On this day - March 8
2011-03-08 07:44
Today is Monday, March 8, the 67th day of 2010. There are 298 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1702 - England's Queen Anne ascends the throne upon the death of King William III.
1722 - Afghanistan's Mir Muhammad starts war against Persia.
1765 - Britain's House of Lords passes Stamp Act to tax American colonies.
1782 - The Gnadenhutten massacre takes place as some 90 Indians are slain by militiamen in Ohio in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.
1865 - A canal is begun in the Netherlands to connect Amsterdam with the North Sea.
1898 - United States refuses to support Britain in its conflict with Russia over a loan to China.
1904 - Germany revises 1872 anti-Jesuit law to permit return of some members of the Roman Catholic order.
1917 - Riots and strikes break out in St Petersburg, marking start of Russian Revolution.
1942 - Japanese forces capture Rangoon, Burma, during World War II.
1949 - France recognises noncommunist Vietnam nationalists under Bao Dai as independent state within French Union.
1950 - Marshal Voroshilov announces the existence of the Soviet atomic bomb.
1954 - United States and Japan sign mutual defence agreement.
1957 - Ghana is admitted to the United Nations.
1965 - United States lands 3 500 Marines in South Vietnam.
1969 - Soviet Union puts its Far East army on alert as warning to China after frontier clash on Ussuri River.
1970 - Cyprus President Archbishop Makarios escapes assassination when terrorist snipers shoot down his helicopter.
1986 - Guerrilla violence in Colombia takes seven lives a day before national elections.
1987 - Sri Lankan troops launch large new offensive, killing 11 separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in northern Jaffna peninsula.
1989 - Chinese troops converge on Tibetan capital of Lhasa to enforce martial law following three days of anti-Chinese rioting.
1990 - West German parliament adopts resolution calling on united Germany to honour Poland's western border.
1991 - Forty foreign journalists and two US servicemen captured by Iraqi soldiers are turned over to Red Cross officials in Baghdad.
1993 - South Korea's President Kim Young-sam fires two key generals in a move to seize civilian control of the army and open the path to reform.
1994 - Indian jetliner crashes into a parked Russian plane in New Delhi, killing at least seven.
1995 - Gunmen fire on a van carrying American employees to the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing two and wounding one.
1996 - China fires three ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan's main ports, two weeks before the island's first presidential elections.
1997 - Hundreds of people flee southern Albania, fearing clashes between the government and armed insurgents.
1998 - James McDougal, one of the most important co-operating witnesses in Kenneth Starr's investigation into President Bill Clinton's Whitewater real estate dealings, dies in prison.
1999 - The US Energy Department fires a Taiwanese-born scientist suspected of handing over nuclear missile technology to China in the 1980s.
2003 - An Argentine court releases an indictment ordering the arrest of four former Iranian government officials for their alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed.
2004 - A female wing of Nepal's Maoist rebel movement, the All Nepal Women's Association (Revolutionary), calls a general strike to protest violence against women, bringing this Himalayan kingdom to a standstill.
2005 - The UN war crimes court indicts Kosovo's prime minister for alleged atrocities while commanding ethnic Albanian insurgents against Serb forces in the struggle for control of the province.
2006 - Tens of thousands of Sudanese march through Khartoum, protesting plans to deploy UN peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur and demanding the expulsion of the top UN and US envoys in the country.
2007 - Insurgents ambush a convoy of African Union peacekeepers sent to help stabilise Somalia's violent capital, setting off a gunfight that kills at least 10 civilians.
2008 - Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica dissolves Serbia's government and calls for new elections.
2009 - Roman Catholic and Protestant congregations pray together for peace after Irish Republican Army dissidents kill two Britsh soldiers - the first deadly attack on Northern Ireland security forces in 12 years.
Today's Birthdays:
Richard Howe, English admiral (1726-1799); Oliver Wendell Holmes, US jurist (1809-1894); Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (1895-1979); Cyd Charisse, US actress-dancer (1923-2008); Lynn Redgrave, British actress (1943--); Aidan Quinn, US actor (1959--); Camryn Manheim, US actress (1961--).
Thought For Today:
We do not acquire humility. There is humility in us - only we humiliate ourselves before false gods - Simone Weil, French philosopher (1909-1943).
Sapa-AP