Title: March 31 Content: It is the last day of the first quarter of the year. == Events == === Up to 1900 === * 307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian. * 1492 – Queen Isabella of Castile issues the Alhambra Decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity, or face being forced to leave. * 1547 – King Henry II of France becomes king on his 28th birthday, following the death of his father, King Francis I of France. * 1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy. * 1774 – American Revolutionary War: The United Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act. * 1822 – Massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by Ottoman Empire soldiers following an attempted rebellion. * 1829 – Francesco Saverio Castiglione is elected Pope, becoming Pope Pius VIII. * 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 bombs the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile * 1885 – The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland, present-day Botswana. * 1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. * 1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces. === 1901 2000 === * 1901 – The 1901 Black Sea earthquake occurs. * 1903 – Richard Pearse reportedly flies 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 (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States. * 1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina. * 1909 – Building work on the RMS Titanic begins. * 1910 – Six North Staffordshire pottery towns merge to form Stoke-on-Trent. * 1917 – The United States takes possession of the United States Virgin Islands after paying $25 million to Denmark. * 1918 – Daylight Saving Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time. * 1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by groups of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Almost 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed. * 1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed. * 1930 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in movies for the next forty years. * 1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000. * 1931 – TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing 8 people, including University of Notre Dame American football coach Knute Rockne. * 1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve unemployment. * 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island. * 1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 26ZA-1, the world's first jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans. * 1949 – Newfoundland and Labrador joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th province of Canada. * 1958 – Canadian Federal Election: The Progressive Conservatives under John Diefenbaker win 208 out of 265 seats in parliament, setting a Canadian record for the number of seats occupied by a single party. * 1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum. * 1964 – The Dictatorship in Brazil, under general Castello Branco, begins. * 1965 – Iberia Airlines Convair 440 flight crashes into the sea off Tangier, Morocco, killing 47 out of the 51 people on board. * 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon. * 1966 – In the United Kingdom the Labour Party under Harold Wilson is elected to a second consecutive term in government. * 1967 – Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar for the first time at London's Astoria Theatre. He is sent to the hospital afterwards for burns on his hands. * 1968 – United States President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not run for re-election. * 1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit). * 1970 – Eight terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 at Tokyo International Airport, using samurai swords and carrying a bomb. * 1979 – In Jerusalem, Israel, Gali Atari & Milk and Honey win the twenty-fourth Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing "Hallelujah". * 1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta is no longer a military base. * 1985 – The first ever WrestleMania is held in New York City's Madison Square Garden. * 1986 – A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta catches fire and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 166. * 1986 – Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England. * 1990 – Boxer Julio César Chávez defeats Meldrick Taylor to unify the boxing's world junior welterweight title in a very controversial fight known as "Thunder Meets Lightning". * 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). * 1995 – TAROM Flight 371 crashes in Balotesti, Romania, killing all 60 people on board. * 1995 – Popular Tex-Mex singer Selena Quintanilla is murdered by her assistant Yolanda Saldivar in a Corpus Christi, Texas motel after a heated discussion where the latter was accused of ripping off the artist's fan club. * 1997 – At age 16, Martina Hingis becomes the youngest female tennis players to reach Number 1 in the world rankings. * 1998 – Netscape gives the code base of its browser under an open source license agreement, thus creating Mozilla Foundation, a not-for- profit corporation to oversee the development of Mozilla. === From 2001 === * 2002 – Major flooding affects the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. * 2004 – Google announces Gmail, the first web-based mail service to offer 1 gigabyte of storage. * 2004 – In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed. * 2004 – Sandton Square in Johannesburg, South Africa, is renamed Nelson Mandela Square. * 2013 – The UK records it coldest Easter Sunday. Overall, it was the coldest March there since 1962. * 2014 – South Korea and North Korea exchange fire over their western maritime border. * 2014 – The United Nations International Court of Justice rules that Japan's Antarctic whaling program is not scientific but commercial. * 2014 – Manuel Valls replaces Jean-Marc Ayrault as Prime Minister of France. * 2016 – A flyover collapses in Kolkata, India, killing at least 20 people. * 2017 – Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye is arrested on corruption charges. * 2019 – Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky wins the first round of Ukraine's Presidential election, ahead of Petro Poroshenko. == Births == === Up to 1800 === * 250 – Constantius Chlorus, Roman Emperor (d. 306) * 1360 – Philippa of Lancaster, Queen of Portugal (d. 1415) * 1425 – Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan (d. 1468) * 1499 – Pope Pius IV (d. 1565) * 1504 – Guru Angad Dev, 2nd Sikh Guru (d. 1552) * 1519 – King Henry II of France (d. 1559) * 1536 – Ashikaga Yoshikatsu, Japanese shogun (d. 1565) * 1576 – Louise Juliana of Nassau, Regent of Bohemia (d. 1644) * 1596 – René Descartes, French mathematician (d. 1650) * 1621 – Andrew Marvell, English poet (d. 1678) * 1635 – Patrick Gordon, Scottish general in the Russian army (d. 1699) * 1644 – Henry Winstanley, English painter and engineer (d. 1703) * 1651 – Karl II, Elector Palatine (d. 1685) * 1675 – Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758) * 1684 – Francesco Durante, Italian composer (d. 1755) * 1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (d. 1750) * 1718 – Mariana Victoria of Spain (d. 1781) * 1723 – King Frederick V of Denmark (d. 1766) * 1732 – Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer (d. 1809) * 1747 – Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, German musician and composer (d. 1800) * 1777 – Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist (d. 1859) * 1788 – Jessadabodindra (Rama III), King of Siam (d. 1851) * 1794 – Thomas McKean Thompson McKennan, American politician (d. 1852) === 1801 1900 === * 1808 – James Pinckney Henderson, 1st Governor of Texas (d. 1858) * 1809 – Edward FitzGerald, English poet (d. 1883) * 1809 – Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (d. 1852) * 1819 – Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, German statesman (d. 1901) * 1822 – Dmitry Grigorovich, Russian writer (d. 1900) * 1831 – Archibald Scott Couper, Scottish chemist (d. 1892) * 1847 – Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev, Russian mathematician (d. 1878) * 1848 – Diederik Korteweg, Dutch mathematician (d. 1941) * 1848 – William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, American-born British financier, writer and statesman (d. 1919) * 1851 – Francis Bell, 20th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1936) * 1853 – Isaac Bayley Balfour, Scottish botanist (d. 1922) * 1870 – James M. Cox, Governor of Ohio (d. 1957) * 1871 – Arthur Griffith, Irish politician (d. 1922) * 1872 – Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario, publicist, curator and art critic (d. 1929) * 1872 – Alexandra Kollontai, Russian Communist revolutionary (d. 1952) * 1873 – William D. Denney, Governor of Delaware (d. 1953) * 1876 – Borisav Stankovic, Serbian writer (d. 1927) * 1878 – Jack Johnson, American boxer (d. 1946) * 1884 – Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer (d. 1946) * 1884 – Henri Queuille, Prime Minister of France (d. 1970) * 1890 – William Lawrence Bragg, Australian-British physicist (d. 1971) * 1890 – Ben Adams, American athlete (d. 1961) * 1893 – Clemens Krauss, Austrian conductor (d. 1954) * 1900 – Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (d. 1974) === 1901 1950 === * 1904 – Sam Zimbalist, American film producer (d. 1958) * 1905 – Robert Stevenson, British director, screenwriter and producer (d. 1986) * 1906 – Shin'ichiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist (d. 1979) * 1913 – Etta Baker, American blues musician and singer (d. 2006) * 1914 – Octavio Paz, Mexican writer (d. 1998) * 1914 – Dagmar Lange (Maria Lang), Swedish writer (d. 1991) * 1915 – Shoichi Yokoi, Japanese sergeant (d. 1997) * 1916 – Lucille Bliss, American actress (d. 2012) * 1917 – Dorothy DeLay, American violin instructor (d. 2002) * 1920 – Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, English aristocrat (d. 2014) * 1922 – Richard Kiley, American actor (d. 1999) * 1922 – William Stanley Peart, British physician and clinical researcher (d. 2019) * 1925 – Andrea Bianchi, Italian movie director and writer * 1926 – John Fowles, English novelist (d. 2005) * 1927 – César Chávez, American labor activist (d. 1993) * 1927 – Vladimir Ilyushin, Russian pilot (d. 2010) * 1927 – Eduardo Martinez Somalo, Spanish cardinal * 1928 – Gordie Howe, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2016) * 1929 – Liz Claiborne, Belgian-born fashion designer (d. 2007) * 1930 – Yehuda Nir, Polish-born psychiatrist (d. 2014) * 1930 – Jim Mutscheller, American football player (d. 2015) * 1932 – Nagisa Oshima, Japanese movie director and screenwriter (d. 2013) * 1934 – Richard Chamberlain, American actor * 1934 – Shirley Jones, American singer and actress * 1934 – Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist * 1935 – Herb Alpert, American trumpeter and bandleader * 1937 – Sid Ahmed Ghozali, former Prime Minister of Algeria * 1938 – David Steel, Scottish politician * 1938 – Sheila Dikshit, Indian politician * 1939 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of the Republic of Georgia (d. 1993) * 1939 – Volker Schlöndorff, German movie director * 1939 – Karl-Heinz Schnellinger, German footballer * 1940 – Barney Frank, American politician * 1940 – Patrick Leahy, American politician * 1943 – Christopher Walken, American actor * 1943 – Sharon Hampson, Canadian singer and musician (Sharon, Lois & Bram) * 1944 – Mick Ralphs, English guitarist * 1944 – Angus King, 72nd Governor of Maine * 1945 – Myfanwy Talog, Welsh actress (d. 1995) * 1945 – Valerie Curtin, American actress and screenwriter * 1946 – F'Murr, French comic artist (d. 2018) * 1947 – Kristian Blak, Danish musician and recording executive * 1947 – Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Israeli physicist (d. 2011) * 1947 – César Gaviria, 36th President of Colombia * 1948 – Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States * 1948 – David Eisenhower, American author and educator * 1948 – Natalia Dubova, Russian ice dancer and coach * 1948 – Rhea Perlman, American actress * 1948 – Gary Doer, Canadian politician, 20th Premier of Manitoba === 1951 1975 === * 1952 – Dermot Morgan, Irish comedian and actor (d. 1998) * 1953 – Dennis Kamakahi, American musician (d. 2014) * 1954 – Laima Vaikule, Latvian actress, singer, director and choreographer * 1955 – Angus Young, Scottish-Australian musician (AC/DC) * 1955 – Svetozar Marovic, only President of Serbia and Montenegro * 1957 – Alan Duncan, British politician * 1958 – Tony Cox, American actor * 1960 – Popa Chubby, American blues singer and guitarist * 1964 – Christian Allard, French- born Scottish politician * 1964 – Oleksandr Turchynov, former interim President of Ukraine * 1965 – Tom Barrasso, American ice hockey player * 1965 – Jean-Christophe Lafaille, French mountaineer (d. 2006) * 1966 – Roger Black, British athlete * 1969 – Francesco Moriero, Italian footballer * 1970 – Alenka Bratusek, 7th Prime Minister of Slovenia * 1971 – Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor * 1971 – Pavel Bure, Russian ice hockey player * 1971 – Martin Atkinson, English footballer and referee * 1971 – Craig McCracken, American animator, producer and screenwriter * 1972 – Alejandro Amenabar, Chilean-Spanish movie director, screenwriter and composer * 1972 – Evan Williams, American businessman * 1975 – Adam Green, American director, producer and screenwriter === From 1976 === * 1978 – Daniel Mays, English actor * 1978 – Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, 16th Duke of Hamilton, Scottish nobleman * 1979 – Danny Invincibile, Australian footballer * 1979 – Euan Burton, Scottish judoka * 1979 – Josh Kinney, American baseball player * 1980 – Maaya Sakamoto, Japanese voice actress and singer * 1980 – Michael Ryder, American ice hockey player * 1980 – Pa Dembo Touray, Gambian footballer * 1982 – Tal Ben Haim, Israeli footballer * 1983 – Hashim Amla, South African cricketer * 1983 – Silver Leppik, Estonian basketball player * 1984 – Alberto Junior Rodríguez, Peruvian footballer * 1984 – Eddie Johnson, American soccer player * 1986 – Andreas Dober, Austrian footballer * 1987 – Nordin Amrabat, Dutch-Moroccan footballer * 1987 – Georg Listing, German musician (Tokio Hotel) * 1987 – Humpy Koneru, Indian chess player * 1989 – Pablo Piatti, Argentine footballer * 1989 – Liu Zige, Chinese swimmer * 1990 – Bang Yong-guk, South Korean rapper, actor and dancer * 1990 – Lyra McKee, Northern Irish journalist (d. 2019) * 1994 – Thomas Batuello, American musician and actor * 1998 – Anna Seidel, German speed skater == Deaths == === Up to 1900 === * 1074 – Yorimichi Fujiwara, Regent of Japan (b. 992) * 1204 – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England (b. 1121) * 1340 – Ivan I of Russia (b. 1288) * 1547 – Francis I of France (b. 1494) * 1567 – Philip I of Hesse (b. 1504) * 1621 – Philip III of Spain (b. 1578) * 1671 – Anne Hyde, Duchess of York (b. 1637) * 1703 – Johann Christoph Bach, German composer (b. 1642) * 1727 – Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician and physicist (b. 1643) * 1741 – Pieter Burmann the Elder, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1668) * 1797 – Olaudah Equiano, Nigerian-American slave and activist (b. around 1745) * 1837 – John Constable, English painter (b. 1776) * 1850 – John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of the United States (b. 1782) * 1855 – Charlotte Brontë, English writer (b. 1816) * 1877 – Antoine Auguste Cournot, French mathematician (b. 1801) * 1885 – Franz Wilhelm Abt, German composer (b. 1819) === 1901 2000 === * 1913 – J. P. Morgan, American financier (b. 1837) * 1915 – Wyndham Halswelle, British runner (b. 1882) * 1917 – Emil von Behring, German doctor, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1901) (b. 1854) * 1920 – Lothar von Trotha, German general (b. 1848) * 1929 – Myron T. Herrick, American politician, Governor of Ohio (b. 1854) * 1931 – Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888) * 1944 – Mineichi Koga, Japanese general (b. 1885) * 1945 – Anne Frank, German-born diarist (b. 1929) * 1945 – Hans Fischer, German chemist (b. 1881) * 1946 – Martin Davey, Governor of Ohio (b. 1884) * 1949 – Friedrich Bergius, German chemist (b. 1856) * 1956 – Ralph DePalma, Italian racing driver (b. 1884) * 1968 – Gary Lowdermilk, American baseball player (b. 1885) * 1972 – Meena Kumari, Indian actress (b. 1932) * 1972 – Ramon Iglesias i Navarri, Catalan bishop of Urgell, co-Prince of Andorra (b. 1889) * 1975 – Percy Alliss, English golfer (b. 1897) * 1976 – Paul Strand, American photographer and movie maker (b. 1890) * 1978 – Charles Herbert Best, American-Canadian medical scientist (b. 1899) * 1980 – Jesse Owens, American athlete (b. 1913) * 1986 – O'Kelly Isley, Jr., American singer (The Isley Brothers) (b. 1937) * 1986 – Jerry Paris, American actor and director (b. 1925) * 1988 – William McMahon, 20th Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908) * 1993 – Brandon Lee, American actor (b. 1965) * 1995 – Selena, Mexican-American singer-songwriter (b. 1971) * 1997 – Friedrich Hund, German physicist (b. 1896) * 1998 – Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920) === From 2001 === * 2001 – Clifford Shull, American physicist (b. 1915) * 2005 – Terri Schiavo, American patient in right-to-die case (b. 1963) * 2007 – Paul Watzlawick, American psychologist (b. 1921) * 2008 – Jules Dassin, American movie director (b. 1911) * 2009 – Jarl Alfredius, Swedish television journalist (b. 1943) * 2009 – Raul Alfonsin, President of Argentina (b. 1927) * 2012 – Dale R. Corson, American physicist (b. 1914) * 2013 – Charles Amarin Brand, French archbishop (b. 1920) * 2014 – Irene Fernandez, Malaysian activist (b. 1946) * 2014 – Frankie Knuckles, American DJ and record producer (b. 1955) * 2014 – Gonzalo Anes, Spanish economist, professor and historian (b. 1931) * 2014 – Charles Keating, American banker (b. 1923) * 2014 – David Hannay, Australian movie producer (b. 1939) * 2014 – Ferdinand Masset, Swiss politician (b. 1920) * 2014 – Roger Somville, Belgian painter (b. 1923) * 2016 – Georges Cottier, Swiss cardinal (b. 1922) * 2016 – Ronnie Corbett, Scottish actor and comedian (b. 1930) * 2016 – Imre Kertész, Hungarian writer (b. 1929) * 2016 – Zaha Hadid, Iraqi-British architect (b. 1950) * 2016 – Douglas Wilmer, English actor (b. 1920) * 2016 – Hans-Dietrich Genscher, German politician and diplomat (b. 1927) * 2016 – Denise Robertson, English broadcaster (b. 1932) * 2017 – Halit Akçatepe, Turkish actor (b. 1938) * 2017 – Gilbert Baker, American LGBT activist, creator of the Rainbow flag (b. 1951) * 2017 – William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., American lawyer, judge and politician (b. 1920) * 2017 – Mike Hall, British endurance cyclist (b. 1981) * 2017 – James Rosenquist, American artist (b. 1933) * 2017 – Radley Metzger, American pornographic filmmaker (b. 1929) * 2017 – Richard Nelson Bolles, American writer (b. 1927) * 2017 – Jerrier A. Haddad, American computer engineer (b. 1922) * 2017 – Amy Ridenour, American political activist (b. 1959) * 2018 – Margarita Carrera, Guatemalan philosopher (b. 1929) * 2018 – Luigi De Filippo, Italian actor (b. 1930) * 2018 – Peg Lautenschlager, American attorney and politician (b. 1955) * 2018 – Michael Tree, American violist (b. 1934) * 2019 – Peter Coleman, Australian writer and politician (b. 1928) * 2019 – Hedi Turki, Tunisian painter (b. 1922) * 2019 – Nipsey Hussle, American rapper (b. 1985) * 2020 – Vincent Marzello, American voice actor (b. 1951) == Observances == * Cesar Chavez Day (United States) * Freedom Day (Malta) * King Nangklao Memorial Day (Thailand) * Transfer Day (United States Virgin Islands * International Transgender Day of Visibility Category:Days of the year