26 March History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1517    -    The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies.
  • 1799    -    Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.
  • 1804    -    Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
  • 1804    -    The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase.
  • 1827    -    German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed "I shall hear in heaven."
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 1832    -    Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.
  • 1885    -    Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
  • 1913    -    The Balkan allies take Adrianople.
  • 1918    -    On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons.
  • 1938    -    Herman Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.
  • 1942    -    The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 1950    -    Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
  • 1951    -    The United States Air Force flag design is approved.
  • 1953    -    Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.
  • 1953    -    Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio.
  • 1954    -    The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks.
  • 1961    -    John F. Kennedy meets with British Premier Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos.
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 1969    -    The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched.
  • 1969    -    Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
  • 1979    -    The Camp David treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt.
  • 1982    -    Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
  • 1989    -    The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.
  • 1992    -    An Indianapolis court finds heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson guilty of rape.

  • 26 March Birthdays

  • 1819    -    Louise Otto, German author.
  • 1850    -    Edward Bellamy, writer (Looking Backward).
  • 1859    -    A.E. Houseman, poet (A Shropshire Lad).
  • 1874    -    Robert Frost, poet, multiple Pulitzer Prize-winner.
  • 1880    -    Duncan Hines, U.S. restaurant guide author
  • 1904    -    Joseph Campbell, folklorist and writer.
  • 1911    -    Tennessee Williams, American dramatist (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Name Desire).
  • 1914    -    William Westmoreland, U.S. army general during the Vietnam War.
  • 1923    -    Bob Elliot, radio comedian, one half of Bob and Ray.
  • 1930    -    Gregory Corso, beat poet, discovered literature in prison.
  • 1930    -    Sandra Day O'Connor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
  • 1933    -    Vine Deloria, Jr., writer, activist.
  • 1942    -    Erica Jong, poet, novelist (Fear of Flying, How to Save Your Own Life).