March 26
1026 Conrad II, King of the Germans for the last two years, is crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XIX. During his reign, he will cede the Sleswick (Schleswig) borderland, south of the Jutland peninsula, to King Canute, but extend his rule into Lombardy and Burgundy.
1150 The dying curse of Lady Mabel de Tichborne, sets up the tradition whereby Baron Tichborne must give any villager who applies, half a peck of flour, every year on this day.
1773 Birth: Nathaniel Bowditch, astronomer, author. "Nathaniel Bowditch's father was Habakkuk Bowditch who was a cooper, that is a maker and repairer of wooden casks. His mother was Mary Ingersoll. Although Nathaniel was born in Salem, Massachusetts, his family moved to Danvers, also in Massachusetts, while he was still a baby. After a few years, when Nathaniel was seven years old, they returned to Salem. This was a hard time for the Bowditch family. Habakkuk Bowditch's business collapsed and the family hit really hard times financially. Although Nathaniel went to school until he was ten years old, his formal education had to end at that point and he began working in his father's cooperage shop. After two years of helping his father, Nathaniel became an apprentice clerk in the ship's chandler shop of Hodges and Ropes in Salem in 1785. This shop dealt in provisions and supplies for ships..."
1850 Birth: Edward Bellamy, author; Looking Backward.
1871 The Paris Commune, an insurrection of Paris against the French government, is formally set up.
1880 Birth: Duncan Hines, author, traveller.
1885 George Eastman manufactures the first commerical motion-picture film at his factory in Rochester, New York.
1902 Death: Cecil Rhodes, British imperialist and statesman. "...although he never regarded accumulating wealth as a means to itself, Rhodes became quite successful in that regard while attempting to fulfil his dreams which were, apart from 'painting the map red', to build a railway from the Cape to Cairo, to reconcile the Boers and the British under one flag (the Union Jack, of course) and claim the American colonies for the Empire. They led him on a successful political career, with a number of achievements, not least of which being Prime Minister of Cape Colony.Cecil Rhodes, who always insisted on being called simply 'Mr Rhodes', never married. There was an annoying entanglement with a cunning self-styled adventuress, Princess Radziwill, whose manipulative schemes were more financially than romantically inclined. Her passion for intrigue, power and gain caused the statesman more annoyance than political - or any other - advantage. She forged signatures, counterfeited documents and committed fraud using his name. He was even summoned to her trial and had to travel from Europe to Cape Town to give evidence.Incurable heart disease brought Rhodes to his end in 1902. He had emerged into the new century hoping for an end to the Boer War, but it outlived him. He was buried in the Matopo Hills early in April of that year, after a funeral cortege by railway which was a memorable procession. The reading of his will later that month increased his reputation as an imaginative farsighted man, due to the creation of a new education grant trust for the now famous Rhodes Scholarships, his main legacy."
1913 The Bulgarians take Adrianople in the Balkan War.
1914 Birth: William Westmoreland, US Army General. "After graduating from West Point and serving with the paratroops in both World War II and the Korean War, General William Westmoreland arrived in Saigon, South Vietnam, in January 1964, and became commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in June of that year. He held that position for nearly four years, during which American forces in South Vietnam increased from about 20,000 men to over 500,000, and he directed the American ground effort until March 1968. The controversy over his strategy and tactics continues to this day..."
1917 WW1: An attack on Gaza, led by General Sir Charles Dobell, fails because of defective staff work and bad communications. General Murray's report, however, presents this First Battle of Gaza as a British victory, and Murray is ordered to advance without delay to take Jerusalem.
1918 WW1: French Marshal Ferdinand Foch is appointed commander of the Allied armies on the western front.
1923 Regular weather broadcasting begins in Britain, broadcast by the BBC radio.
1925 Volkishness: Count Hochberg gives 500 gold marks to the Order of the New Templars (ONT) for the purchase of the small ancient earthwork of Wickeloh near Gross-Oesingen in Lower Saxony. (Roots)
1930 Birth: Sandra Day O'Connor, US Supreme Court Justice.
1934 Driving tests are introduced in Britain.
1937 Popeye the sailor man becomes the first cartoon character to have his statue erected in Crystal City, Texas.
1937 The Pope publishes an encyclical entitled Divini Redemptoris, condemning atheistic Communism.
1938 Jewish professors and instructors are dismissed from Austrian universities.
1939 Polish Ambassador Lipski in Berlin completely rejects Germany's proposals of October 1938. Beck refuses to even meet with Hitler, and instructs Lipski to tell Ribbentrop that if Germany continues to insist on the idea of a German Danzig... it would mean war.
1941 WW2: Matsuoka visits Berlin and is received by Hitler.
1941 WW2: A military coup d'etat against the pro-German policies of Prince-Regent Paul begins in Yugoslavia. General Dusan Simovic becomes prime minister under King Peter II.
1941 Holocaust: Reinhard Heydrich and Wehrmacht Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner have produced a draft plan outlining a partnership between the Wehrmacht and the SS, setting up the operational procedure for what are called Einsatzgruppen (special task forces). The Einsatzgruppen are to take their orders from the SS, but otherwise, they are subject to military command. The army is to control their movements and furnish them with quarters, rations, gasoline and communications assistance. These small mobile groups are charged with ridding freshly acquired eastern territories of their "undesirable" civilian elements, and will be required to operate virtually on the front lines. (Apparatus)
1941 Holocaust: A scientific meeting takes place to mark the inauguration of the Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main. Professor Fischer and Professor Günther are guests of honor. Dr. Gross, head of the Race-policy Bureau of the Nazi Party says: "The definitive solution must comprise the removal of the Jews from Europe," and he demands sterilization of quarter-Jews: "The reproduction of the quarter-Jews left behind in European countries must be reduced to a minimum." Professor von Verschuer reports the meeting for his journal, "Der Erbarzt" (The Heredity-Physician). (Science)
1942 Holocaust: The first deportations of Jews to Auschwitz begins. The first group is from Bratislava in Slovakia. Once at Auschwitz, all are sent to the barracks. No gassing take place until May 4, 1942. (Atlas)
1942 Holocaust: All Jewish dwellings in Germany must now be marked by a Star of David. (Persecution)
1943 Birth: Bob Woodward, reporter, author. "...The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know. I suspect there have been a number of conspiracies that never were described or leaked out. But I suspect none of the magnitude and sweep of Watergate. Suppose Watergate had not been uncovered? I'd still be on the City Desk, among other things. But of course the number of illegal activities were so large -- I could count nearly 100 -- that one was bound to come out and lead to the uncovering of the others. Nixon was too willing to use the power of government to settle scores and get even with enemies. His talk and his attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form. Now, if the tapes had never been discovered, or he had burned them, he almost surely would not have had to resign, in my view..."
1944 Diary of Leon Gladun: Second day at the front: we do some shooting, and so far nothing more.
1945 WW2: The remaining Japanese troops on Iwo Jima stage a final suicide attack. They are wiped out by the 5th Marine Division and the island is finally secured. Japan has lost almost 21,000 soldiers with only 200 taken prisoner; 4,500 US troops are killed.
1945 WW2: The Japanese attempt to reinforce a garrison at Kiska in the Aleutians but are intercepted by a US naval force at the battle of Komandorski Islands.
1945 Death: David Lloyd George, British statesman and former Prime Minister.
1951 The US Air Force flag is approved.
1953 The first polio vaccine is unveiled by Dr. Jonas Salk of Pittsburgh University. It is so successful that by 1961 poliomyelitis will have decreased by 95 per cent.
1957 The West German Constitutional Court upholds the continued validity of the Vatican Concordat for the German Federal Republic.
1959 Death: Raymond Chandler, novelist; The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye.
1970 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announces that it will prohibit any new combination of radio and TV ownership in the same city to prevent control of public opinion by a few people.
1973 President Anwar Sadat of Egypt takes over the premiership, saying 'the stage of total confrontation (with Israel) has become inevitable'.
1979 In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties. Less than two years earlier, in an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Sadat traveled to Jerusalem, Israel, to seek a permanent peace settlement with Egypt's Jewish neighbour after decades of conflict. Sadat's visit, in which he met with Begin and spoke before Israel's parliament, was met with outrage in most of the Arab world. Despite criticism from Egypt's regional allies, Sadat continued to pursue peace with Begin, and in September 1978 the two leaders met again in the United States, where they negotiated an agreement with US President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland. The Camp David Accords, the first peace agreement between the state of Israel and one of its Arab neighbours, laid the groundwork for diplomatic and commercial relations. Seven months later, a formal peace treaty was signed. For their achievement, Sadat and Begin will be jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace. Sadat's peace efforts will not be so highly acclaimed in the Arab world, Egypt will be suspended from the Arab League, and on 6 October 1981, Muslim extremists will assassinate Sadat in Cairo. (Bradley)
1981 In china, the so-called Gang of Four launch the Social Democratic Party.
1989 The first free elections are held in the USSR.
1996 The International Monetary Fund approves a $10.2 billion loan for Russia to help the country further transform its economy.
1997 The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult are found dead in a house in California, having committed suicide when the comet Hale-Bopp appeared in the sky.
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