/year

March

third month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars

115 dated entries naming March, drawn from 109 separate years between 211 CE and 1983 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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3rd century

  • 211March – September: Battle of Tong Pass: Cao Cao defeats Ma Chao.source
  • 231March – August – Battle of Mount Qi: The Chinese state of Shu Han gains a tactical victory, and the state of Cao Wei a strategic victory.source

5th century

  • 453c. March – Attila the Hun is found dead in bed, after a wedding feast with the Goth princess Ildico. He dies of a nosebleed at his Hungarian stronghold, drowning in his own blood, aged about 47. The Huns celebrate a strava (lamentation) over his burial place with great feasting. Attila's son Ellac is appointed successor, but his brothers Dengizich and Ernakh divide the Hunnic Empire by establishing their own kingdoms north of the Black Sea (Ukraine), supported by vassal states.source
  • 453c. March – Attila, ruler of the Huns (b. 406)source
  • 456March – Emperor Marcian sends an embassy to Carthage, to end the Vandal raids in the Mediterranean from their strongholds in North Africa, and quells disturbances on the Armenian frontier.source
  • 468March – Jiaozhou governor Lưu Mục dies of illness. Lý Trường Nhân, a nobleman, launches a coup d'état against the Jiaozhou government, kills the Liu Song officials in Jiaozhou, seizes control of the citadel, then declares himself the governor.source
  • 493March – Battle for the Body of St. Patrick: The Uí Néill Dynasty fights over the body of Saint Patrick with the Airgialla Kingdom (according to the Annals of the Four Masters).source

6th century

  • 534March – King Gelimer surrenders to Belisarius, after spending a winter in the mountains of Numidia. He and large numbers of captured Vandals are transported to Constantinople. The Vandal Kingdom ends, and the African provinces return to the Byzantine Empire.source
  • 536March – April – Belisarius sails to Carthage with 1,000 men, to suppress a mutiny against Solomon. Meanwhile, Carthage is besieged by 9,000 rebels, including many Vandals, under Stotzas.source
  • 536March – Ostrogothic King Theodahad cedes Provence and upper Alamannia to the Franks, gaining their support in the war. He sends a large Gothic army into Dalmatia. They defeat the Byzantines, Mundus is killed during the fighting at Salona, and the Byzantine army withdraws.source
  • 539March – Gothic War: The Goths and the Burgundians recapture Mediolanum (modern Milan), after many months of siege, the city reaching the point of starvation. The Byzantine garrison (1,000 men) surrenders and is spared, but the inhabitants are massacred (according to Procopius 300,000 people are murdered), and the city itself is destroyed.source
  • 542March – Totila bypasses Rome and begins his expedition in Southern Italy. He captures Beneventum and receives the submission of the provinces of Apulia, Lucania and Bruttium.source

7th century

  • 637March – Siege of Ctesiphon: The Rashidun army (15,000 men) under Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas occupies the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, after a two-month siege. King Yazdegerd III flees with the imperial treasure eastward into Media. Muslim forces conquer the Persian provinces as far as Khuzestan (modern Iran).source

8th century

  • 779March, days unknown - An earthquake in Silla with a magnitude of 6.7–7.0 on the Richter scale kills more than 100 people.source

9th century

  • 861March – Robert the Strong is appointed margrave of Neustria by King Charles the Bald. He re-establishes the Breton March, and extends his remit by campaigning against Salomon, duke 'king' of Brittany. Robert hires a combined Seine-Loire fleet for 6,000 pounds of silver, 'before Salomon can ally with them against him'. In return, Salomon enlists 12 Viking ships under the command of Hastein, to raid the county of Maine, which, with Anjou, becomes squeezed between Brittany and Neustria.source
  • 862March – Viking raiders led by Weland are trapped at Trilbardou Bridge (Northern France), and submit to King Charles the Bald. He and his family accept Christianity (they are baptised) before leaving Neustria.source
  • 886March – A wide-ranging conspiracy against Emperor Basil I, led by John Kourkouas, is uncovered.source
  • 894March – Arnulf of Carinthia proceeds to Piacenza, and from there invades central Italy. After a successful campaign, he calls the invasion off and returns to Pavia – probably because Duke Rudolph I of Burgundy was threatening to invade Lorraine. Arnulf has himself proclaimed King of Italy at Pavia, leaving Berengar I as his vice-regent in Italy.source
  • 896March – King Lambert II proceeds to re-conquer Italy. Heading north, he captures western Lombardy, and decapitates count Maginulf of Milan. In the meantime, the deposed king Berengar I recovers Verona (March of Friuli) from Arnulf's candidate, count Walfred of Verona, who dies in office with "great fidelity to the emperor".source

10th century

  • 901March – Abu Abbas Abdallah resumes his Aghlabid campaign against the Byzantine enclaves of Sicily. He dispatches his fleet towards Messina, while bombarding the town walls of Damona.source
  • 902February – March – Abu Abbas Abdallah, conqueror of Reggio Calabria, returns from Sicily and succeeds his father Ibrahim II as Aghlabid emir of Ifriqiya.source
  • 921March – Battle of Pegae: Bulgarian forces under kavhan (first minister) Theodore Sigritsa defeat the Byzantine army at the outskirts of Constantinople. After the battle, the Bulgarians burn the palaces in Pegae ("the Spring"), and devastate the area north of the Golden Horn.source
  • 924March – A group of 1,800 warriors of the Qarmatians of Bahrayn attack and destroy the returning Hajj caravans at al-Habir. Some of the more prominent pilgrims, who were returning to Baghdad from Mecca, are taken to Al-Ahsa Oasis to be held for ransom. The event leads to the downfall and execution of the Abbasid Caliphate's vizier, Ibn al-Furat.source
  • 988March 988 – Ishaq ibn al-Muqtadir, Arab princesource

11th century

  • 1014March – King Æthelred the Unready sends ambassadors to England, including his own son Edward to negotiate to reclaim of the throne at the invitation of the English nobles.source
  • 1023March – Musharrif al-Dawla, ruler of Iraq, comes to Baghdad to see the Abbasid Caliph al-Qadir, and attempts to defy the caliphate.source
  • 1024March – Massud ibn Tahir al-Wazzan, the vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt since 1019, is dismissed by the Caliph al-Zahir li-I'zaz Din Allah, and replaced by al-Rudhbari.source
  • 1034March – Conrad II converges his armies on Lake Lemano and defeats Count Odo II in battle at Geneva (modern Switzerland). For his assistance, Conrad grants Humbert I with the Burgundian county of Maurienne.source

12th century

  • 1148March – The French crusaders are left in Adalia; lack of available shipping obliges Louis VII to divide his forces – the knights and best troops accompany him to St. Symeon. Large numbers of pilgrims and non-combatants try to continue along the coastal road. Continually harassed by the Turks many French and Germans are killed. Less than half of them arrive in the late spring at Antioch.source
  • 1163March / April (traditional date) – The first stone of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is set by Pope Alexander III during the reign of Louis VII of France.source
  • 1177February/March – Philip of Swabia, rival of Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1208)source
  • 1177March – Treaty of Venice: Frederick I Barbarossa acknowledges Alexander III as Pope, after a diplomatic mediation by Venetian doge Sebastiano Ziani.source
  • 1190March – Frederick I leaves Adrianople to Gallipoli at the Dardanelles to embark, with the help of Byzantine transports, to cross into Asia Minor. On April 25, he enters territory of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum under the rule of Sultan Kilij Arslan II. Although promised to let the German Crusaders pass peaceably through his domains, Kilij Arslan harasses Frederick's forces with hit-and-run attacks. On May 7, a Turkish army (some 10,000 men) is defeated at the Battle of Philomelion, by 2,000 Crusaders.source
  • 1194March – Richard returns to England, and remains for only a few weeks before returning to the Continent. He leaves the administration of England in the hands of Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, who accompanied Richard on the Third Crusade and led his army back to England. He levied the taxes to pay the king's ransom and put down a plot against Richard by his younger brother John.source

13th century

  • 1205March – Byzantine officials in Adrianople revolt and expel Latin administrators, requesting Bulgarian support from Kaloyan, ruler (tsar) of the Bulgarian Empire, against Baldwin I who assembles an army (some 40,000 men) and marches to aid the Byzantines. Meanwhile, Baldwin sets out from Constantinople in force, he arrives at Adrianople and promptly begins to siege the city by the end of March.source
  • 1243March – King Ferdinand III (the Saint) turns the independent Taifa of Murcia into a protectorate, and initiates the process of the colonization and Christianization of the region. He receives the submission of the Moors, under the terms of a peace agreement (the famous Treaty of Alcaraz).source
  • 1265March – End of the Hungarian Civil War (1264–1265) – Battle of Isaszeg: Younger King Stephen decisively defeats his father's army.source

14th century

  • 1302March – Robert the Bruce, the future King of Scotland marries as his second wife the 13-year-old Elizabeth de Burgh at Writtle in Essex. She is the daughter of Richard Óg de Burgh ("the Red Earl"), a powerful Irish nobleman and close friend of King Edward I of England.source
  • 1333March – William of Alnwick, Franciscan friar and theologiansource
  • 1353March – Margaret I of Denmark, queen of Haakon VI of Norway (d. 1412)source
  • 1354March - Within a month after the devastating earthquake the Ottomans besieged and captured the town of Gallipoli, making it the first Ottoman stronghold in Europe and the staging area for Ottoman expansion across the Balkans.source
  • 1362March – Murad I succeeds his father Orhan as sultan of the Ottoman Empire.source
  • 1362March – Champa, during the reign of King Po Binasuor, raids Hóa Châu of Đại Việt, then withdraws.source
  • 1362March – Orhan, Ottoman sultan (b. 1281)source

15th century

  • 1401March – William Sawtrey, English Lollard martyr (burned at the stake)source
  • 1408March – (late in the month of Tagu, which ended March 28, 769 ME) Ava–Hanthawaddy War: In Burma (now Myanmar), King Razdarit leads the invasion of the Kingdom of North Arakan and overthrows its ruler, Anawrahta of Launggyet, then has him executed.source
  • 1423March – Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London (b. 1358)source
  • 1426March / May – Thomas Hoccleve, English poet (b. c. 1368)source
  • 1431March – Alexander I Aldea takes the throne of Wallachia with support from Alexander I of Moldavia.source
  • 1449March – Dolce dell'Anguillara, Italian condottiero (b. 1401)source
  • 1456March – Jan Łaski, Polish nobleman (d. 1531)source
  • 1475March – Simon of Trent, Italian saint, subject of a blood libelsource
  • 1487March – Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, largely on the poor advice of his counselors, declares war on Venice, and seizes silver mines in and around the Sugana Valley.source
  • 1490March or April – 1490 Qingyang event, a presumed meteor shower or air burst over Qingyang in the Gansu province in Ming dynasty China. Some later accounts lists casualties of more than 10,000 people. The only date given for the Qingyang event is that it was in "the third lunar month" on the Chinese lunar calendar coinciding with a period beginning on March 12 and ending on April 19, 1490.source
  • 1496August 5 – Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher Columbus, formally founds the city of Santo Domingo (first settled in March) on Hispaniola (in the modern-day Dominican Republic), making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the New World.source

16th century

  • 1526March – The first complete printed translation of the New Testament of the Bible into the English language by William Tyndale arrives in England from Germany, where printing had been completed in Worms by Peter Schöffer the younger, towards the end of February.source
  • 1531March – María Pacheco, Spanish heroine and defender of Toledo (b. 1496)source
  • 1553March – Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, Italian noble (d. 1576)source
  • 1557March – The Takeda clan besiege Katsurayama Castle in eastern Japan. The siege ends with the last stand of the castle garrison, and the complete destruction of Katsurayama, allowing the Takeda to further expand in Shinano Province.source
  • 1560March – Bairam Khan, the Vakil or prime minister of India's Mughal Empire, is forced to retire by the Emperor Akbar.source
  • 1573February 16–March – The siege of Noda Castle begins near what is now the city of Shinshiro in Japan, after the leader of the Takeda clan, the warlord Takeda Shingen, is shot by a sniper after offering generous terms of surrender to the Tokugawa clan, led by Tokugawa Ieyasu. By March 10, the Noda Castle surrenders.source
  • 1582March – The New Testament of the Douai Bible, the translation into English by Father Gregory Martin from Latin of the New Testament, for use in the Roman Catholic Church, is published. Martin had started his work on October 16, 1578.source

17th century

  • 1606March – Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester (d. 1680)source
  • 1616March – Action of 1616, La Goulette, Tunisia: A Spanish squadron under Francisco de Ribera defeats a Tunisian fleet.source
  • 1624March – Jane Leade, English esotericist (d. 1704)source
  • 1630March – Fedorovych Uprising: Zaporozhian Cossacks rebel against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and occupy a large part of modern-day Ukraine. After a number of indecisive skirmishes with a Polish army sent to pacify the region, the Treaty of Pereyaslav is signed, ending the uprising.source
  • 1632March – Thirty Years' War: Gustavus Adolphus invades Bavaria with his army.source
  • 1635March – Thomas Randolph, English poet (b. 1605)source
  • 1647March – Following the Treaty of Ulm that removed Bavaria from the Thirty Years War, the Bavarian troops' commander, Holy Roman Imperial General Johann von Werth, defies Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, and von Werth attempts to move the Bavarian troops out of Bavaria and into Austria to come under Imperial jurisdiction. The troops refuse, and von Werth flees to Austria.source
  • 1657March – Edward Hopkins, colonial Connecticut politician (b. 1600)source
  • 1660March – Philip Skippon, English soldier (b. c. 1600)source
  • 1667March – Louis XIV of France abolishes the livre parisis (Paris pound), in favor of the much more widely used livre tournois (Tours pound). He also designates Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie as the first chief of "police" of Paris.source
  • 1671March – In the Battle of Saraighat in India, fought in mid-March, General Lachit Borphukan of the Ahom kingdom, located in what is now the Indian state of Assam defeats a larger force of Mughal Empire troops on the outskirts of what is now Guwahati.source
  • 1672March – Archibald Armstrong, court jester to James VI and I and Charles I of Englandsource
  • 1685March – Louis XIV passes the Code Noir, allowing the full use of slaves in the French colonies.source
  • 1688March – William Dampier makes the first recorded visit to Christmas Island, now a territory of Australia, located south of the island of Java (now part of Indonesia).source
  • 1700March (early) – William Congreve's comedy The Way of the World is first performed in London.source

18th century

  • 1736March 20 – Rama I, First King of Siam (d. 1809)source
  • 1740March – Johann van Beethoven, German musician, father of Ludwig van Beethoven (d. 1792)source
  • 1768March – Tecumseh, Native American (Shawnee) chief (d. 1813)source
  • 1771March – War of the Regulation: North Carolina Governor William Tryon raises a militia to put down the long-running uprising of backcountry militias against North Carolina's colonial government.source
  • 1776March – Restrictions on the grain trade in Sweden are lifted.source
  • 1781March – Riots break out in Socorro, Santander, and spread to other towns.source
  • 1791March – French Revolution: In France, the National Constituent Assembly accepts the recommendation of its Commission of Weights and Measures that the nation should adopt the metric system.source
  • 1795March – English Benedictine monks expelled from Douai are permitted to proceed to England.source

19th century

  • 1803March–April – The franc germinal is introduced in France.source
  • 1819March – Nonosabasut, Beothuk (indigenous Canadian) leadersource
  • 1842March – Commonwealth v. Hunt: The Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that labor strikes and the formation of labor unions are both legal in the United States.source
  • 1844March – Carlota, Cuban slave rebel leadersource
  • 1847March – The first known publication of the classic joke "Why did the chicken cross the road?" occurs in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine.source
  • 1849March – The Frankfurt Parliament completes its drafting of a liberal constitution, and elects Frederick William IV emperor of the new German national state.source
  • 1853March – The clothing company Levi Strauss & Co. is founded in San Francisco (US).source
  • 1854March – The British East India Company annexes Jhansi State in India under the doctrine of lapse.source
  • 1856March – Nepalese–Tibetan War: The signing of the Treaty of Thapathali concludes the war.source
  • 1857March – The Austrian garrison leaves Bucharest.source
  • 1860March–August – The second rout of the Jiangnan Daying destroys the Qing dynasty's army of 180,000.source
  • 1865March – Hamm's Brewery opens in St. Paul, Minnesota.source
  • 1867March – The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is established (opened one year later).source
  • 1869March – In Japan, the daimyōs of the Tosa, Hizen, Satsuma and Chōshū Domains are persuaded to return their domains to the Emperor Meiji, leading to creation of a fully centralized government in the country.source
  • 1870March – The Mitsubishi Company is established in Japan as a shipping firm, by Iwasaki Yatarō with Thomas Blake Glover.source
  • 1874March – The Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan (which will still be operating 150 years later as the 92nd Street Y) is founded.source
  • 1876February–March – The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.source
  • 1877March – The Nineteenth Century magazine is founded in London.source
  • 1884March – John Joseph Montgomery conducts the first manned glider flights in the United States near Otay, California.source
  • 1886March – Gottlieb Daimler assembles his first automobile, in Germany.source

20th century

  • 1910March – Albanian revolt of 1910: An uprising against Ottoman rule breaks out in Albania.source
  • 1915March – The 1915 Palestine locust infestation breaks out in Palestine; it continues until October.source
  • 1938November 30 – Benito Mussolini and his Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, order "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, demanding that France cede Tunisia, Nice, Corsica and French Somaliland to Italy. This begins an acute crisis in Franco-Italian relations, that lasts until March 1939.source
  • 1939March – The 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine ends.source
  • 1943March–December – History of computing hardware: British prototype Mark I Colossus computer is constructed (the world's first totally electronic programmable computing device) to assist in cryptanalysis of German signals at Bletchley Park.source
  • 1943March – Exiled French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's self-illustrated children's novella, The Little Prince, is published in New York City, the all-time best-selling book originating in French.source
  • 1944March – Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek publishes his book The Road to Serfdom in London.source
  • 1961March–April – Drilling for Project Mohole is undertaken off the coast of Guadalupe Island, Mexico.source
  • 1976March – The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research, with the first purchaser being the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) in Los Alamos, New Mexico.source
  • 1983August 18 – Five people are killed and 18 others injured when a road train is deliberately driven into a motel at Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory of Australia (the driver, Douglas Edward Crabbe, is convicted in March 1984).source

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