12 March History
- 1496 - The Jews are expelled from Syria.
- 1507 - Cesare Borgia dies while fighting alongside his brother, the king of Navarre, in Spain.
- 1609 - The Bermuda Islands become an English colony.
- 1664 - New Jersey becomes a British colony.
- 1789 - The United States Post Office is established.
- 1809 - Great Britain signs a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country.
- 1863 - President Jefferson Davis delivers his State of the Confederacy address.
- 1879 - The British Zulu War begins.
- 1884 - Mississippi establishes the first U.S. state college for women.
- 1894 - Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
- 1903 - The Czar of Russia issues a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout the land.
- 1909 - British Parliament increases naval appropriations for Great Britain.
- 1911 - Dr. Fletcher of the Rockefeller Institute discovers the cause of infantile paralysis.
- 1912 - Juliet Low founds the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia.
- 1917 - Russian troops mutiny as the "February Revolution" begins.
- 1930 - Gandhi begins his march to the sea to symbolizes his defiance of British rule in India.
- 1933 - President Paul von Hindenburg drops the flag of the German Republic and orders that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.
- 1933 - President Roosevelt makes the first of his Sunday evening fireside chats.
- 1938 - German troops enter Austria without firing a shot, forming the anschluss (union)of Austria and Germany.
- 1939 - Pius XII is elected the new pope in Rome.
- 1944 - Great Britain bars all travel to neutral Ireland, which is suspected of collaborating with Nazi Germany.
- 1945 - Diarist Anne Frank dies in a German concentration camp.
- 1959 - The U.S. House of Representatives joins the Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii.
- 1984 - Lebanese President Gemayel opens the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war.
- 1985 - The United States and the Soviet Union begin arms control talks in Geneva.
- 1994 - The Church of England ordains women priests.
12 March Birthdays
- 1554 - Richard Hooker, English theologian (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity).
- 1858 - Adolph Simon Ochs, publisher of The New York Times.
- 1862 - Jane Delano, nurse, teacher, founder of the Red Cross.
- 1890 - Vasav Nijinsky, Russian ballet dancer.
- 1922 - Jack Kerouac, American novelist (On the Road).
- 1928 - Edward Albee, American dramatist (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf).
- 1946 - Patricia Hampl, poet and memoirist (A Romantic Education, Virgin Time).