16 MARCH

1521 - Portuguese-born explorer for the Spanish crown Ferdinand Magellan sights the first islands of the archipelago of San Lazaro, what will later be called the Philippines; his ship will later successively land at the at the islands of Gada, Seilani, and Mazava, and pass by or anchor at Matan(=Mactan), Subu(=Cebu), Baibai(=Baybay), will pass by Panilongo and will anchor at Bohol.

1953 - Yugoslavia's leader, Marshal Josef Tito, arrives in Britain in the first ever visit of a Communist head of state to the Western country; Tito, who has developed his own form of communism independent of the USSR, has travelled by sea in the Yugoslavian Vessel Galeb (Seagull) in the bid to strengthen the ties of the two nations.

1968 - American soldiers brutally kill between 200 and 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, a hamlet in South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War; the US soldiers had entered My Lai during an operation against forces of the Viet Cong but even when they found unarmed villagers, majority of whom were women, children, and old men, the Americans nonetheless raped, tortured and killed the Vietnamese.

1988 - At least 3,200 are reported to have been killed and some 7,000 injured in a poison gas attack on a Kurdish city in the northern region of Iraq; around 20 aircraft that might have dropped mustard gas and nerve agents tabun, sarin, and VX have been seen overhead in Halabja in an attack that followed major developments during the Iran-Iraq War. 

15 MARCH

1899 - Philippine Gen. Mariano Trias submits to President Aguinaldo the report of the Commission of Investigation on the incident at San Juan Bridge on February 4, 1899, [concluding that]  the Americans were the first to fire and that their attack had been premeditated; the United States went to war based on a false claim that Filipinos began attacking American soldiers in Manila [as] historians would later discover a “prearranged plan” by the U.S. military to precipitate [the Philippine-American War] as soon as an incident was provoked.

44 BC - Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, is stabbed to death in the Roman Senate house by 60 conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus; Caesar has enlarged the Roman empire and launched grand reform programs but the conspirators (erroneously) believe that his death would restore the Roman Republic.

1939 - At nightfall, Hungary begins to occupy Carpatho-Ukraine and will annex it following heavy fighting with the inhabitants who had only hours earlier actually declared the independence of the nation from Czechoslovakia; the Nazi Occupation of Hungary in 1944 and subsequent crossing of Soviet troops into Czech territory during World War II will lead to the proclamation of  the "will of the Ukrainian people" to join Soviet Ukraine.

1981 - Pakistan Airways jet hostages are released after having been hostaged for nearly two weeks by the Al Zulfikar group which wants to oust General Zia ul-Haq; the hijackers are said to be in cahoots with the son of former leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was ousted in a coup by ul-Haq four years ago and then executed for a supposed murder of a political opponent.

14 MARCH

1947 - The controversial RP-US Military Bases Agreement (MBA) that grants American access to 22 military, naval, and air bases in the Philippines is signed by Philippine President Manuel A. Roxas and United States Ambassador Paul V. McNutt at Malacanang some eight months after the imperialist Bald Eagle nation granted "independence" to its Southeast Asian colony; supposedly forged for the mutual defense of the two countries, the agreement would be decried by nationalists as both a symbol and actual tool of American neo-colonial hold on Filipinos; another criticism of the MBA is how it was approved only as an international executive agreement on the American side, not having been ratified by the U.S. legislature. 

1917 - The Petrograd Soviet (Council of of Worker's and Soldier's Deputies) of Russia' provisional government of the issues Order No. 1 which deprived the officers of all authority except for strategic operations, with the view of entrusting the army's administration to elected members of committees; the order, prompted by Soviet suspicion that the generals have counterrevolutionary tendencies will virtually be ignored and the Soviet will subsequently be more openly antagonistic towards the government.

1960 - The British radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire sets a new space record when it makes contact with the NASA's  Pioneer V satellite at a distance of some 407,000 miles; the Soviet Union's Lunik III has held the previous record with its photograph of the back of the Earth's Moon a year earlier.

1978 - Israel invades Lebanon in the bid to push the Palestinian Liberation Forces out of South Lebanon; codenamed Operation Litani by Israel,  it would be a military success but the Lebanese government's objections would lead to the creation of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force and a partial Israeli withdrawal.

13 MARCH

1899 - Some 200 Filipino soldiers are killed by American imperialist forces led by Brig. Gen. Loyd Wheaton during the Battle of Guadalupe Church in what is now known as Makati City, with official US report only listing 3 Americans killed and 26 wounded; a year later on the same day (March 13, 1900) in Abra, Captain Villareal writes to Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo Informing him that the forces under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Juan Villamor captured 200 Americans in the Pial settlement of Abra province.

1848 - Vienna students marching to the Landhaus to present a petition to the Diet in Hofburg (Imperial Palace) are fired on when they grew large in size; in the next few days, the Emperor and the Diet wil consider a constitution and within two months, a new constitution providing for a bicameral legislature will be published.

1881 - Russia's Tsar Alexander II is assassinated by the People's Will that has employed murders and terrorism in the bid to overthrow the autocracy; Alexander II has considerably liberalized and modernized Russia but when his authority was challenged he turned repressive.

1979 - The leader of Grenada, Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy, has been ousted in a coup while he was at the United Nations in New York; Gairy has met criticisms of human rights violations and coup leader Maurice Bishop will take over his position of Prime Minister for the next four years.

12 MARCH

1900 - During the Philippine-American War, Gen. Manuel Tinio instructs commanders of the flying columns under his jurisdiction to intensify their guerrilla operations against enemy [American] forces; the youngest general of the fledgling Philippine Republic, Tinio is one of the most efficient military leaders during the guerrilla warfare phase of the war as he has turned the whole Ilocos region and its population into an espionage network marked by a warning system apprising the patriots of approaching imperialist forces.

1610 - Galileo Galilei publishes The Starry Messenger, which recounts the astronomical discoveries he made using his telescope; the book that includes discovery of Jupiter's four largest satellites [providing] evidence that not all objects in the heavens orbited the Earth, will serve to be an important resource for future mathematics and physics great, Isaac Newton.

1917 - A provisional government is formed by Russia's duma (council or parliament) despite an imperial order dissolving the body amidst much discontent and unrest against Tsarist rule; within three days, Nicholas II will abdicate in favor of his brother Michael, who [will shortly abdicate] in favor of the provisional government pending election by a constituent assembly.

1930 - Mahatma Gandhi of India begins the Salt March, his boldest act of civil disobedience against British rule; aiming to protest against British salt tax, the march will lead to the arrest of Gandhi and some 60,000 followers but will earn for Indian political and spiritual leader international support and respect for the cause of his non-violent civil disobedience methods.

11 MARCH

1947 - Despite the granting of "independence" to the Philippines, the Parity Rights amendment to the 1935 Constitution is ratified, giving American citizens equal rights as Filipinos to exploit the natural resources of the Southeast Asian country; the administration of President Manuel Roxas actively campaigned for the ratification in what has been described as "persuasive harangue" and which will merit him a foiled assasination attempt by a disgruntled barber.

1426 - Thutmose III, Egypt's sixth Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, is believed to have died on this day; his reign has been marked with the the expansion of the Egypt empire, made possible by at least 17 military campaigns that conquered territories ranging from Niya in north Syria to the fourth waterfall of the Nile in Nubia.

1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev becomes premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics following the death of  his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko; Gorbachev will be responsible for a policy of openness or "glasnost" and ... of "perestroika" or deep political and economic reforms that will eventually lead to the dissolution of the communist state almost seven years later.

2006 -  Slobodan Milosevic, the former communist Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and has been on trial for war crimes in Hague, is found dead inside his prison cell; Milosevic, who likened himself to Ayatollah Khomeini in terms of charisma and leadership, had exhibited uncanny political adroitness that he had always managed to survive serious mistakes and blows until about the time he failed to convince his people that he genuinely won in the 2000 polls.

10 MARCH

1892 - The masonic lodge Nilad, established by future Filipino patriots Pedro Serrano Laktaw and Antonio Luna, is recognized and given the number 144 by the Gran Oriente Espanol, the Spanish mother lodge; freemasonry  in the Philippines began when Filipino intellectuals in foreign countries have noticed with misgivings the continued persecution and injustices committed by friars back in the Philippines.

1946 - Yugoslavia's General Drazha Mihailovich,  wartime resistance leader, was captured and will be tried for collaborating with the enemy; despite protests from Western countries, he will eventually be executed four months later; Mihailovich led during World War II the Chetnik movement which, though founded as a resistance force itself, increasingly provided assistance to the Axis powers in the bid to eliminate their main  rival, Marshal Broz Tito's Partisans.

1969 - Martin Luther King's killer, James Earl Ray, is sentenced to 99 years imprisonment by a Memphis, Tennessee court after admitting he murdered the American civil rights leader; the admission and verdict swiftly concluded the trial but which would be seen as a cover-up for a politically motivated conspiracy to silence the black activist leader.

1990 - The Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft has been convicted by an Iraqi court of spying for Israel, while working on a story about an explosion at a weapons complex south of the capital, although the British nurse who accompanied him to the site will eventually be released; the trial and execution of Bazoft, an Iranian who lived in Britain beginning the early 1980s, drew international condemnation.

9 MARCH

1900 - Detachment commanders of the Filipino forces are informed by Second Zone Secretary Potenciano Luna that Capt. Pedro Cadurales and several others had been killed, including patriotic soldiers who were shot after being captured by the enemy United States forces; writing in a circular during the Philippine-American War, Luna also cautions the Filipino soldiers to be wary of infiltrators and to "Take care of our guns, bury them under the earth so nobody shall know about it, except the officer and the sergeant."

1932 - Henry Pu Yi, the last emperor of the last of China's imperial dynasties is made Chief executive of Manzhouguo (Manchukuo) by Imperial Japan, months after earlier being named emperor or Kangde; he reigned until 1945, during which time Japan is said to have taken steps towards Japanizing Manchuria as it did in Korea and elsewhere.

1956 - Cyprus Archbishop Makarios, along with his allies, is deported by Britain to Seychelles in the bid to contain nationalist guerrilla activities in the crown colony; he will eventually be allowed back in 1959 and will soon become president of an independent Cyprus.

1967 - The daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,Svetlana, requests political asylum at the United States Embassy in India; she will become an American citizen, changing her name to Lana Peters following her marriage with architect William Peters but some time after their divorce, she will resettle in the USSR and later, in England.

8 MARCH

1896 - The Supreme Council of the secret Philippine revolutionary society Kataas-taasang, Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (KKK) rules that Balangay Mahiganti, a KKK branch in Ermita, Manila, shall be elevated to the status of a Sangguniang Bayan (Sb.); Andres Bonifacio, as the Katipunan's Supreme President, discusses the duties of newly elected officers and then explains the decision made by the Katipunan's Supreme Assembly requiring all sections to remit to the Supreme Council the fees paid by members upon their admission to the Katipunan and upon their promotion to a higher grade.

1917 - The Russian Revolution, also known as the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia's use of the Julian calendar) begins when demonstrations of rioters clamoring for food, with support from some 90,000 strikers, erupt in the city of Petrograd; a week later, NIcholas II will abdicate, putting an end to centuries of czarist rule and the development will serve as precursor to the socialist October Revolution.

1949- The French forges an agreement with non-Communist nationalist forces under which Vietnam's independence (Cochin China included)  is recognized within the French Union, and  with former Annam emperor Bao Dai installed as head of state; made on the eve of the Communist victory in China, France hopes but will fail to stem the momentum of the socialist guerrilla forces of the Viet Minh.

1971 - Joe Frazier defeats Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight boxing championship; popular professional boxer and social activist Ali (Cassius Clay) had challenged Frazier who had become heavyweight champion during his absence from the ring while on conviction for refusing induction into the United States Army.

7 MARCH

1919 - The Philippine Legislature during the American colonial period passes a Declaration of Purposes officially setting forth the position of the Filipino people on this vital problem. " The Philippine question, " said the representatives of the Filipino people, " has reached such a stage that a full and final exchange of views between the United States of America and the Philippine Islands has become necessary. We need not repeat the declarations respecting the national aspirations of the Filipino people.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, beating a similar claim made by Elisha Gray by a mere two hours; his Bell Company  will emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry.

1965 - State troopers and volunteer officers in the southern US state of Alabama break up a civil rights demonstration in protest of discriminatory voting practices against black Americans; after "Bloody Sunday," Dr. Martin Luther King will organize two more protest marches and by August 1965, American President Lyndon B Johnson will sign a new Voting Rights Act outlawing discrimination based on race or skin color.

1969 - Golda Meir becomes Israel's first female Prime Minister; a long-time foreign minister before emerging as compromise candidate, the septuagenarian politician will later win the general election in October of the same year.

6 MARCH

1901 - Apolinario Mabini, Prime Minister of the fledgling Philippine republic under siege by imperialist American forces, informs President Emilio Aguinaldo of William H. Taft's reply that the United States could not recognize Philippine independence; US President William Mckinley's policy to forcibly annex the Southeast Asian archipelago and start the blood Philippine-American War has been criticized by fellow Americans, including the members of the Anti-Imperialist League.

1836 - American defenders of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, are defeated by Mexican forces during what United States historians dub the Texas War for Independence; the siege at the Alamo will later become a rallying cry for United States forces, particularly Texan volunteers, in other battles and in 1845, the US will seize Texas from Mexico and  annex it as its 28th state.

1957 - The Ghanaian people celebrate the end of colonial rule and the dawn of their independence as Ghana becomes the first black African country to gain freedom; Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah will later declare Ghana a republic and make himself president for life but will be deposed in 1966.

1992 - Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet foreign minister and first secretary of the central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, returns to Georgia to lead the newly formed State Council that has been endowed with executive and legislative powers; three months earlier, nationalist President Aviad Gamsakhurdia fled following months of violent conflict between the forces of the Georgian government and opposition groups in Tbilsi.

5 MARCH

1899 - A band of Filipinos fire on some crew members of the U.S.S. Bennington, giving the impression to Washington that the Americans are getting nervous and restless under the harassment of the guerrilla patriots of the people of the Southeast Asian archipelago; the Philippine-American War began months earlier on February 4, 1899 as the emerging turn-of-the-century imperialist power had decided to forcibly annex the Philippines (in context, along with Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guano islands,  American Samoa, etc.).

1933 - The Nazi Party wins 44 percent of the German vote in what will be the country's last democratic polls until after World War II; the victory will enable the party of future dictator Adolf Hitler to join with the Nationalists to gain a slender majority in the Reichstag, the German parliamentary body.

1953 - Josef Stalin, long-time dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, dies from what Communist officials will ascribe to natural illness; there will be rumors, however, that the 73-year-old leader responsible for mass killings during his campaigns of political purging was murdered in a conspiracy that aimed to prevent him from plunging the Soviet Union into a war its people were in no position to fight.

1956 - The United States Supreme Court declares that racial segregation in the university setting is illegal; the ruling, which upholds an earlier ruling that has quashed the "separate but equal" segregation principle practiced in US schools, colleges and universities for decades, marks a significant victory for the civil rights movement in America.

4 MARCH

1879 - Rosa Sevilla Alvero, oustanding Filipina patriot and educator, is born in Tondo, Manila; Alvero will be one of the two women staffers of La Independencia, a wartime newspaper published by Gen. Antonio Luna in September 1898 during the second phase of the Revolution against Spanish colonial rule; during the height of the Philippine-American War, she will establish the Instituto de Mujeres, the first Filipino-run school for girls offering primary to collegiate courses.

1238 - The Battle of the Sit River is fought between the Rus' people and the Mongols during the full-scale Mongolian invasion of what are today's Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus; the forces of Grand Prince Yuri II will lose succumb to Batu Khan's hordes and the Mongol World Empire will dominate the region for some 200 years.

1915 - Negotiations for the Constantinople Agreement, the wartime secret arrangements among the Entente powers for the partition of the Ottoman Empire, begins; the part stating Russia will get control of Istanbul will never be implemented because the Dardanelles campaign during the First World War failed and because the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution led Russia to drop out of the agreement.

1980 - Robert Mugabe is elected prime minister of Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia), becoming the first black leader in the African country's modern history; Mugabe is a left-left leaning nationalist who jointly led the Patriotic Front guerrillas' operations against the white-dominated government during the the 1975-1979 civil war.

3 MARCH

1815 - The Kailianes (common people) of the Philippine northern town of Sarrat in Ilocos Norte begin a rebellion against the rule of the Spanish colonizers; soon spreading to other towns under the leadership of Simon Tomas, Mariano Espiritu, Vicente Santiago, and Andres Bugarin , the uprising will be one of the many unsuccessful revolts in the archipelago prior to the Revolution of 1896. 

1918 - The new Soviet Union and the Central Powers sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, concluding hostilities between those countries during the First World War; the terms of the treaty wherein Soviet Russia gives up Ukraine and territories in Poland and the Baltic region will later be nullified by the Armistice.

1924 - The caliphate, the office of the supreme spiritual leader for Sunni Muslims worldwide, is abolished as part of Turkey's initial step towards secularization of the government and society; the Ottoman Empire-era position of the chief religious official, Sheik ul-Islam, will be dissolved, religious schools will be closed, the Islamic law courts will be dismantled, and, later, Islam will be dropped as state religion.
  
1974 - A Turkish Airline crashes near Paris while on a regular flight from Ankara to London via the French capital; all the 346 passengers and crew members are killed, including many transfer passengers from  British Airways flights that had been canceled due to a London airport strike.

2 MARCH

1945 - The Philippine island fortress of Corregidor  is retaken by United States forces from Japan during World War II; the Japanese forces had seized the island on May 6, 1942 following their campaign to invade the Philippines and pound the main American military bases in the Southeast Asian archipelago, then a US colony.

1970 - Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith proclaims his African country a republic, cutting its last link with the British Crown; four years earlier, he declared Rhodesian independence and by 1977, will yield to British sanctions to negotiate a smooth transition to the rule of the black majority.

1972 - NASA's Pioneer 10 is launched, making it the first human-made object to exit the solar system after traversing the asteroid belt and flying by Jupiter; the spacecraft will allow astronomers to discover Jupiter's large magnetic tail, newly identify two moons and an additional ring around Saturn and radiation belts in its magnetosphere.

1992 - Following the dissolution of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan officially become members of the United Nations; the USSR had dissolved on December 25, 1991 and the seven states, along with other members of the former communist bloc, soon proclaimed their independence.