Today In History – This Day In History Funny Events

The Roman emperor was the ruler and monarchical head of state of the Roman Empire, starting with the granting of the title augustus to Octavian in 27 BC. The title of imperator, originally a military honorific, was usually used alongside caesar, originally a cognomen. When a given Roman is described as becoming emperor in English, it generally reflects his accession as augustus, and later as basileus. Early emperors also used the title princeps alongside other Republican titles, notably consul and pontifex maximus.

The Roman Emperor Augustus is named Pontifex Maximus, incorporating the position into that of the emperor.

The Farewell Sermon also known as Muhammad's Final Sermon or the Last Sermon, is a religious speech, delivered by the Islamic prophet Muhammad on Friday the 9th of Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH in the Uranah valley of Mount Arafat, during the Islamic pilgrimage of Hajj. Muhammad al-Bukhari refers to the sermon and quotes part of it in his Sahih al-Bukhari. Part of it is also present in Sahih Muslim and Sunan Abu Dawood. Verse 5:3, "Today I have perfected for you your religion," is believed to have been recited during the address as the capstone verse of the Quran. Various versions of the sermon have been published, including several English translations. The sermon consists of a series of general exhortations for Muslims to follow the teachings that Allah had set forth in the Quran and Muhammad in his Sunnah.

The Farewell Sermon (Khutbah, Khutbatul Wada') of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The 42 Martyrs of Amorium were a group of Byzantine senior officials taken prisoner by the Abbasid Caliphate in the Sack of Amorium in 838 and executed in 845, after they refused to convert to Islam. They are commemorated by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church on March 6. Amorium is located at Hisar, Turkey.

Execution of the 42 Martyrs of Amorium at Samarra.

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'.

Byzantine conquest of Chandax by Nikephoros Phokas, end of the Emirate of Crete.

The siege of Château Gaillard was a part of Philip II's campaign to conquer John, King of England's continental territories. The French king besieged Château Gaillard, a Norman fortress, for six months. The Anglo-Normans were beaten in the battle and the consequence was the fall of Normandy.

The Siege of Château Gaillard ends in a French victory over King John of England, who loses control of Normandy to King Philip II Augustus.

The Thirteen Years' War, also called the War of the Cities, was a conflict fought in 1454–1466 between the Prussian Confederation, allied with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, and the State of the Teutonic Order.

Thirteen Years' War: Delegates of the Prussian Confederation pledge allegiance to King Casimir IV of Poland who agrees to commit his forces in aiding the Confederation's struggle for independence from the Teutonic Knights.

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he discovered the Strait of Magellan, performed the first European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and made the first known European contact with the Philippines. Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, but his crew, commanded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522, achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.

Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam.

The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world.

The first joint Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, publishes the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the European colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three storeships and six convict transports under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. On 13 May 1787, the ships, with over 1,400 convicts, marines, sailors, colonial officials, and free settlers onboard, left Portsmouth and travelled over 24,000 kilometres and over 250 days before arriving in Botany Bay, New South Wales, on 18 January 1788. Governor Arthur Phillip rejected Botany Bay, choosing instead Port Jackson to the north as the site for the new colony; the Fleet arrived there on 26 January 1788. The Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales as a penal colony; the first British settlement in Australia.

The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.

The Missouri Compromise was federal legislation of the United States that balanced the desires of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery in the country with those of southern states to expand it. It admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and declared a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel. The 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820.

The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

York was a town and the second capital of the colony of Upper Canada. It is the predecessor to the old city of Toronto (1834–1998). It was established in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe as a "temporary" location for the capital of Upper Canada, while he made plans to build a capital near today's London, Ontario. Simcoe renamed the location York after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, George III's second son. Simcoe gave up his plan to build a capital at London, and York became the permanent capital of Upper Canada on February 1, 1796. That year Simcoe returned to Britain and was temporarily replaced by Peter Russell.

York, Upper Canada, is incorporated as Toronto.

The Texas Revolution was a rebellion by Anglo-American immigrants as well as Hispanic Texans against the centralist government of Mexico in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. The uprising was part of a larger revolt against the Centralist Republic of Mexico that included other provinces opposed to the regime of President Antonio López de Santa Anna. The Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree, declaring that any foreigners fighting against Mexican troops "will be deemed pirates and dealt with as such, being citizens of no nation presently at war with the Republic and fighting under no recognized flag". Only the province of Texas succeeded in breaking with Mexico, establishing the Republic of Texas. It was eventually annexed by the United States about a decade later.

Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo - After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was a Russian chemist known for formulating the periodic law and creating a version of the periodic table of elements. He used the periodic law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known elements, such as the valence and atomic weight of uranium, but also to predict the properties of three elements that were yet to be discovered. The synthetic element Mendelevium is named in his honor.

Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

The Kingdom of Serbia was a country located in the Balkans which was created when the ruler of the Principality of Serbia, Milan I, was proclaimed king in 1882. Since 1817, the Principality was ruled by the Obrenović dynasty. The Principality of Serbia, under the suzerainty of the Turkish Empire, de facto achieved full independence when the very last Ottoman troops left Belgrade in 1867. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognized the formal independence of the Principality of Serbia, and in its composition Nišava, Pirot, Toplica and Vranje districts entered the South part of Serbia.

The Serbian kingdom is re-founded.

Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies and biomedical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products. The company is a component of the EURO STOXX 50 stock market index.

Bayer registers "Aspirin" as a trademark.

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional association football club based in Madrid. The club competes in La Liga, the top tier of Spanish football.

Real Madrid C.F. is founded.

The Italo-Turkish War, also known as the Turco-Italian War, was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911 to 18 October 1912. As a result of this conflict, Italy captured coastal areas of the Ottoman Tripolitania Vilayet, of which the main sub-provinces were Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and Tripoli itself. These territories became the colonies of Italian Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which would later merge into Italian Libya.

Italo-Turkish War: Italian forces become the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet.

The Portuguese Communist Party is a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Portugal. It is one of the strongest communist parties in Western Europe and the oldest Portuguese political party with uninterrupted existence. It is characterized as a far-left party on the political spectrum. Since 1987, it runs to any national, local and European elections in coalition with the Ecologist Party "The Greens" (PEV), assembled in the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU).

Portuguese Communist Party is founded as the Portuguese Section of the Communist International.

International Unemployment Day was a coordinated international campaign of marches and demonstrations, marked by hundreds of thousands of people in major cities around the world taking to the streets to protest mass unemployment associated with the Great Depression. The Unemployment Day marches, organized by the Communist International and coordinated by its various member parties, resulted in two deaths of protestors in Berlin, injuries at events in Vienna and the Basque city of Bilbao, and less violent outcomes in London and Sydney.

International Unemployment Day demonstrations globally initiated by the Comintern

Norman Percevel Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, the Four Freedoms series, Saying Grace, and The Problem We All Live With. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent, and A Guiding Hand.

Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.

World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

World War II: Cologne is captured by American troops.

World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

World War II: Operation Spring Awakening, the last major German offensive of the war, begins.

Hồ Chí Minh, colloquially known as Uncle Ho among other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman who founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, which was commonly known as North Vietnam after 1954. He served as its first president from 1946 until his death in 1969 and as its first prime minister from 1945 to 1955. A committed Marxist–Leninist, Hồ also played a central role in establishing the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and later led its successor, the Workers' Party of Vietnam, as chairman until his death.

Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. They were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber in Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime.

The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician who succeeded Joseph Stalin as Premier and the overall leader of the Soviet Union in March 1953. Shortly thereafter, Malenkov entered into a power struggle with the party's First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, which culminated in his removal from the premiership in 1955 as well as the Central Committee Presidium in 1957.

Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated with the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to the east. Ghana covers an area of 239,567 km2 (92,497 sq mi), spanning diverse ecologies, from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests. With over 35 million inhabitants, Ghana is the thirteenth-most populous country in Africa, and the second-most populous country in West Africa specifically. The capital and largest city is Accra.

Ghana becomes the first Sub-Saharan country to gain independence from the British.

The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious group founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A centralized and hierarchical organization, the NOI is committed to black nationalism and focuses its attention on the black African diaspora, especially on African Americans. While describing itself as Islamic and using Islamic terminology, its religious tenets differ substantially from orthodox Islamic traditions. Scholars of religion characterize it as a new religious movement.

Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

Constantine II was the last King of Greece, reigning from 6 March 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy on 1 June 1973.

Constantine II becomes King of Greece.

Sir Thomas Playford was an Australian politician from the state of South Australia. He served as Premier of South Australia and leader of the Liberal and Country League (LCL) from 5 November 1938 to 10 March 1965. Though controversial, it was the longest term of any elected government leader in Australian history. His tenure as premier was marked by a period of population and economic growth unmatched by any other Australian state. He was known for his parochial style in pushing South Australia's interests, and was known for his ability to secure a disproportionate share of federal funding for the state as well as his shameless haranguing of federal leaders. His string of election wins was supported by a system of malapportionment later dubbed the "Playmander".

Premier Tom Playford of South Australia loses power after 27 years in office.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held office as general secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as premier from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, and his version of it is referred to as Stalinism.

Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.

Rhodesia, officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised country in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the de facto successor state to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia following a unilateral declaration of independence issued by the ruling white-minority government. Throughout this fourteen-year period, Rhodesia faced internal conflict and political unrest. Following the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979, the territory returned to British political control and then subsequently gained internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe in 1980.

Three rebels are executed by Rhodesia, the first executions since UDI, prompting international condemnation.

The Weather Underground was an American Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, or simply Weatherman, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.

An explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three.

The Zapruder film is a silent 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder with a Bell & Howell home-movie camera, as United States president John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. It unexpectedly captured the president's assassination.

For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.

The 1975 Algiers Agreement, also known as the Algiers Accord and the Algiers Declaration, was signed between Iran and Iraq to settle any outstanding territorial disputes along the Iran–Iraq border. Mediated by Algeria, it served as the basis for additional bilateral treaties signed on 13 June 1975 and 26 December 1975. The territorial disputes in question concerned Iraq's Shatt al-Arab and Iran's Khuzestan Province, and Iraq had wished to negotiate to end Iran's support for the then-ongoing Iraqi Kurdish rebellion after suffering a military defeat in the 1974–1975 Shatt al-Arab conflict. On 17 September 1980, shortly after the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi government abrogated the treaty in light of another series of cross-border clashes between the two countries. On 22 September 1980, the treaty was completely voided with the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which triggered the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War.

Algiers Accord: Iran and Iraq announce a settlement of their border dispute.

The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be played in the autumn/winter, directly competing against the long-established National Football League (NFL). However, the USFL ceased operations before that season was scheduled to begin.

The first United States Football League games are played.

Brampton Bierlow, near Barnsley, often known as Brampton, is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It is situated on the south side of the Dearne Valley, between Barnsley and Rotherham.

In the United Kingdom, a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow signals the start of a strike that lasted almost a year and involved the majority [but never all] of the country's miners.

MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ferry which capsized moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the night of 6 March 1987, killing 193 passengers and crew.

The British ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes in about 90 seconds, killing 193.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army, officially known as the Irish Republican Army and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argued that the all-island Irish Republic continued to exist, and it saw itself as that state's army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.

Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers are shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in Operation Flavius.

The Michelangelo virus is a computer virus first discovered on 3 February 1991 in Australia. The virus was designed to infect DOS systems, but did not engage the operating system or make any OS calls. Michelangelo, like all boot sector viruses, operated at the BIOS level. Each year, the virus remained dormant until March 6, the birthday of Renaissance artist Michelangelo. There is no reference to the artist in the virus, and it is doubtful that the virus's developer(s) intended a connection between the virus and the artist. The name was chosen by researchers who noticed the coincidence of the activation date. The actual significance of the date to the author is unknown. Michelangelo is a variant of the already endemic Stoned virus.

The Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers.

The 6 March 2008 Baghdad bombing was a suicide bombing attack on a shopping district in Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq, on 6 March 2008, killing 68 people and wounding 120.

A suicide bomber kills 68 people (including first responders) in Baghdad on the same day that a gunman kills eight students in Jerusalem.