17 March: This Date in History

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<< Mar 16| HISTORY “4” “2”DAY |Mar 18 >>
Events, deaths, births, of MAR 17
[For Mar 17 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Mar 27 — 1700s: Mar 28 — 1800s: Mar 29 — 1900~2099: Mar 30]

ALTERNATE SITES ALL FOR 030317 ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” MAR 17

• Van Gogh exhibition... • First US ambassador to Poland… • Lithuania rejects Soviet annexation demand... • First Porsche car... • Paul Green is born... • Anti–spam software... • Prodigy adds services... • My Lai coverup uncovered... • Review of Vietnam situation... • US Treasury backs greenbacks... • Todt named Reich Minister... • British evacuate Boston... • 2nd Maori war begins... • Bali volcano kills 1000+... • First NYC St.Patrick's Day parade...

On a March 17:
2002 Parliamentary elections in Portugal, held early because Socialist prime minister Antonio Guterres resigned in December 2001 after a sweeping victory by Social Democrats in local elections. The Socialists had been in power for six years. As a result of today's elections, the Social Democrats will have 102 of the 230 seats in parliament, the Socialists 95, the Popular Party 14, the Communists 12, and the Left Bloc 3. On 21 March 2002, President Jorge Sampaio would name Social Democratic leader Jose Manuel Durão Barroso as prime minister. Durão would need an alliance with the conservative Popular Party to have a narrow 116 majority in parliament.
2001 The Saint Patrick's Day parades in Ireland have been canceled, for fear that foot-and-mouth disease would be propagated.
2001 Australia's Liberal Party, headed by Prime Minister John Howard, loses a normally safe parliamentary seat to the opposition Labor Party, in a by-election in Ryan, Queensland.
2000 Pro-independence leader Chen Shui-bian wins the presidential election in Taiwan, with some 39% of the votes, vs. 37% for Vice President Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party, which has been in power for the last 51 years, and 23% for a third candidate.
2000 Smith & Wesson signed an unprecedented agreement with the Clinton administration to, among other things, include safety locks with all of its handguns to make them more childproof. In return, the agreement called for federal, state and city lawsuits against the gun maker to be dropped.
2000 El Gobierno de EE.UU. anuncia la eliminación de algunas de las sanciones que pesaban sobre Irán desde la revolución islámica de 1979, en un gesto de apoyo a la moderación del presidente Mohammad Jatamí en aquel país.
1999 A panel of medical experts concluded that marijuana has medical benefits for people suffering from cancer or AIDS.
1998 The US Justice Department expanded its antitrust investigation of Microsoft beyond Internet browsers to include the company's relationship to the Java programming language. Executives from Sun Microsystems, which had filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for violating the terms of its license to use Java, are subpoenaed to testify at the antitrust suit.

1998 Anti-spam E-mail software. ^top^
Eric Allman, creator of the popular Sendmail program used by most computers to route e-mail, released anti-spam tools to limit junk e-mail on this day in 1998. Sendmail originated in the 1970s, developed along with popular versions of the UNIX operating system at Berkeley. Like many early Internet efforts, the program resulted from the testing and suggestions of various programmers around the world, linked by the Net. The new version of the Sendmail program included the ability to reject e-mail originating from a group of known "spammers" and made it more difficult for spammers to conceal their own e-mail addresses. While numerous tools on the market already helped fight spam, the sheer popularity of the Sendmail program made these changes a significant addition to the war on spam.

1997 The Ford Motor plant in Lorain, Ohio announces layoffs that threaten to impact 2500 employees, part of Ford’s decision to discontinue various car lines produced in Lorain. Along with the Thunderbird model, Ford also stopped work on the Cougar. Ford officials cited shifting tastes and a contracting market for mid-specialty coupés. Though both the Cougar and Thunderbird were top selling mid-specialty items, the field as a whole had suffered in recent years. According to Ford, mid-specialty sales had fallen 30% since the beginning of the 1990s.
1992 La mayoría de los tres millones de electores blancos de Sudáfrica decide en referéndum el fin del apartheid y el respaldo a las negociaciones tendentes a establecer una sociedad democrática multirracial.

1991 Prodigy adds services. ^top^
Prodigy announces that it will add services to its online network, including a stock picking and tracking service and a fantasy baseball league. Users would be charged premium fees to access these services. Prodigy was an early entrant to the online service race: The company was formed in 1984 as a joint venture between IBM and Sears. However, the popularity of the Internet soon made proprietary systems almost obsolete, with the notable exception of America Online. In 1996, Sears and IBM sold Prodigy to its management, and later that year, the company began offering Web access. In January 1998, the company announced it would no longer create its own original content so the company could focus on Internet services. While Prodigy still had 600'000 members in its proprietary online service at that time, it hoped to wean them to the Internet in order to complete the switch to ISP.

1991 USSR holds a referendum on whether to preserve the splintering Soviet Union. — En un referéndum, el 76% de los votantes soviéticos se pronuncian a favor del mantenimiento de la Unión Soviética, pero en algunas repúblicas no se celebró ninguna votación.
1991 El Partido del Centro, en la oposición, gana las elecciones parlamentarias en Finlandia.

1990 Lithuania rejects Soviet demand to renounce its independence. ^top^
      The former Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania steadfastly rejects a demand from the Soviet Union that it renounce its declaration of independence. The situation in Lithuania quickly became a sore spot in US-Soviet relations. The Soviet Union had seized the Baltic state of Lithuania in 1939. Lithuanians complained long and loud about this absorption into the Soviet empire, but to no avail. Following World War II, Soviet forces did not withdraw and the United States made little effort to support Lithuanian independence. There matters stood until 1985 and the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union. In 1989, as part of his policy of loosening political repression in the Soviet empire and improving relations with the West, Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine of 1968, which stated that the Soviet Union was justified in using force to preserve already existing communist governments. Lithuanian nationalists took the repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine as a signal that a declaration of independence might be accepted.
      On March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared that it was an independent nation, the first of the Soviet republics to do so. It had, however, overestimated Gorbachev's intentions. The Soviet leader was willing to let communist governments in its eastern European satellites fall to democratic movements, but this policy did not apply to the republics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government responded harshly to the Lithuanian declaration of independence and issued an ultimatum: renounce independence or face the consequences. On March 17, the Lithuanians gave their answer, rejecting the Soviet demand and asking that "democratic nations" grant them diplomatic recognition.
      The Soviets had not been bluffing. The Soviet government insisted that it still controlled Lithuania, Gorbachev issued economic sanctions against the rebellious nation, and Soviet troops occupied sections of the capital city of Vilnius. In January 1991, the Soviets launched a larger-scale military operation against Lithuania. Many in the United States were horrified, and the US Congress acted quickly to end economic assistance to the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was incensed by this action, but his powers in the Soviet Union were quickly eroding. In December 1991, 11 of the 12 Soviet Socialist Republics proclaimed their independence and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. Just a few days after this action, Gorbachev resigned as president and what was left of the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

1988 Apple Computer sues Microsoft for stealing the look and feel of the Macintosh interface in its Windows 2.0 operating system. Although Microsoft had signed a licensing agreement to copy visual elements of the Macintosh for Windows 1.0, it failed to seek permission for the upgrade. The suit would be dismissed after three years.
1984 El pintor expresionista abstracto español Antoni Tàpies (nacido en 1923) es galardonado en Basilea con el Premio Rembrandt. — LINKS
1980 Huelga general en El Salvador, convocada por la coordinadora revolucionaria. La organización Amnistía Internacional pide a la Junta Militar que termine la campaña de represión contra campesinos y activistas.
1978 Amoco Cadiz tanker spills 1.6 mil gallons of oil off French coast
1973 Saint Patrick Day marchers carry 14 coffins commerating Bloody Sunday.

1970 Accusations in coverup of My Lai massacre. ^top^
After an investigation, the US Army accuses 14 officers of suppressing information related to an incident at My Lai in March 1968. Soldiers from a company had massacred Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets in Quang Ngai Province, on 16 March 1968. The company had been conducting a search-and-destroy mission looking for the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion. The unit entered My Lai, but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers, indiscriminately shooting people as they ran from their huts, and systematically rounding up and executing the survivors. Reportedly, the killing was only stopped when Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson landed his helicopter between the Americans and the fleeing South Vietnamese, confronting the soldiers and blocking them from further action against the villagers.
The incident was subsequently covered up, but eventually came to light a year later. The Army commissioned a board of inquiry, headed by Lieutenant General Peers. After investigating, Peers reported that US soldiers committed individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming and assault that took the lives of a large number of civilians--he concluded that a "tragedy of major proportions" occurred at My Lai. The Peers report said that each successive level of command received a more watered-down account of what had actually occurred; the higher the report went, the lower the estimate of civilians allegedly killed by Americans. Peers found that at least 30 persons knew of the atrocity, but only 14 were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Lt. William Calley, the platoon leader of the unit involved. He was found guilty of personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a "scapegoat," Calley was paroled in 1974 after having served about a third of his 10-year sentence.

1970 US casts its first veto in the U.N. Security Council (against condemning Britain for failure to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.)
1969 Golda Meir becomes prime minister of Israel.
1967 Charlie Brown and Snoopy of Peanut comic strip appear on cover of Life magazine. [picture >]
1966 A US midget submarine locates a nuclear fusion bomb which had accidentally fallen from a US bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain.

1964 National Security Council reviews Vietnam situation. ^top^
President Lyndon B. Johnson presides over a session of the National Security Council during which Secretary of Defense McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor present a full review of the situation in Vietnam. During the meeting, various secret decisions were made, including the approval of covert intelligence-gathering operations in North Vietnam; contingency plans to launch retaliatory US Air Force strikes against North Vietnamese military installations and against guerrilla sanctuaries inside the Laotian and Cambodian borders; and a long-range "program of graduated overt military pressure" against North Vietnam. President Johnson directed that planning for the bombing raids "proceed energetically." A statement issued to the public afterwards stated that the United States would increase military and economic aid to support South Vietnamese President Nguyen Khanh's new plan for fighting the Viet Cong. Khanh's intention was to mobilize all able-bodied South Vietnamese males, raise the pay and status of paramilitary forces, and provide more equipment for the South Vietnamese armed forces.

1963 Elizabeth Ann Seton of NY beatified (canonized in 1975)
1962 Fidel Castro Ruz anuncia una "purga" en el aparato del Estado cubano.
1960 Se produce el primer cambio en el Gobierno español desde 1957; dimite el ministro de la vivienda, José Luis Arrese y Magra, y le sustituye Gual Villalbí.
1959 Dwight David Eisenhower asegura que EE.UU. no retirará sus tropas de Berlín y acepta las negociaciones con la Unión Soviética.
1959 Dalai Lama flees Tibet for India.
1953 La Cámara de los Comunes británica anula la nacionalización de la industria del acero.
1950 Scientists at the University of California-Berkeley announce that they have created a new radioactive element (element 98), "californium."
1948 Firma del Pacto de Bruselas entre Benelux, Francia y Gran Bretaña, precursor del Tratado del Atlántico Norte (OTAN).
1945 Victoria electoral de los comunistas en Finlandia.

1940 Todt named Reich Minister for Weapons and Munitions. ^top^
Dr. Fritz Todt, an engineer and master road builder, is appointed Minister for Weapons and Munitions, ushering in a new era in the efficient use of German industry and forced labor. A civil engineer with a doctorate from the School for Advanced Technical Studies in Munich, Fritz Todt caught the attention of Adolf Hitler in 1932 as Todt spoke out about the importance of building new roads to jumpstart a moribund German economy. Once Hitler came to power, Hitler placed Todt in charge of a massive road-building project that remains remarkable today: the Autobahn, Germany's superhighway. Todt designed the Autobahn so it would "harmonize with the German landscape." One of the unintentional outcomes of the project was that it provided a working model of the use of slave labor within the Nazi regime. In February 1940, realizing that mass executions in occupied Poland were not serving the Reich efficiently, Hitler decided to create a centralized and supervised source of mass slave labor. It was Todt who was chosen to command the project. The Todt Organization became the single largest employer of slave labor in Hitler's empire, disseminating workers to shorthanded munitions plants. And as Minister for Munitions and Weapons, Todt oversaw a more efficient use of raw materials in Hitler's arms machine. Todt's engineering skills also proved useful in the war against France, with the design and construction of what was called the "West Wall," a fortress line of bunkers that divided the Franco-German border. On 08 February 1941, Todt, after a conference with various government ministries on German arms production and distribution, was killed in a plane crash en route to Berlin. He had intended to tell Hitler of his decision to increase arms production a whopping 55 percent. A state funeral was given for Todt, at which Hitler, who had come to rely heavily on the engineer, gave the eulogy. "Much of what the man has done can be made known to the German people, or brought to the amazed attention of the world, only after the war," said Hitler. "I have lost in this man one of my most faithful coworkers and friends."

1936 En España, se decreta la disolución de FE de las JONS (Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalistas) y el procesamiento y prisión de sus dirigentes.

1930 First US ambassador to Poland. ^top^
John North Willys of the Willys-Overland Corporation becomes the first U. S. ambassador to Poland. Willys had rescued the ailing Overland firm from its woeful production of 465 cars in 1908. By 1916 Willys-Overland produced over 140,000 cars per year. Willys subsequently left the day-to-day operations of the company, moving his personal offices to New York in order to pursue work related to World War I. During his absence mismanagement nearly buried the company he had worked so hard to build up. Massive strikes, bloated inventories, and other troubles had cost Willys-Overland dearly.
By 1920 the company was $46 million in debt. The briefly retired Walter Chrysler returned to rework the company’s daily operations, and in no time at all, he had cut the debt by nearly two-thirds to $18 million. Chrysler claimed, however, that without the release of a new model of automobile, the debt would decrease no further. Willys, who remained president of Willys-Overland, disagreed. He maintained that through the improvement of the existing models, the company could regain its original profit margins. Chrysler left. Continuing to pursue his political interests, Willys became the US ambassador to Poland on this day in 1930. Eight years later Poland would be absorbed into the Third Reich. Three years after that, in 1941, Willys-Overland began mass production of the Willys Jeep, the "General Purpose" vehicle of the US Army. In 1944 Willys’s political and manufacturing legacies merged symbolically as Willys Jeeps carried US troops across liberated Poland.

1929 Ante la creciente agitación estudiantil contra el Gobierno, Miguel Primo de Rivera ordena clausurar la Universidad Central de Madrid.
1915 El Reichstag alemán aprueba, con un solo voto en contra, el presupuesto para 1915, así como el programa para financiación de la guerra.
1914 The Fifth Avenue Coach Company of New York introduced the first bus with cross-wise seats. Prior to this introduction, all buses had been equipped with longitudinal seating. The company’s double-decker buses were capable of seating forty-four passengers.
1911 Entra en vigor en China la ley de interdicción contra los fumaderos de opio y contra los malos tratos a los presos.
1906 Vicente Blasco Ibáñez renuncia al acta de diputado por Valencia.
1906 US President Theodore Roosevelt uses the term “muckrake” in a speech to the Gridiron Club in Washington, DC.
1901: 71 Van Gogh paintings shown in Paris create a sensation, eleven years after the death of Vincent van Gogh , almost unknown until this exposition. — MORE AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS

1898 First practical submarine first submerges, NYC (for 1 hour 40 minutes)
1888 Harper's Weekly features a cartoon about the Saint Patrick's Day parade in New York City, in which a non-native born Irish-American leaves the parade because he has heard that Saint Patrick was not a native-born Irishman..
1884 John Joseph Montgomery makes first glider flight, Otay, California
1863 US Civil war engagement at Kelly's Ford, Virginia, and beyond

1862 US Treasury backs greenbacks. ^top^
In hopes of stopping the flood of counterfeit cash that was engulfing the nation, the US Treasury sanctioned two issues of greenbacks on this day in 1862. Despite the official approval, greenbacks, the paper money minted to support the Union during the Civil War, continued to be a source of controversy during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The bills, which weren't tied to any form of metallic backing, irked conservatives and proponents of the gold standard. Still, that didn't stop the government from releasing $450 million in greenbacks during the war; nor did it prevent farmers and other pro-greenback forces from forming a political movement that briefly wielded a small measure of power during the 1870s. Indeed, though the House of Representatives attempted to stem the flow of greenbacks with the passage of the Resumption Act in 1875, the greenback movement, which had since joined forces with the Labor party was able to make some legislative inroads. The newly formed Greenback-Labor party seized some seats in the House during the 1880 election, but the paper money movement quickly lost steam, as most of its members switched their allegiance to the drive for the free coinage of silver.

1860 Japanese embassy arrives aboard Candinmarruh [sic]

1860 The Second Maori War begins ^top^
     In New Zealand, tension between the native Maori people and European colonists leads to the outbreak of the Second Maori War, a bloody insurrection that lasts for over a year.
      In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the South Pacific island group that would later become known as New Zealand. While attempting to land, several of Tasman’s crew were killed by Maori warriors, who interpreted the Europeans’ exchange of trumpet signals as a prelude to battle. The Maori were believed to have migrated to New Zealand from other islands of Polynesia sometime in the ninth century.
      Despite Tasman’s discovery, the islands, which were named after the Dutch province of Zeeland, do not attract much additional European attention until the late eighteenth century, when English explorer Captain James Cook traveled through the area and wrote detailed accounts of New Zealand. Against resistance from the Maori, whalers, missionaries, and traders arrived, and in 1840, Britain formally annexed the islands and established New Zealand’s first permanent European settlement at Wellington.
      The same year, the Maori signed the Treaty of Waitangi, in which they recognized British sovereignty in exchange for guaranteed possession of their land. The treaty brought what is known to the First Maori War to an end, and kept the peace in New Zealand for nearly two decades. However, by 1860, colonist land encroachment in violation of the Treaty of Waitangi led to the outbreak of the Second Maori War.
      By 1872, a decade of almost continuous warfare, along with diseases introduced by the Europeans, had reduced the Maori to less than 40'000, and they surrendered to the white New Zealanders.
      Originally part of the Australian colony of New South Wales, New Zealand became a separate colony in 1841, and was made self-governing in 1852. Dominion status was attained in 1907, and full independence was granted in 1931 and ratified by New Zealand in 1947.
      During the twentieth century, the Maori people reemerged as an economically self-sufficient minority in New Zealand, and a number of Maori politicians have been elected to the New Zealand parliament to defend the unique interests of their people.

1824 En virtud del Tratado de Londres, Holanda cede Malaca a Gran Bretaña a cambio de los establecimientos de los ingleses en Sumatra.
1813 El rey José Bonaparte, hermano de Napoleón, abandona Madrid para no volver, con lo que la Guerra de la Independencia Española llega a su fin.
1808 Motín de Aranjuez contra Manuel de Godoy y Alvarez de Faria, valido de Carlos IV.

1776 The British evacuate Boston ^top^
    During the American War for Independence, British forces are forced to evacuate Boston following Patriot General George Washington’s successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights, which overlooks the city from the south. During the evening of 04 March, Patriot General John Thomas, under orders from Washington, secretly led a force of 800 soldiers and 1200 workers to Dorchester Heights, and began fortifying the area. To cover the sound of the construction, Patriot cannons, besieging Boston from another location, began a noisy bombardment of the outskirts of the city. By the morning, over a dozen cannons from Fort Ticonderoga had been brought within the Dorchester Heights fortifications.
      British General Sir William Howe hoped to use British ships in Boston Harbor to destroy the Patriot position but a storm set in, giving the Patriots ample time to complete the fortifications and set up their artillery.
      On 17 March, 11'000 British soldiers and some 1000 Royalists departed Boston by ship and sailed to the safety of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The bloodless liberation of Boston by the Patriots brought an end to a hated eight-year British occupation of the city, known for such infamous events as the "Boston Massacre." For the victory, General Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was presented with the first medal ever awarded by the Continental Congress.

1766 Britain repeals Stamp Act.

1762 First St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City, ^top^
honoring the Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is held by Irish soldiers serving in the British army. Saint Patrick, who was born in the late fifth century, was one of the most successful Christian missionaries in history. Born in Britain to a Christian family of Roman citizenship, at the age of sixteen, Patrick was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family's estate. They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity, before escaping to Britain. Believing that he had been called by God to Christianize Ireland, he began joined the Church and studied for fifteen years. Eventually consecrated as the second missionary to Ireland by the Roman Church, Patrick began his mission to Ireland in 432, and by his death in 460, the island was almost entirely Christian. Early Irish settlers to the American colonies, many of whom were indentured servants, brought the Irish tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s feast day to America. The first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade was held not in Ireland, but in New York City in 1762, and with the dramatic increase of Irish immigrants to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, the March 17th celebration became widespread. Today, across the United States, millions of Americans of Irish ancestry celebrate their cultural identity and history by enjoying St. Patrick’s Day parades and engaging in general revelry.
— MORE about the parade and a 17 March 1888 Harper's Weekly cartoon.

1756 St Patrick's Day first celebrated in NYC at Crown and Thistle Tavern
1753 First official St Patrick's Day
1753 First Saint Patrick's Day parade in Boston
1734 Forty-two families of German Protestant refugees landed in the American colonies. Sponsored by the British Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), the 78 religious pilgrims soon founded the town of Ebenezer, 30 miles from Savannah, Georgia.
1521 Ferdinand Magellan discovers the Philippines.
0830 First day of the 10th baktun.

10 baktun / 0 katun / 0 tun / 0 winal / 0 k'in // 07 - ahaw // 18 - sip / g9

0180 Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus (31 Aug 0161 – 31 Dec 0192) , co-emperor of Rome since 0117 with his father Marcus Aurelius, becomes sole emperor of Rome, upon his father's death in Vindobona. Commodus would take the name Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus. The brutal misrule of Commodus would precipitate civil strife ending 84 years of prosperity and stability in the Roman Empire. — [Commode n'était pas du tout commode, mais pas du tout. Devenu complètement fou, il fut étranglé par un champion lutteur par ordre de ses aides, au soulagement général, qui ne dura pas d'ailleurs, car son successeur Publius Helvius Pertinax fut lui aussi assassiné, et de même deux mois après Pertinax, son successeur Marcus Didius Julianus, pour faire place à Septime Sévère (qui, lui, mérita bien son nom).]

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a March 17:

2002 Noa Auerbach, 18, Israeli [photo >], and Amar Abed Almagig Shahrir, 27, unauthorized Fatah activist who fires his pistol at a busy intersection just as schools nearby were about to let out at 12:45 and is then killed by police, in Kfar Sava, just north of Tel Aviv. 16 persons are wounded.

2002 (Sunday) Barbara Green, her daughter Kristen Wormsley, a Pakistani, an Afghani, and a fifth person, by hand grenades thrown by two intruders in the nondenominational Protestant International Church, in the diplomatic enclave in Karachi, where some here, 400 yards from the sprawling American Embassy compound, where there were some 70 worshippers. Barbara Green was an employee in the human resources center at the US embassy, where her husband, Milton Green, is director of the computer section. He and their young son were among the 40 injured. Kristen was a high school senior. The unidentified fifth victim might be one of the attackers.

2002:: 62 Maoist rebels, in attack by Nepali troops on a rebel training camp in Gumchal, Rolpa district, in west Nepal.

2001 Santos Santamaria Avedaño, 32, police officer, by a 20-kg ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) bomb as he had arrived at a hotel in Roses, Catalonia, where a phone call had said the bomb would explode at 11:00, but it exploded at 10:53.
Euskal Herria (Basque Country) is divided politically between the French and Spanish states. It is composed of seven provinces: three under French administration, Iparraldea or Northern Basque Country, and four under Spanish administration, Hegoaldea or Southern Basque Country.
In 1901 the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party, Sabino Arana, coined the term, Euskadi to describe a hypothetical Basque confederated state comprised of the seven Basque provinces. Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) [Basque Fatherland and Liberty] was founded in 1959 with the aim of creating an independent homeland in Spain's Basque region. It uses terrorism.

2001 Terry Foster, policeman, murdered, and Jeff Keith, the murderer.
     At his home in Independence, Missouri, in the 3600 block of Ralston Avenue near Blue Ridge Mall, Jeff Keith, 34, becomes violent with his parents, late in the evening. His sister calls the police so that they can take Jeff to a mental hospital for evaluation. Police, including Foster, had been called to the home several times before to deal with the son, the last time being in February 2001.
      When the police arrives, Jeff refuses to cooperate with officers and locks himself in an upstairs bedroom. After a little more than an hour of negotiations, Keith agrees to speak to his mother. When Foster forces the door open, Jeff fires a gun at them. Foster, who is not wearing a protective vest, is killed instantly by three shots to the head and one to the chest. The other officers pull his body outside.
     When the officers go back inside the house they feel an explosion and see fire. The blaze is intensified by several oxygen tanks in a closet. Jeff's father, who has heart disease, uses oxygen. Jeff, at whom the police had not shot, dies in the fire.
     The previous Independence police officer to die in the line of duty was Lt. David Kraxner, shot during a traffic stop in 1966.

2000 More than 300 members of a religious sect burned to death in a makeshift church in southwestern Uganda.

2000 Ricky Kinchen, sheriff's deputy.
      Deputy Kinchen dies from an abdominal wound suffered the previous day from a gunshot from Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown, Black radical activist), 56, in an impoverished section of Atlanta west of dowtown, across the street from the mosque where al-Amin was the mullah.
     In the evening of 16 March 2000, deputies Ricky Kinchen and Algernon English, both Black, went to serve an old arrest warrant on al-Amin. English asked to see al-Amin's right hand. He said “Yeah”, frowned, and swung up an assault rifle and started shooting. Both deputies were wounded. One round went under Kinchen's bulletproof vest into his abdomen.
     English recovered and testified at the trial of al-Amin (who was arrested in Alabama on 20 March 2000), which resulted on 09 March 2002 in an Atlanta jury of nine Blacks, two Whites, and one Hispanic, finding him guilty on all 13 counts resulting from the shooting, and on 13 March 2002 sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Al-Amin maintains that he is innocent..
[photo: 13 Mar 2002, al-Amin listens to his sentence being read >]

1992: 29 persons in a truck bomb attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
1985 Dayle Okasaki and Veronica Yu, separately shot in Los Angeles, the first victims of “the Night Stalker”, Richard Ramirez, who would be arrested on 31 August 1985, after several more murders.
1979 Carmen de Icaza, escritora española.
1978 Dos personas muertas y 14 heridas por la explosión de una bomba en la central nuclear en construcción de Lemóniz (Vizcaya), efectuada por ETA.
1969 Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Spanish painter born in 1882. — MÁS SOBRE VÁZQUEZ DÍAZ EN ART “4” MARCH

1963 Over 1000 victims of the eruption of Mount Agung, on Bali ^top^
      On the small Indonesian island of Bali in the Indian Ocean, one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions of the twentieth century occurs when Mount Agung erupts, producing ash flows that kill over 1000 people.
      Mount Agung [photo], also known as Gunung Agung, is the highest mountain on Bali, with a height of 3014 m. With a deep volcanic crater at its summit that occasionally vents out smoke and steam, Mount Agung is considered sacred by the Bali people and is also the most-climbed peak in Indonesia.
      In addition to Mount Agung, Indonesia has another 130 active volcanoes, the most of any country in the world. The most famous of all Indonesian volcanoes is Krakatau, a small volcanic island where the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurred in 1883, producing 50-m tidal waves that killed more than 36'000 persons. Within months, dust from the Krakatau eruption produced a veil in the atmosphere that temporarily lowered world temperatures by over a degree.

1962 Blaschke, mathematician.
1961 Suzanna Salter, 101, first US female mayor/temperance leader.
1960 Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, pintor español.
1957 Ramon Magsaysay, president of Philipines, in a plane crash
1956 Baker, mathematician.

1945: 25 US soldiers in collapse of bridge over the Rhine ^top^
     On 07 March 1945, during World War II, tanks of the US Third Corps reached the Rhine River opposite the small German town of Remagen, Germany, and found the Ludendorff Bridge damaged but still usable The bridge had survived the massive Allied air assaults on Nazi Germany and then the country's own efforts to protect its interior from the Allied invasion. Troops and vehicles were immediately rushed across, and for the first time, the US forces secured a foothold on the eastern side of the fortified Rhine River shore.
      Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was so furious to learn of the US'o use of the intact Ludendorff Bridge that he fired General Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of western German forces. German bombers attempted to destroy the bridge, but the US troops continued to move across and expand the beachhead on the other side.
      On 17 March, after transporting thousands of troops and military vehicles across the Rhine, the bridge collapses, killing twenty-five Americans. Nevertheless, the Allies now hold the area and engineers erect other bridges nearby.

1922 Suter, mathematician.
1921 Zhukovsky, mathematician.
1913 [ Soledad Acosta de Samper, escritora colombiana.
1886: 20 Blacks killed in Carrollton Massacre, (Mississippi)
1890 John Rogers Herbert, British painter born on 23 January 1810. — LINKS
1878 José Amador de los Ríos, literato español.
1877 Hans Jacob Ulrich, Swiss artist born on 28 February 1798.
1864 Alexandre Calame, Swiss painter born on 28 May 1810, specialized in Landscapes. — LINKS — Geneva from Petit Saconnex (1814) — Oak Tree (1859) — 60 prints at FAMSF

1863 Major John Pelham, 132 other Rebs, 78 Yanks at Battle of Kelly's Ford.
      Union cavalry attack Confederate cavalry at Kelly's Ford, Virginia. Although the Yankees were pushed back and failed to take any ground, the engagement proved that the Federal troopers could hold their own against their Rebel counterparts. In the war's first two years, Union cavalry fared poorly in combat. This was especially true in the eastern theater, where Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart boasted an outstanding force comprised of excellent horsemen. On several occasions, Stuart embarrassed the Union cavalry with his daring exploits. During the Peninsular Campaign of 1862, Stuart rode around the entire 100'000-man Union army in four days. Later that year, he made a daring raid to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and returned unmolested to Virginia after inflicting significant damage and capturing tons of supplies. In February 1863, a raid by General Fitzhugh Lee (son of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee) left the Federals running in circles in search of the enemy force.
      Now, General Joseph Hooker assumed command of the Federal Army of the Potomac. He sought to bring an end to the Confederate raids by stopping Stuart's cavalry. Hooker assigned General William Averell to attack the Rebel cavalry near Culpeper Court House. Averall assembled 3000 men for the mission, but he left 900 behind to protect against a rumored Confederate presence near Catlett's Station. Averell led the rest of his men towards Kelly's Ford, a crossing of the Rappahannock River east of Culpeper Court House. Fitzhugh Lee learned of the advance and positioned his cavalry brigade, which was part of Stuart's corps, to block the ford and dig rifle pits above the river.
      On the morning of 17 March, Averell's men reached Kelly's Ford and were welcomed by fire from 60 Confederate sharpshooters. It took four attacks for Averell's men to capture the rifle pits and by noon the entire force was across the Rappahannock. Now, Fitzhugh Lee arrived with 800 troopers and two pieces of artillery. As the Confederates approached, the cautious Averell ordered his men to form a defensive line, thus giving the initiative to the Confederates. Lee arrived and ordered his men to attack, but Yankee fire drove them back. He attacked again and was again repulsed. Averell had a chance to score a major rout with a counterattack, but he instead withdrew across the Rappahannock River. He later said that the arrival of Stuart on the battlefield signaled the possible approach of additional Confederate cavalry.
      Averell lost 78 men killed, wounded, and captured during the day's fighting. The Confederates lost a total of 133 men. Among the Rebel dead was Major John Pelham, perhaps the best artillery officer in the Confederate army. He happened to be visiting Stuart when the battle began, and he rode forward to see the action. Pelham was mortally wounded by a shell splinter as he observed the Confederate attacks in the afternoon. Although Kelly's Ford was a Union defeat, it signaled a new phase of the cavalry war in the east. The Yankees were closing the gap with the Confederate horsemen. In the next four months, the Union cavalry fought their Confederate counterparts to a standstill at Brandy Station, and then scored a major victory at the Battle of Gettysburg.

1853 Doppler, mathematician.
1846 F. Wilhelm Bessel, mathematician, astronomer, measurer of distance to 61 Cygni
1808 Hindenburg, mathematician.
1782 Daniel Bernoulli, 81, mathematician.
1747 Josef Orient, Hungarian artist born in 1677.
1690 Jan van Mieris, Dutch painter born on 17 or 07 Jun 1660 — MORE ON MIERIS AT ART “4” MARCH — Lady and Cavalier
1680 François de la Rochefoucauld, escritor francés.
1652 Bramer, mathematician.
1619 Denys Calvaert “Dioniso Fiammingo”, Flemish painter from Antwerp, born in 1540, who emigrated to Italy in about 1562 and remained there for the rest of his life. — MORE ON CALVAERT AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS — The Presentation of Mary — The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine
1406 Ibn Jaldún, historiador tunecino, fallece en El Cairo.
1190 Crusades complete massacre of Jews of York England
0659 Saint Gertrude, 33, Abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Nivelles
0461 Saint Patrick, Patrick Succat, apostle of Ireland (there seems to be no divergence about the date, but the year is uncertain. Catholic Encyclopedia improbably gives the date of Saint Patrick's death as 17 March 493, and of the year of his birth as 387, which elsewhere is given as “about year 360”. Encarta: [389?-461?] ).
— Saint Patrick's Day New York parade: cartoon in Harper's Weekly of 17 February 1888.— Will the Real St. Patrick Please Stand Up? — Saint Patrick at The History Channel
— SAINT PATRICK ONLINE: (in English translations): Letter to Coroticus — Confessio — Confessio (this site notes: Saint Patrick was not Irish. He was a British Celt, first enslaved in Ireland as a teen, later a missionary to Ireland. He was not necessarily the first missionary to Ireland. No one knows his birth or death date. 17 March is traditionally considered to be one of the two, but there is no documentation for this. The only documents about Patrick are his Confession and a letter he wrote to Coroticus. There were never snakes---or other reptiles---in Ireland for Patrick to chase out.) — Breastplate of St. Patrick (hymn not by St. Patrick) — Hymn of St. Patrick (by his nephew Secundinus).

Births which occurred on a March 17:
1987 PC-DOS version 3.3 released by IBM.

1949 The first Porsche car. ^top^
The first car to carry the Porsche family name was introduced at the 19th International Automobile Show in Geneva, Switzerland. After serving a two-year prison sentence for his participation as an engineer in Hitler’s regime, Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry went to work on a car that would carry the Porsche name. The Porsche prototype, named the 356, was a sports car version of the Volkswagen that Porsche had designed at Hitler’s request. Its rounded lines, rear engine, and open two-seater design set the standard for all Porsches to come. The classic design and the incomparable engineering of Porsche cars attracted loyal customers at a record pace. In 1950, Ferdinand Porsche celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday. He had risen to fame as an engineer for Mercedes, he had developed the Volkswagen; and he had finally put his name to his own automobile. One year later Porsche suffered a stroke from which he would never recover. He died in January of 1952. Ferry Porsche, Ferdinand’s son, built the Porsche Company into the empire it is today.

1941 The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington DC.
1935 Valerio Adami, pintor italiano.
1935 Luis Goytisolo, escritor español.
1933 Myrlie Evers-Williams, NAACP chairwoman
1927 Brandy, mucho brandy, de José Martínez Ruiz “Azorín”, se estrena en Madrid. El público arma un sonoro escándalo y muestra ostensiblemente su desagrado por la obra.
1914 Juan Carlos Onganía, político y militar argentino.
1910 Bayard Rustin, US civil rights activist who died on 24 August 1987.
1910 The Camp Fire Girls organization is formed. It would be presented to the public exactly two years later.
1897 Fox, mathematician.

1894 Paul Green, novelist and playwright. ^top^
Paul Green would be the winner of the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for his play In Abraham's Bosom, is born. Although Green was white, his work examined the problems of blacks in the South, based on his observations of his native state, North Carolina. Born in 1894, Green studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began writing plays for the theater group Carolina Playmakers in 1919, drawing on Southern folklore for his themes. During the Depression, his work took on a tone of social protest and included plays like Hymn to the Rising Sun (1936), about a chain gang. In 1941, he worked with novelist Richard Wright to dramatize Wright's book Native Son. Interested in the interplay of words and music, he wrote a series of symphonic dramas, including The Stephen Foster Story (1959) and The Lone Star (1977). He died in Chapel Hill in 1981.

1881 Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss, 1949 Nobel Prize-winning physiologist (autonomic nervous system) who died on 12 August 1973; author of The Biology of Mind (1964). [NOT to be confused with German Walter Richard Rudolf Hess (26 Apr 1894 – 17 Aug 1987), Hitler's deputy who, on his own, flew to Scotland on 10 May 1941 with unauthorized peace proposals, and died in Spandau prison, its sole inmate since 1966, serving a life sentence imposed by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal].[Nor to be confused with Austrian Victor Francis Hess (24 Jun 1883 – 17 Dec 1964), Nobel Physics 1936]
1876 Esclangon, mathematician.
1874 Stephen Samuel Wise US, president of Zionist Org of Americaife)
1874 Kincsem horse that never lost a race [but did it run in any?]
1861 Italia, el estado: el Parlamento subalpino consagra el nacimiento del nuevo Estado italiano. Aparece el primer número de la Gazzeta Ufficiale, que publica el decreto para conceder a Víctor Manuel II el título de rey de Italia.
1858 Irish Republican Broterhood (IRB) se funda, más tarde llamada Hermandad Republicana Irlandesa, base histórica del IRA.
1851 Julien Dupré, French artist who died in April 1910. — MORE ON DUPRÉ AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS — Milking Time — Peasant Girl with Sheep — Dans le Pré — Le Repos — La Faneuse — Laitière — Le Déjeuner de la Faneuse — Peasant Woman with Cows & Sheep — Returning From the Fields — The Wheatfield — La Récolte Des Foins — A Shepherdess with her flock
1849 Charles Brush, 6/15/1929 US inventor and industrialist who died on 15 June 1929. [NOT a co-founder of the Fuller Brush Company]
1846 Kate Greenaway, English artist and book illustrator who died on 06 November 1901.
1839 René-François-Armand Sully Prudhomme, poeta francés, premio Nobel de Literatura en 1901.
1834 Gottlieb Daimler Germany, engineer/inventor/auto pioneer. — primer constructor del motor de explosión para automóviles.
1806 Louis Haghe, Belgian artist who died on 09 March 1885.
1785 Adolf Carl Senff, German artist who died on 21 March 1863.
1777 Roger Brooke Taney, 5th chief justice of the US Supreme Court (28 March 1836 – 12 October 1864); infamous for the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision (1855) . Taney died on 12 October 1864.
1686 Jean-Baptiste Oudry, French artist specialized in Animals who died on 30 April 1755. — MORE ON OUDRY AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS — Dead Roe _ Dead Wolf _ These are two of Oudry's finest paintings. — Swan Attacked by a Dog — Louis XV Chassant le Cerf dans la Forêt de Saint Germain — Laie et ses marcassins attaqués par des dogues
1685 Jean-Marc Nattier, French painter specialized in portraits, who died on 07 November 1766. — MORE ON NATTIER AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS — Marie Adélaïde of France as Flora — Marie Adélaïde of France as Diana — Mademoiselle de Clermont "en Sultane" — Comtesse de Tillières
1591 Gerard Seghers (or Zegers), Flemish artist who died on 18 March 1651. — LINKS
1578 Francesco Albani, Italian artist who died on 04 October 1660.
1473 James IV, Rey de Escocia.

Holidays Boston : Evacuation Day (1776) Ireland : St Patrick's Day/Irish National Day (461, 493) World : World Maritime Day
St Joseph of Arimathea / / Santos Patricio, José de Arimatea, Teodoro y Pablo.

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