1496 The Jews are expelled from Syria.
1507 Cesare Borgia dies while fighting alongside his brother, the king of Navarre, in Spain.
1609 The Bermuda Islands become an English colony.
1664 New Jersey becomes a British colony.
1789 The United States Post Office is established.
1809 Great Britain signs a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country.
1863 President Jefferson Davis delivers his State of the Confederacy address.
1879 The British Zulu War begins.
1884 Mississippi establishes the first U.S. state college for women.
1894 Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
1903 The Czar of Russia issues a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout the land.
1909 British Parliament increases naval appropriations for Great Britain.
1911 Dr. Fletcher of the Rockefeller Institute discovers the cause of infantile paralysis.
1912 Juliet Low founds the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia.
1917 Russian troops mutiny as the "February Revolution" begins.
1930 Gandhi begins his march to the sea to symbolizes his defiance of British rule in India.
1933 President Paul von Hindenburg drops the flag of the German Republic and orders that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.
1933 President Roosevelt makes the first of his Sunday evening fireside chats.
1938 German troops enter Austria without firing a shot, forming the anschluss (union) of Austria and Germany.
1939 Pius XII is elected the new pope in Rome.
1944 Great Britain bars all travel to neutral Ireland, which is suspected of collaborating with Nazi Germany.
1945 Diarist Anne Frank dies in a German concentration camp.
1959 The U.S. House of Representatives joins the Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii.
1984 Lebanese President Gemayel opens the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war.
1985 The United States and the Soviet Union begin arms control talks in Geneva.
1994 The Church of England ordains women priests.
Born on March 12
1554 Richard Hooker, English theologian (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity).
1858 Adolph Simon Ochs, publisher of The New York Times.
1862 Jane Delano, nurse, teacher, founder of the Red Cross.
1890 Vaslav Nijinsky, Russian ballet dancer.
1922 Jack Kerouac, American novelist (On the Road).
1928 Edward Albee, American dramatist (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf).
1946 Patricia Hampl, poet and memoirist (A Romantic Education, Virgin Time).