History On This Day

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• 303 Martyrdom of Saint Adrian of Nicomedia.
• 852 Croatian Duke Trpimir I issued a statute, a document with the first known written mention of the Croats name in Croatian sources.
• 938 Translation of the relics of martyr Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, the patron saint of the Czech state
• 1790 France is divided into 83 départements, which cut across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on noble ownership of land.
• 1791 1st Jewish member of US Congress, Israel Jacobs (PA), takes office
• 1791 President Washington calls the US Senate into its 1st special session
• 1791 Vermont admitted as 14th state (1st addition to the 13 colonies)
• 1792 Oranges introduced to Hawaii
• 1793 French troops conquer Geertruidenberg, Netherlands
• 1793 Washington's 2nd inauguration as US President, shortest speech (133 words)
• 1846 8th Grand National: William Taylor aboard Pioneer wins
• 1848 Sardinia-Piemonte gets new Constitution
• 1848 Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia
• 1849 US had no president, Polks term ends on a Sunday, Taylor couldn't be sworn-in, Sen David Atchison (pres pro tem) term ended Mar 3rd
• 1853 Pope Pius IX recovers Catholic hierarchy in Netherlands
• 1853 William Rufus de Vane King (D) sworn in as 13th US VP
• 1857 19th Grand National: Charlie Boyce aboard Emigrant wins
• 1861 Confederate States adopt "Stars & Bars" flag (US Civil War)
• 1933 Chancellor Dollfuss dissolves Austrian parliament
• 1933 Frances Perkins becomes sec of labor, 1st US woman cabinet member
• 1933 Henderson, DeSylva & Brown's "Strike Me Pink" premieres in NYC
• 1933 Noordwijk soccer team forms
• 1947 WWJ (now WDIV) TV channel 4 in Detroit, MI (NBC) begins broadcasting
• 1949 Andrei Vishinsky succeeds Molotov as Soviet Foreign minister
• 1949 Piet Van de Pol (Neth) becomes world champion billiard player
• 1949 Security Council of UN recommends membership for Israel
• 1954 James E. Wilkins appointed 1st black US sub-cabinet member
• 1954 Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, announces the first successful kidney transplant.
• 1955 1st radio facsimile transmission sent across the continent
• 1957 The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90.
• 1959 US Pioneer IV misses Moon & becomes 2nd (US 1st) artificial planet
• 1960 French freighter "La Coubre" explodes in Havana Cuba, killing 100
• 1961 Paul-Henri Spaak resigns as sec-gen of NATO
• 1961 8th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: Wake Forest beats Duke, 96-81
• 1962 AEC announces 1st atomic power plant in Antarctica in operation
• 1964 Jimmy Hoffa convicted of jury tampering
• 1965 David Attenbrough became the new controller of BBC2
• 1966 Canadian Pacific airliner explodes on landing at Tokyo, 64 die
• 1991 Iraq releases 6 US, 3 British & 1 Italian POW
• 1993 "Goodbye Girl" opens at Marquis Theater NYC for 188 performances
• 1995 Blind teenage boy receives a 'Bionic Eye' at a Washington Hospital
• 2007 Estonian parliamentary election: approximately 30,000 voters take advantage of electronic voting in Estonia, world's 1st nationwide vote where part of the vote casting allowed by remote electronic voting
• 2009 International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur becoming the first sitting head of state to be indicted
• 2009 U.S. Steel announce the closure of the Stelco Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ontario due to the increasingly worsening effects of the global economic slowdown
• 2009 Malaysia has a 50% chance of slipping into the recession as growth is expected to reach just 0.5% for the year, announces the executive director Datuk Mohamed Ariff Abdul Kareem of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research
• 2016 Ben Carson announces he is dropping out of the Republican presidential nomination race