This Day In History

April 4th 1841: President William Henry Harrison dies

On this day in 1841, the 9th President of the United States, William Henry Harrison, died in office. Harrison’s time in office was the shortest of any US President, serving only 32 days. He died of complications from pneumonia which he supposedly caught at his inauguration, held in the middle of winter, as he did not want to look old and so refused to wear a coat. Harrison was the oldest President to take office, aged 68, until Ronald Reagan in 1981. He was succeeded upon his death by his Vice-President John Tyler.

April 3rd 1968: King’s last speech

On this day in 1968, the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. made his last speech, the day before his assassination. King was one of many leaders of the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality in America, but became the face of the movement for his non-violent tactics and powerful oratory. In 1963, during the March on Washington, King delivered the crowning speech of the struggle - the ‘I have a dream’ speech. Beyond his role in combating racial inequality, King also focused on tackling poverty and advocating peace, especially during the Vietnam War. In April 1968, King visited Memphis in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. It was at the Mason Temple in this city that he delivered his ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech. The very next day, King was assassinated at his Memphis hotel by James Earl Ray. His final speech was remarkably prophetic, as he appeared to acknowledge he would not live long. King, a Baptist minister, invoked the Biblical story of Moses, who led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt but died before he could enter the Promised Land.

April 2nd 1982: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands

On this day in 1982, Argentine forces landed on the Falkland Islands and occupied the area, which marked the beginning of the Falklands War. The war was the product of long tensions over who possessed the islands, with Argentina claiming ownership and Britain seeing the islands as British territory. Argentine forces landed on the islands and fought the British Royal Marines at Government House, leading to British surrender and thus Argentina seizing control of the Falklands. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded by sending a naval task force to attack the Argentinians. The conflict killed 649 Argentinians, 255 Britons and three Falkland Islanders, even though it only lasted 74 days. The war ended with Argentine surrender on 14th June, thus returning the islands to Britain.

March 31st 1492: Spanish expulsion

On this day in 1492, the joint Catholic monarchs of Spain - Ferdinand and Isabella - issued the Alhambra Decree. This decree ordered the expulsion of all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity from the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon by July 31st. This measure was pushed for by the monarchs’ adviser Tomas de Torquemada, who spearheaded the Spanish Inquisition aimed at rooting out heresy. Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to the expulsion after successfully completing the reconquista - the unification of Spain under Christian rule - with the conquest of Granada. The majority of the nearly 200,000 Spanish Jews chose to leave the country rather than renounce their religion and culture. Many of these Sephardic Jews moved to Turkey, Africa, and elsewhere in Europe, though they often encountered violence as they tried to leave the country. The Jews who remained became conversos, suffering harassment and mistrust. The policy of religious conformity continued in 1502, when Spanish Muslims were also ordered to convert to Christianity. The Alhambra Decree was formally revoked by the Second Vatican Council in 1968, as part of a general attempt by the Spanish government to make amends for the painful legacy of the expulsion.

March 30th 1979: Airey Neave killed

On this day in 1979, the Shadow Secretary for Northern Ireland Airey Neave was assassinated by a car bomb aged 63. Neave was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Abingdon in 1953, and in the mid 1970s helped lead the effort to install Margaret Thatcher as party leader. At the time of Neave’s death, the Conservatives were the opposition party to the Labour government of James Callaghan but the Conservatives were poised to win the upcoming election, which would have elevated Neave to the cabinet. Neave was known for his tough, anti-IRA policies, which invoked the ire of republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. As the politician was leaving the House of Commons car park, a bomb attached to his car exploded, and he subsequently died from his injuries. The noise from the explosion could be heard in the Commons, which led to a suspension of proceedings as MPs rushed to the windows to see what had happened. The Irish National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the murder. The incident occurred at the height of the Troubles, which saw conflict in Northern Ireland over the country’s relationship to Britain.

March 29th 1879: Battle of Kambula

On this day in 1879, the Battle of Kambula occurred, marking a decisive moment in the Anglo-Zulu War. The war in South Africa began in 1878 after the murder of several British citizens by Zulus and the Zulu king’s refusal to hand over the perpetrators for trial. However, authorities in Britain had long been seeking pretense to launch an assault on the Zulu Kingdom to consolidate British rule in the area. The indigenous Zulu warriors had some initial success against the European invaders, including at the battle of Isandlwana in January 1879, though this victory was offset by defeat at Rourke’s Drift. Wary of the enemy, British forces in the Zulu Kingdom led by Evelyn Wood fortified an area near Kambula. On March 29th the Zulu army launched an attack on the British position, but their advance was halted by a British mounted force. The Zulu forces continued their attack, and 11,000 fighters charged head-on into a hail of British fire. They sustained heavy losses, but the Zulu army successfully exerted pressure on the British stronghold and forced the defenders to retreat. Despite putting up a considerable attack, the Zulu forces were eventually forced to retreat under British fire. The battle was a decisive British victory, with the defenders losing 29 soldiers and the Zulu up to 3,000. Kambula also severely weakened the Zulu forces, allowing the British to ultimately defeat the Zulu and imprison their king in July. British victory spelled the end of the independence of the Zulu nation in South Africa.

March 28th 1871: Paris Commune declared

On this day in 1871, following elections held two days prior, the Paris Commune was officially proclaimed. The Commune seized power in opposition to the election of a conservative National Assembly February 1871; republican Parisians feared that when they met in Versailles the royalist Assembly would restore the monarchy. When officials of Adolphe Thiers’s government tried to remove the city guard’s cannons as a precautionary measure on March 18th, the people rebelled. The city guard called municipal elections for March 26th, which saw victory for the revolutionaries, who established the Commune to govern the city of Paris. On March 28th, the new government held its first meeting and was formally declared. The Commune immediately set about enacting socialist policies, which included a ten-hour work day, abolition of the death penalty, end of military conscription, banning established religion and promoting female suffrage. They adopted a plain red flag as the flag of the Commune, and envisioned that the situation in Paris would encourage a nationwide revolution. The Commune’s lack of internal organisation left them vulnerable to attack, but the catalyst for retribution came when Communard soldiers killed two French troops. On May 21st, national forces entered Paris through an undefended area, launching a violent campaign of street fighting known as ‘Bloody Week’. Around 20,000 insurrectionists were killed before the Commune fell on May 28th. The government treated the surviving Communards and their supporters ruthlessly - arresting around 38,000 and deporting another 7,000. The Commune became a symbol of socialist revolution in Europe and further abroad, with their supporters lamenting the martyrdom of the Communards.

March 27th 1958: Khrushchev becomes Soviet Premier

On this day in 1958, Nikita Khrushchev became head of the government of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev served as Premier of the world’s first Communist state from 1958 to 1964. He, along with Lenin and Stalin, are the only Premiers to also have been party leader simultaneously. Under Khrushchev, Russia was partially de-Stalinised, which was a core policy of the Premier who vociferously denounced his predecessor’s dangerous ‘cult of personality’. However, the accession of Khrushchev did not ease the tensions of the Cold War, and during his tenure Russia escalated its space program to compete with the United States in the ‘Space Race’. Russia had successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957, but now sought to put a man in space, which they did in 1961. It was also under Khrushchev that the Cold War came the closest to breaking out into fully fledged war, with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963. Khrushchev was deposed by party colleagues in 1964 and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary of the Communist Party and by Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

March 26th 1830: The Book of Mormon published

On this day in 1830, the Book of Mormon was first published at E.B Grandin’s New York bookstore. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith Jr, claimed that he had been visited by an angel called Moroni who told him of ancient writings on golden plates which described people God led to the Western hemisphere before the birth of Jesus. These plates were supposedly found by Smith buried by a tree near his home. Smith said he was told by Moroni to translate the plates into English and publish them. Smith initially struggled to find someone to publish the book as many considered it fraudulent and blasphemous. Smith and his friend Martin Harris began work on translating the Book of Mormon, with Smith dictating by either reading directly or using seer stones placed in a top hat. It took eight men and boys working 12 hours a day, six days a week, for almost eight months to print the initial 5,000 copies, which went on sale in March 1830. The building in New York where the Book of Mormon was first published and sold is now the Book of Mormon Historic Publication Site.

March 25th 1811: Shelley expelled from Oxford

On this day in 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing a pamphlet entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. Shelley is best known as a famous English poet, who was part of a group of fellow prominent writers including his wife Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. As well as being as being an author, Shelley was a radical political activist who advocated non-violent protest. Having begun study at Oxford in 1810, it is often said that he only attended one lecture during his time there. He published several works whilst at university, but it was his atheistic pamphlet which led to his appearance before the College fellows and his eventual expulsion as he refused to deny authorship. ‘The Necessity of Atheism’ argued that people do not choose their beliefs and thus atheists shouldn’t be persecuted. However it is unclear whether Shelley was personally an atheist; he may have instead been an agnostic or a pantheist. Either way, this document is an interesting insight into Shelley’s views and shows how atheism was stigmatised in the early nineteenth century.

March 24th 1944: The ‘Great Escape’

On this day in 1944, a group of Allied prisoners of war staged a daring escape attempt from the German prisoner of war camp at Stalag Luft III. This camp, located in what is now Poland, held captured Allied pilots mostly from Britain and the United States. In 1943, an Escape Committee under the leadership of Squadron Leader Roger Bushell of the RAF, supervised prisoners surreptitiously digging three 30 foot tunnels out of the camp, which they nicknamed ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’. The tunnels led to woods beyond the camp and were remarkably sophisticated - lined with wood, and equipped with rudimentary ventilation and electric lighting. The successful construction of the tunnels was particularly impressive as the Stalag Luft III camp was designed to make it extremely difficult to tunnel out as the barracks were raised and the area had a sandy subsoil. ‘Tom’ was discovered by the Germans in September 1943, and ‘Dick’ was abandoned to be used as a dirt depository, leaving ‘Harry’ as the prisoners’ only hope. By the time of the escape, American prisoners who had assisted in tunneling had been relocated to a different compound, making the escapeees mostly British and Commonwealth citizens. 200 airmen had planned to make their escape through the ‘Harry’ tunnel, but on the night of March 24th 1944, only 76 managed to escape the camp before they were discovered by the guards. However, only three of the escapees - Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Müller and Dutchman Bram van der Stok - found their freedom. The remaining 73 were recaptured, and 50 of them, including Bushell, were executed by the Gestapo on Adolf Hitler’s orders, while the rest were sent to other camps. While the escape was generally a failure, it helped boost morale among prisoners of war, and has become enshrined in popular memory due to its fictionalised depiction in the 1963 film The Great Escape.

March 23rd 1933: Enabling Act passed

On this day in 1933, the German Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which essentially secured Adolf Hitler’s position as dictator of Germany. The law gave Chancellor Hitler legal powers to establish his dictatorship as it gave the Cabinet the power to enact laws independently of the legislature - the Reichstag. Its formal name was ‘Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich’. Hitler had been appointed Chancellor on January 30th and just before the scheduled election, the Reichstag fire occurred. The Nazis used the incident to suggest a Communist revolution was imminent and passed the Reichstag Fire Decree which suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus. The Nazis failed to gain an absolute majority in the Reichstag, so Hitler drafted the Enabling Act to secure his position. The Nazis pressured and threatened representatives of the Reichstag to pass the bill, positioning SA men and Nazi swastikas in and around the building. With the bill’s passing, Hitler’s dictatorship was assured, and thus began a brutal regime which would last until 1945.

March 22nd 1963: ‘Please Please Me’ released

On this day in 1963, the first album by the Beatles, ‘Please Please Me’, was released in the UK by Parlophone Records. The Beatles formed in Liverpool, and made their musical start by performing concerts in Liverpool’s Cavern Club and playing in Hamburg, Germany. The first singles from their debut album, ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’ had been very successful, with the latter topping the charts in the United Kingdom. The success of their debut album was followed up with their second UK album ‘With the Beatles’ in November 1963. The Beatles went on to become one of the most famous music groups of their day, and its members - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - became international icons. The band’s influence continued long after their break up in 1970 and endures to this day.

March 21st 1960: Sharpeville massacre

On this day in 1960, police opened fire on peaceful anti-apartheid protestors in the South African township of Sharpeville, killing 69. The over 5,000 strong crowd gathered at Sharpeville police station to protest the discriminatory pass laws, which they claimed were designed to limit their movement in designated white only areas. The laws required all black men and women to carry reference books with their name, tax code and employer details; those found without their book could be arrested and detained. The protest encouraged black South Africans to deliberately leave their pass books at home and present themselves at police stations for arrest, which would crowd prisons and lead to a labour shortage. Despite the protestors’ peaceful and non-violent intentions, police opened fire on the crowd. By the day’s end, 69 people were dead and 180 were wounded. A further 77 were arrested and questioned, though no police officer involved in the massacre was ever convicted as the government relieved all officials of any responsibility. The apartheid government responded to the massacre by banning public meetings, outlawing the African National Congress (ANC) and declaring a state of emergency. The incident convinced anti-apartheid leader and ANC member Nelson Mandela to abandon non-violence and organise paramilitary groups to fight the racist system of apartheid. In 1996, 36 years later, then President Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which he signed into law the country’s new post-apartheid constitution.

March 20th 1852: Uncle Tom’s Cabin published

On this day in 1852, American author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. Previously published as a serial in the anti-slavery periodical the National Era, Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of a black slave and recounts the harsh reality of his enslavement. Stowe was an ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery, and wrote the novel in response to the passage of the controversial 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which was part of the Compromise of 1850. The Act ordered Northern citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves from the South, thus forcing the generally anti-slavery North to become complicit in the continuance of the ‘peculiar institution’. The popular discontent over the slavery issue helped make Uncle Tom’s Cabin the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and saw its translation into sixty languages. The novel helped keep the flames of anti-slavery sentiment alive, and is therefore sometimes attributed with helping start the American Civil War. While still hailed as a great anti-slavery work of its day, the novel falls short of modern expectations with its stereotypical portrayal of African-Americans.

March 19th 1932: Sydney Harbour Bridge opens

On this day in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened. There had been discussions of building a bridge to connect the northern and southern shores of Sydney Harbour for years. In 1924, the contract for the bridge was given to English firm Dorman Long and Co. Ltd. and work began on the bridge; work was overseen by J.J.C. Bradfield. There were fears that the two sides of the arch would not align properly, but in August 1930 the two halves met perfectly. Sixteen workers died during construction, most from unsafe working practices. The opening ceremony took place on March 19th 1932, and though the Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang was supposed to cut the ribbon, he was interrupted by an intruder who slashed the ribbon with his sword and declared the bridge open. The man was Francis de Groot, a member of a right-wing paramilitary group who opposed Lang’s leftist policies and the fact that a member of the Royal Family had not been invited to open the bridge. The ribbon was retied and Lang officially opened the bridge. The festivities to mark the opening included floats and a procession across the bridge by members of the public. Thousands of people turned out to see the opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge - a triumph over Depression times.

March 18th 1314: Jacques de Molay killed

On this day in 1314, Jacques de Molay, the twenty-third and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake. The Templar knights were a major fighting unit of the Crusades, aiming to preserve Christendom and regain control of the Holy Land. After control the Holy Land was lost to Muslim forces, support for the Knights Templar started to fade. King Philip IV of France began to mistrust the group and wanted to free himself of his debts to the Templar; he thus had many leading Knights burned at the stake. Pope Clement V disbanded the group in 1312, and the hunt continued for remaining members. The Knights were tortured until they confessed to a range of crimes, including heresy, obscene rituals, and idolatry. De Molay had been forced to make such a confession, and despite retracting the confession, he was charged with heresy and burned at the stake. Pope Clement died a month later and King Philip died that year. With their leader gone, the remaining Templars were arrested or removed from the group and the Knights Templar were no more.

March 17th 1959: Dalai Lama flees Tibet

On this day in 1959, Tenzin Gyatso - the fourteenth Dalai Lama, a central figure of Vajrayana Buddhism - fled Tibet for India. He fled following the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule which broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, where the Dalai Lama lived. Fearing for his safety, he and around twenty of his entourage fled Lhasa on March 17th and embarked on a 15 day journey on foot over the Himalayan mountains to Dharamsala in India where they had been offered asylum. No news was heard of the Dalai Lama, and many feared their spiritual and political leader had been killed during the arduous journey. However, on March 30th he crossed into India and people learned that he was safe. He was followed by around 80,000 Tibetans who settled in the same area of India, leading to it becoming known as ‘Little Lhasa’. This place became the home to the Tibetan government-in-exile. Tibet remains under Chinese rule, and the Dalai Lama continues to try to find a peaceful negotiation for Tibetan self rule.

March 16th 1912: Lawrence Oates dies

On this day in 1912 Lawrence Oates, a member of Robert Falcon Scott’s British team to the South Pole, left his tent never to be seen again. Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition was his second attempt and aimed to become the first group to reach the South Pole. The group succeeded in reaching the Pole on January 17th 1912, only to discover that they had been beaten by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition. Sadly, Scott’s entire party of five men died on the return journey. Oates was one of those who died first. He was suffering from severe frostbite and, in an apparent act of self-sacrifice, simply walked out of his tent into a blizzard. He had asked them to leave him behind as his condition worsened, and it is likely he felt that he was holding his group back and limiting their chances for survival. Thus on March 16th he walked out of the tent saying: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” The others died soon after and their bodies were found by a search party in November, along with some of their equipment and personal effects. Oates’s body was never found, but he and his companions are remembered as brave men and national heroes.

March 15th 1848: Hungarian Revolution begins

On this day in 1848, a revolution broke out in Hungary, one of many in the ‘Year of Revolutions’. There had been a growing reform movement in Hungary which demanded change and provisions for those who had been most affected by the economic downturn after the Napoleonic Wars. Journalist Lajos Kossuth became leader of this movement, and pushed for democracy and civil equality in Hungary. As it stood, the Hungarian elites did not pay tax but only they had the vote - the system was in dire need of change. The Habsburg monarchs tried to suppress the movement by blocking its legislation and arresting its leaders. The full revolution began with mass demonstrations and insurrections throughout Hungary. The powers-that-be acquiesced on some demands - passing reforms and establishing a new parliament. As the imperial government of Austria tied to halt the movement, the revolution soon evolved into a war of independence. Hungary lost the war, and the Austrians retained control over the kingdom.