directory of Great Britain authorizes vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships are American.
- 1815 - To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.
- 1836 - Texas declares independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday.
- 1853 - The Territory of Washington is organized.
- 1865 - President Abraham Lincoln rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee's plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.
- 1867 - The first Reconstruction Act is passed by Congress.
- 1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes is declared president by one vote the day before the inauguration.
- 1889 - Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.
- 1896 - Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, is sentenced to two years of hard labor in the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small portion of the sentence.
- 1901 - Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
- 1908 - An international conference on arms reduction opens in London.
- 1908 - Gabriel Lippman introduces the new three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.
- 1917 - Congress passes the Jones Act making Puerto Rico a territory of the United States and makes the inhabitants U.S. citizens.
- 1923 - In Italy, Mussolini admits that women have a right to vote, but declares that the time is not right.
- 1930 - Novelist D.H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.
- 1943 - The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.
- 1945 - MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.
- 1946 - Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
- 1951 - The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.
- 1955 - Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous arrest for the same offense.
- 1956 - France grants independence to Morocco.
- 1965 - More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the "Rolling Thunder" raids.
- 1968 - The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.
- 1973 - Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.
- 1974 - A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.
- 1978 - Czech pilot Vladimir Remek becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.
- 1981 - The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.
02 March Birthdays
- 1793 - Sam Houston, president of Texas, later Texas senator and governor.
- 1810 - Leo XIII, 256th Roman Catholic Pope.
- 1829 - Carl Schurz, Civil War general, political reformer and anti-imperialist.
- 1900 - Kurt Weill, German-born composer (The Threepenny Opera).
- 1904 - Henry Dreyfuss, industrial designer of everything from telephones to the interior of the Boeing 707.
- 1904 - Theodor Seuss Geisel [Dr. Seuss], author of numerous children's books including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.
- 1923 - Doc Watson, singer and guitarist.
- 1931 - Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the Soviet Union. Responsible for restructuring the Soviet economy (perestroika) and openness and information (glasnost).
- 1942 - John Irving, novelist (The World According to Garp).