March 28
0193 The post of Roman Emperor goes to profligate Senator Didius Julianus, after he promises soldiers of the Praetorian Guard the most money in an unofficial auction. (Bradley)
1380 Besieged by the Genoese fleet after 100 years of warfare, the Venetians turn the tables on their enemy on this day, by employing gunpowder for the first time in Europe.
1384 It is believed that on this day, Richard II condemned the eating of cats, probably a reference to the 'big cats', the nobles who stalked the court during the boy king's reign. (Bradley)
1483 Birth: Santi Raphael, artist.
1774 Coercive Acts: Britain passes the Quartering Act against the Massachusetts Colony. "In the decade before the American Revolution, a series of Quartering Acts were passed by Parliament to provide for the housing and provisioning of British troops in the American colonies. The first act, which took effect this day, required the colonies to provide barracks for the troops and to keep them supplied with free bedding, firewood, cooking utensils, and certain staple provisions, as well as a daily allowance of cider. A second act in 1766 required billeting the troops in inns, alehouses, and unoccupied dwellings. In January 1766, the members of the New York Assembly argued that because the British commander had his headquarters in New York, they carried a disproportionate burden under the Quartering Act; they therefore agreed to provide some but not all the supplies specified in the bill. Their defiance mounted until in December 1766 they refused to make any provisions at all for the troops. As punishment, the Board of Trade in October 1767 declared all acts of the New York Assembly to be null and void until the colony complied with the Quartering Act. In the meantime, the assemblymen had given in (June 1767) and voted a grant of three thousand pounds. The matter was thus resolved, but ill-feeling remained on both sides. In 1774, Parliament passed a group of laws entitled the Coercive Acts (the colonists called them the Intolerable Acts) designed to restore imperial control over the American colonies. All the Coercive Acts dealt specifically with Massachusetts, except one, a new Quartering Act, which applied to all thirteen colonies. This Quartering Act extended the provisions of the earlier legislation; it required that troops be housed not only in commercial and empty buildings but in occupied dwellings as well. The law was bitterly protested, symbolizing as it did to the colonists the potential dangers and abuses of standing armies. The quartering of troops in America was specifically cited as a grievance in both the Resolves of the First Continental Congress (October 1774) and the Declaration of Independence (July 1776)."
1797 Nathaniel Briggs, of New Hampshire, patents a washing machine. 'This device is an improvement in washing cloaths.'
1800 The Irish parliament passes the Act of Union with England.
1814 The funeral of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the inventor and namesake of the infamous execution device, takes place outside of Paris, France. Guillotin had what he felt were the purest motives for inventing the guillotine and was deeply distressed at how his reputation had become besmirched in the aftermath. Before he died he said, "How true it is that it is difficult to benefit mankind without some unpleasantness resulting for oneself." Guillotin had bestowed the deadly contraption on the French as a 'philanthropic gesture' for the systematic criminal-justice reform that was taking place in 1789. The machine was intended to show the intellectual and social progress of the Revolution. It was expensive to build at a time when cost-effectiveness was a serious issue, but it was supposed to have overriding benefits, particularly its efficiency. The guillotine was first used on January 24, 1792, when Nicolas Pelletier was put to death for armed robbery and assault in Place de Greve. The newspapers reported that the guillotine was not an immediate sensation. The crowds seemed to miss the gallows at first. But it quickly caught on with the public and many thought it brought dignity back to the executioner. However, the prestige of the guillotine precipitously fell due to its frequent use in the French Terror following the Revolution. It became the focal point of the awful political executions and was so closely identified with the terrible abuses of the time that it was perceived as partially responsible for the excesses itself. Still, it was used sporadically in France even during the 20th century, until its last use in 1977. In 1981, France will outlaw capital punishment entirely. (Bradley)
1849 Frederick William IV of Prussia is elected Emperor of the Germans by the German National Assembly.
1854 Crimean War: Britain and France declare war on Russia. "In 1853, Russia sent troops to defend Christians within the Ottoman Empire. Within months, Russian troops had occupied parts of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks declared war. On 28 March 1854, looking to prevent Russian expansion, Britain and France (with Austrian backing) also declared war on Russia. In September 1854, Allied troops invaded the Crimea and within a month were besieging the Russian held city of Sebastopol. On 25 October 1854, the Russians were driven back at the Battle of Balaclava (including the foolhardy Charge of the Light Brigade). Eleven days later, the Battle of Inkerman was also fought (with high casualties on both sides). Poorly supplied and with little medical assistance (despite the self-publicity of Florence Nightingale), the British troops suffered immense casualties - 4,600 died in battle; 13,000 were wounded; and 17,500 died of disease. The French and British forced the fall of Sebastopol on 11 September 1855 and peace was subsequently concluded at Paris. Within fifteen years, the Russian were back in Sebastopol and rearming."
1865 Outdoor advertising legislation is enacted in New York State. The law bans 'painting on stones, rocks and trees'.
1868 Death: James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Earl of Cardigan, English cavalry officer, son of the 6th Earl of Cardigan, whom he succeeded to the title in 1837. He was MP for Marlborough (1818-29) and North Northamptonshire (1832). In 1824 he joined the army as a cornet, and in 1830 bought himself a command in the 15th Hussars as a lieutenant-colonel. His fiery temper brought him into conflict with fellow officers, and he was forced to resign in 1833. From 1836 to 1847 he commanded the 11th Hussars, on which he lavished his own money to make it a crack squadron; after a duel with one of his officers in 1841 he was acquitted on a legal technicality by the House of Lords. Appointed major-general in 1847, he commanded the light cavalry brigade ('the Six Hundred') in the Crimea War, and led it to destruction with the fatal charge (the charge of the light brigade) against enemy guns at Balaclava (1854). Received home as a hero, he was appointed inspector-general of the cavalry (1855-60). The knitted woolen jacket he wore against the cold of a Crimean winter is named after him. (Bradley)
1885 The US Salvation Army is officially organized.
1922 Bradley A. Fiske, of Washington DC, patents a microfilm reading device.
1930 Weimar: Dr. Heinrich Bruening forms a government which will support the Young Plan. "...Heinrich Bruening, the leader of the Catholic Center party who became Chancellor when the Social Democrats and the establishment parties split in March 1930 under pressure from the Great Depression, was chosen Chancellor by the aging President of the Weimar Republic, the war hero Paul Hindenburg. Bruening sought to use this escape hatch to pass a policy of fiscal retrenchment and welfare state cutbacks. For as he promised Hindenburg, Bruening tried "at any price [to] make the government finances safe" balancing the budget--reassuring investors that Germany was committed to financial orthodoxy--was Bruening's first and nearly his only priority. Thus Bruening spent the first months of his Chancellorship trying to balance the budget, only to find the economic situation outrunning him. The projected deficit tripled during his first three months..."
1933 Church and Reich: The German Catholic episcopate, organized in the Fulda Bishop's Conference, withdraws its earlier prohibition against membership in the Nazi party, and admonishes the faithful to be both loyal and obedient to the new Nazi regime. (Lewy)
1933 A large protest rally is held in Tel Aviv against the persecution of German Jews by the Nazis.
1934 Dr. Max Naumann, leader of a small group of ultranationalist, assimilationist Jews in Germany, organizes a Nazi-like party.
1935 Greece orders all anti-Jewish organization within its borders closed.
1938 Hitler gives General Keitel secret directives for Operation Green against Czechoslovakia. "...It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future. It is the business of the political leadership to await or bring about the suitable moment from a political and military point of view. An unavoidable development of events within Czecho-slovakia, or other political events in Europe providing a suddenly favorable opportunity which may never recur, may cause me to take early action. The proper choice and determined exploitation of a favorable moment is the surest guarantee of success..."
1938 Holocaust: Berlin's Jewish community loses its incorporated status.
1939 Spanish Civil War: Madrid surrenders to Franco, effectively ending the conflict.
1940 WW2: The British and French Supreme War Council decides to mine Norway's coastal waters and to invade Norway if the Germans interfere. The operation is scheduled to begin on April 5, but is later postponed to April 8.
1941 WW2: The British defeat the Italian fleet off Cape Matapan in the eastern Mediterranean.
1941 Holocaust: Brack, who has been placed in charge of the "euthanasia" program, writes from the Reich Chancellery to the Reichsfuehrer-SS, Himmler, that the problem of sterilizing large numbers of individuals by means of X-rays has been solved in principle. (Science)
1941 Death: Virginia Woolf, at 59, author, distinguished feminist essayist, critic, and a central figure of the Bloomsbury group, by suicide. She leaves a note for her husband, Leonard, and for her sister, Vanessa: 'I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go thru another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices.' Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882, in London. She was educated at home by her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, the author of the Dictionary of English Biography, and she read extensively. Her mother, Julia Duckworth Stephen, was a nurse, who published a book on nursing. Her mother died in 1895, which was the catalyst for Virginia's first mental breakdown. Virginia's sister, Stella, died in 1897; and her father died in 1904. She married Leonard Wolf in 1912. Leonard was a journalist. In 1917 the Woolfs founded Hogarth Press, which became a successful publishing house, printing the early works of authors such as Forster, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot, and introducing the works of Sigmund Freud. Except for the first printing of Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), Hogarth Press also published all of her works. Virginia Woolf became one of the most prominent literary figures of the early 20th century, with novels like Night And Day (1919), Jacob's Room (1922) was based upon the life and death of her brother Toby, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), A Room Of One's Own (1929), The Waves (1931), and Three Guineas (1938). The brilliant writer had suffered several nervous breakdowns through out her life, and after the Germans invaded Paris during WW2, Woolf and her husband, who was Jewish and a socialist, discussed killing themselves with different methods. It was after her London home, with all of their belongings, was bombed, that she fell into a great depression, and on this date, took her walking stick and down to the Ouse River. She forces a large stone into her coat pocket and enters the water. (Bradley)
1942 WW2: The drydock at St Nazaire in France is destroyed in a combined raid by the British navy, army and airforce.
1943 Holocaust: Professor Fischer begins an article in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung with the sentence: "It is a rare and special good fortune for a theoretical science to flourish at a time when the prevailing ideology welcomes it, and its findings can immediately serve the policy of the state." (Science)
1945 WW2: Top Polish political leaders go under safe conduct for discussion with Soviet officials near Warsaw. They are arrested and taken to Moscow where they are charged with "crimes against the USSR" despite protest from Allies.
1959 11 days after an uprising began in Tibet, China dissolves the country's government and installs an autonomous authority under the Panchen Lama.
1967 The Nam: UN Secretary General U Thant makes public proposals for bringing about peace in Vietnam.
1969 Death: Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and one of the most highly regarded American generals of WW2, in Washington, DC, at the age of seventy-eight. Born in Denison, Texas in 1890, Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915, and steadily rose in the ranks of the US army between the wars. After the American entrance into WW2, he was appointed commanding general of the European theatre of operations, and oversaw US troops massing in Great Britain. In January 1944 he was appointed supreme Allied commander of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe. Although Eisenhower left much of the specific planning for the actual Allied landing in the hands of his capable staff, such as British Field Marshall Montgomery, he served as a brilliant organizer and administrator both before and after the successful invasion. In November 1952, 'Ike' won a resounding victory in the presidential elections, and, in 1956, he was reelected in a landslide. In 1961, he retired to his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, farm with his wife, Mamie Doud Eisenhower. He is buried on a family plot in Abilene, Kansas. (Bradley)
1969 Extensive anti-Soviet demonstrations are held in Prague.
1974 Romanian Communist Party leader Nicolae Ceausescu is elected to the newly created post of president of the Socialist Republic of Romania.
1979 Extensive reevaluation of the safety of nuclear power-generating operations in the US begins in earnest. The reevaluations are prompted by a series of accidents that begin at 4am at Three Mile Island. Failures in equipment bring the nuclear power plant close to a uranium core meltdown. The fear of extensive radiation contamination will spread throughout the rural Pennsylvania area and the state capital of Harrisburg, just ten miles away. (Bradley)
1979 British Prime Minister James Callaghan, after a 'Winter of Discontent' looses a vote of confidence in the Commons and calls the General Election which will bring Mrs Thatcher to power. (Bradley)
1982 In El Salvador, the first free elections for 50 years are held to elect a new constituent assembly. Five right-wing parties jointly win 60 percent of the vote and agree to form a government of national unity.
1990 Customs officers intercept a cargo of electrical detonators for nuclear weapons bound for Iraq.
1991 Tens of thousands of Soviet radicals defy a Kremlin ban and circumvent a huge police and army presence to stage rallies in support of radical Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.
1994 Russia signs an agreement with Kazakhstan to rent Baikonur launchpad, springboard of the former Soviet Union's space program.
1996 Israel's official inquiry into the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin concludes that security agencies ignored ample intelligence information that a Jewish militant might try to kill the prime minister.
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2003 Up to 120,000 extra US troops are sent to Iraq as the coalition prepared for a drawn-out siege of Baghdad.
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