The March 31 reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

March 31

March 31 is the 90thth day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years). There are 275 days remaining.

Feb - March - Apr
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31
2004 day arrangement All days

Table of contents

1 Events 2 Births 3 Deaths 4 Holidays and observances

Events

• 307 - After divorcing his wife Minerva, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
• 1774 - American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act.
• 1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
• 1866 - Spanish Navy bombed the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile
• 1885 - The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
• 1889 - The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.
• 1903 - Richard Pearse is reputed to have flown a heavier than air machine in powered flight near Pleasant Point, South Canterbury, New Zealand; some claim 1902
• 1906 - The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States. The IAAUS would later become the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910.
• 1909 - Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• 1917 - The United States takes possession of the U.S. Virgin Islands after paying $25 million to Denmark.
• 1918 - Daylight Savings Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
• 1930 - The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next forty years.
• 1931 - An earthquake destroys Managua Nicaragua killing 2,000.
• 1933 - The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.
• 1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
• 1964 - The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco, begins. General Mourão Filho joins his troops in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and starts to march to Rio de Janeiro to overthrow the president João Goulart acused of being a leftist.
• 1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon.
• 1967 - Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar for the first time at London's Astoria Theatre. He is sent to the hospital afterwards because he suffered burns on his hands as a result of the stunt.
• 1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
• 1986 - A Mexicana Boeing 727 enroute to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City killing 166
• 1990 - Thunder Meets Lightning: Julio César Chávez defeats Meldrick Taylor to unify boxing's world junior welterweight title in a very controversial fight.
• 1991 - The Warsaw Pact comes to an end.
• 1992 - The television news program Dateline NBC premieres.
• 1993 - Actor Brandon Lee is accidentally killed during the filming of The Crow.
• 1994 - The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (see Human evolution).
• 1998 - Netscape gives the code base of its browser under an open source license agreement, thus creating Mozilla, a non-lucrative organization in order to oversee the development.

Births

• 1499 - Pope Pius IV (d. 1565)
• 1504 - Guru Angad Dev, Second Guru of the Sikhs (d. 1552)
• 1519 - Henry II of France (d. 1559)
• 1596 - René Descartes, mathematician (d. 1650)
• 1675 - Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758)
• 1732 - Joseph Haydn, composer (d. 1809)
• 1742 - P. D. Q. Bach, fictitious composer (d. 1807)
• 1809 - Nikolai Gogol, writer (d. 1852)
• 1809 - Edward FitzGerald, poet (d. 1883)
• 1811 - Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist, inventor: Bunsen burner (d. 1899)
• 1878 - Jack Johnson, African-American boxer (d. 1946)
• 1885 - Pascin, the "Prince of Montparnasse" (d. 1930)
• 1900 - Richard Alexander Walter Windsor, Duke of Gloucester
• 1912 - Hermann Höcherl, politician (d. 1989)
• 1914 - Ocatvio Paz, author, Nobel Prize for Literature (d. 1998)
• 1922 - Richard Kiley, actor, singer (d. 1999)
• 1926 - John Fowles, author
• 1927 - César Chávez, labor activist (d. 1993)
• 1927 - William Daniels, actor
• 1928 - Gordie Howe, ice hockey player
• 1928 - Lefty Frizzell, country music performer
• 1934 - Shirley Jones, singer, actress
• 1935 - Richard Chamberlain, actor
• 1935 - Herb Alpert, musician
• 1939 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia, scientist and writer, first President of the Republic of Georgia (d. 1993)
• 1939 - Volker Schlöndorff, film director
• 1940 - Patrick Leahy, United States Senator from Vermont
• 1943 - Christopher Walken, actor
• 1948 - Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States
• 1948 - Rhea Perlman, actress
• 1949 - Bethel Enproe Adam, second Angam Baby
• 1966 - Roger Black, British athlete
• 1971 - Ewan McGregor, actor
• 1971 - Pavel Bure, ice hockey player
• 1976 - Josh Saviano, actor (The Wonder Years)

Deaths

• 1837 - John Constable, painter (b. 1776)
• 1855 - Charlotte Brontë, author (b. 1816)
• 1912 - Karl May, author (b. 1842)
• 1913 - John Pierpont Morgan - US financier and banker (b. 1837)
• 1917 - Emil Adolf von Behring, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901 (b. 1854)
• 1915 - Wyndham Halswelle, British runner
• 1931 - Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888)
• 1945 - Anne Frank, whose world-famous diary was published after WW II (b. 1929)
• 1978 - Charles Best, medical scientist (b. 1899)
• 1980 - Jesse Owens, athlete (b. 1913)
• 1988 - William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
• 1993 - Brandon Lee, actor (b. 1965)
• 1995 - Selena, Tejano singer (b. 1971)
• 1998 - Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920)

Holidays and observances

• 1991, 2002, 2013, 2024: Easter day
• Thomas Mundy Peterson Day in New Jersey

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March 30 - April 1 - February 28 (February 29) - April 30 -- listing of all days

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