| In 105, A.D., Ts'ai Lun invented paper, made from bamboo, mulberry, and other fibers, along with fish nets and rags. He lived and served as an official at the Chinese Imperial Court at the Han Dynasty in China. He presented samples of paper to Emperor Han Ho Ti. In China, before Tsai, Lun, books were made of bamboo, which were heavy and clumsy. Some books were made of silks, which were very expensive. In the West at that time, books were made of sheepskin or calfskin. |
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| Romeo Montevecchio and Juliet Cappelletto are married at Cittadella in Italy. |  |
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| Perhaps the most destructive eruption from Mount Etna came in 1669. This is when lava flowed down the slope and ended up destroying a dozen villages. In its destruction it managed to cover the western portion of Catania. This eruption had historical importance because it is considered to be the first known attempt in history that people dug trenches to divert the lava. |  |
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| The history of United States Army Corps of Engineers can be traced to June 1775, when the Continental Congress organized an army with a chief engineer and two assistants. It was not until 1779, however, that Congress created a separate Corps of Engineers. Army engineers, including several French officers, were instrumental in some of the hard-fought battles of the Revolutionary War. |
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| French artist-architect Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant was hired to plan the physical layout of the city. L'Enfant planned for two series of broad avenues, named for the states, that would converge into circular intersections, which were intended to complete long vistas and give direction and character to the city. Although L'Enfant's design became the basis for landsales, construction and planning, President Washington fired him a year after he was hired because L'Enfant "forged ahead regardless of his orders, the budget, or landowners with prior claims." He took his plans for D.C. with him to France, but renowned mathematician, astronomer and publisher Benjamin Banneker, who was assisting commissioner Andrew Ellicott in the survey of the site, saved the project by reproducing the plans in their entirety from memory. |
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| In 1791, Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia, Penn. became the first person to receive more than one U.S. patent. The Secretary of State issued him the first patent on a threshing machine for corn and grain, being the seventh in the records of the office. On the same day he was granted three more letters patent: for breaking and swingling hemp; for cutting and polishing marble; and to raise the nap on cloths. Although his threshing machine was too complicated to work efficiently, no other inventors made significant improvements until 1820. |
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| Samuel Read Hall (1795-1877) taught school in several northern New England communities, where he experimented with the use of blackboards. Shortly after he arrived in Concord, Vermont, he established a training school for teachers in 1823. The Concord Academy was the first American normal school. |
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| The office of superintendent of Indian trade was in the War Department in 1806. The superintendent was responsible for the operation of the factory trading system. The abolition of the trading system removed even this effort to centralize the work with the Indians within the War Department. On March 11, 1824 Secretary of War John C. Calhoun created what he called the Bureau of Indian Affairs without authorization from the Congress. McKenney, formerly superintendent of Indian trade, was appointed to head the office, with two clerks assigned to him as assistants. |
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| The eruption of Mauna Kea on this day in 1867 caused the largest earthquake in Hawaii, registering the equivalent of 8 on the Richter Scale. Mauna Loa ("Long Mountain") rises just over 13,600 feet above sea level. The majestic wonder has erupted 39 times since 1832. The last eruption ended in 1984. |  |
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| The great blizzard of 1888 (March 11-14). dumped 20" of snow in Baltimore and 40" in New York. Drifts in the Big Apple were up to 20 feet and over 200 people perished. The "Great White Hurricane," as it was called, paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine. Telegraph and telephone wires snapped, isolating New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington for days. Two hundred ships were grounded, and at least one hundred seamen died. Fire stations were immobilized, and property loss from fire alone was estimated at $25 million. Overall, more than 400 deaths were reported. |
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| In his original game, which he invented while at the Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA, Naismith used a soccer ball which were thrown into peach baskets (with their bottoms intact). The first public basketball game was in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1892. Springfield’s newspaper called it a "Basket Football Game." Famous football coach Alonzo Stagg who was a member of the Springfield College staff at that time. Stagg scored the only basket for the faculty team. |
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| The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Baltimore manager John McGraw has signed a Cherokee Indian named Tokohoma. It is really black 2B Charlie Grant, who McGraw is trying to pass off as an Indian, but the ruse does not work. |
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| Franklin Roosevelt, eager to assure public consent for this controversial plan, explained to the public and the press that his plan was comparable to one neighbor's lending another a garden hose to put out a fire in his home. "What do I do in such a crisis?" the president asked at a press conference. "I don't say... 'Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.' …I don't want $15 — I want my garden hose back after the fire is over." A total of $50.1 billion worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to Free France and $1.6 billion to China. |
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| Laine hit the big time in 1949, with two huge number one hits, "That Lucky Old Sun" and "Mule Train." Another chart-topper, 1950's "The Cry of the Wild Goose," was his last for Mercury, and he signed with Columbia just one year later. |  |
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| Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to former McCarthy aide and friend of Cohn's, G. David Schine. McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his questioning of Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker the previous year. Hearings opened on April 22. |  |
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| "Richard III" was the first film to have its U.S. premiere in theatres and on TV simultaneously. It occurred on March 11, 1956, when NBC-TV broadcast the film on the same day it had its U.S. premiere in New York. The telecast was the longest single presentation of a film or play - three hours counting the commercials - ever shown on TV up to that time. |  |
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| One important champion was Herb Stempel, a working class man who was very intelligent and had a terrific memory. However, Geritol decided that the image Stempel gave, the very one that the producers cultivated, was a negative one. Stempel was sweaty, nervous and not attractive - which is not an image that the company wanted. Geritol told the producers to come up with a new champion, so they discovered a Columbia University literature professor named Charles Van Doren, who was attractive, smart and charming by nature. He defeated the champion on December 5, as producers made Stempel deliberately lose. He answered several questions wrong during that show on purpose - even ones that he would have been able to get right if he had not been fed the answers. Stempel was disgruntled and angry that Van Doren received a great amount of attention where he received little. He soon told authorities that the game was fixed, but because there was no evidence, nothing happened at first. Van Doren kept winning for about four months, collecting $129,000 in the process. He finally ended up losing on March 11, 1957 to Vivian Nearing. |
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| In 1960, Pioneer V was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in one of the first in-depth attempts to study the solar system. The spacecraft was carried into space on a Thor-Able three stage rocket. It was a beach ball sized spacecraft equipped with four paddle like solar cells that recharged the on-board batteries that provided electrical power. Pioneer V entered an orbit around the Sun between Earth and Venus. It provided a wealth of new data on interplanetary space including measurements of magnetic fields, cosmic radiation, electrical fields and micrometeorites. It was stabilized by slowly spinning about its axis. |
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| Checker’s first two singles, “The Class” and “Dancing Dinosaur” were minor hits. Cameo encouraged him to make his own version of “The Twist,” a song originally written and performed by Hank Ballard, which was already having modest success on the charts. But it was Checker’s version and his accompanying dance routine that gave the song new life. "Pony Time" (1961), a rewrite of Clarence "Pine Top" Smith's "Boogie Woogie", became Checker's second gold disc and second US number 1, before "Let's Twist Again" established him as a truly international star. |
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| Unlike all of the Supremes' other songs, this was recorded in Los Angeles instead of Hitsville USA in Detroit. Holland-Dozier-Holland wanted the sound for this song to be different than the Supremes' other hits. After the song was recorded, they were dissatisfied with the way the bass and drums and percussion sounded, so these parts were re-recorded at Hitsville by the Funk Brothers (a studio band who worked for Motown). |
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| Redding wrote the first verse of the song, under the abbreviated title "Dock of the Bay", at a houseboat in Sausalito, California. He had just come off his famed performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, just days earlier in June 1967. While touring in support of the LPs King & Queen (collaborations with female vocalist Carla Thomas) and his live set Live in Europe, he continued to scribble lines of the song on napkins and hotel paper. In December of that year he joined producer and guitarist Steve Cropper at a recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Together, they completed the music and melancholy lyrics of "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay". |
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| "Without You" was originally recorded by Badfinger in 1970. It was on their second album, “No Dice.” Nilsson heard this in 1971 and thought it was a Beatles song. Badfinger was signed to Apple Records, The Beatles' label. This won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal in 1973. |  |
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| Soon after the release of “Flowing Rivers,” in 1977 Andy embarked on his first American concert tour which was a huge success. His single: “I Just Want To Be Your Everything,” written by Barry, was one of the biggest selling records of 1977. His second international hit which he wrote with Barry became: “Love Is Thicker Than Water.” Both singles reached the number one spot in the U.S. charts and both became certified gold. |
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| Upon the death of Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev, at age 54, was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party on March 11, 1985. He became the Party's first leader to have been born after the Russian Revolution of 1917. As de facto ruler of the Soviet Union, he tried to reform the stagnating Communist Party and the state economy by introducing glasnost ("openness"), perestroika ("restructuring"), and uskoreniye ("acceleration", of economic development). |
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| A replay official in a booth would decide what plays to review and make the final ruling, regardless of the current score or the amount of time left in the game. The replay official communicated with the game officials via radio transmitters. However, there was no time limit on how long the replay official could review a play, a major reason why the system was eventually repealed in 1992. |
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| "Lost in Your Eyes," the first single from her second album, Electric Youth, became Gibson's biggest hit early in 1989, staying at number one for three weeks. Electric Youth, released in the spring of 1989, also hit number one, spending five weeks at the top of the charts. |  |
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| McCartney was awarded the MBE on October 16, 1965, by Queen Elizabeth II, and, on March 11, 1997, he was knighted (Knight Bachelor) by her for his services to music. He dedicated his knighthood to fellow Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr and the people of Liverpool. |  |
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| In 2007, in the U.S., Daylight Saving Time begins three weeks earlier than in previous years. It was reset by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed into law by the president on August 8, 2005. Among hundreds of other provisions giving incentives and subsidies concerning energy production and conservation, the Act set the change to DST to begin three weeks earlier, on the second Sunday of March, and end a week later on the first Sunday of November. When it was first introduced in the U.S., On March 31, 1918, the U.S. first began daylight saving time (DST) on Easter Sunday, when clocks were set ahead by one hour. The concept was introduced earlier in Great Britain during WWI as a coal-conserving measure. |
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105 Paper invented
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1302 Romeo & Juliet's wedding day, according
to Shakespeare
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1669 Volcano Etna in Italy erupts killing 15,000
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1779 US army Corps of Engineers established (first
time)
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1789 Benjamin Banneker with L'Enfant begin to
lay out Washington DC
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1791 Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia, PA
first to receive multiple patents
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1823 First normal school in US opens, Concord
Academy, Concord VT
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1824 US War Department creates the Bureau of Indian
Affairs
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1867 Great Mauna Loa eruption (Hawaiian volcano)
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1888 Great blizzard of '88 strikes northeast US
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1892 First public basketball game (Springfield
MA)
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1901 Cincinnati Enquirer reports Reds signed a
Cherokee Indian
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1941 FDR signs Lend-Lease Bill (lend money to
Britain)
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1950 "The Cry of the Wild Goose" by
Frankie Laine topped the charts
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1954 US Army charges Senator Joseph McCarthy used
undue pressure tactics
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1956 Sir Lawrence Olivier starred in the three-hour
afternoon NBC-TV special, "Richard III"
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1958 Charles Van Doren finally loses on TV game
show "21"
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1958 Starting this season, American League batters
are required to wear batting helmets
1960 Pioneer 5 launched; orbits sun between Earth
& Venus
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1961 "Pony Time" by Chubby Checker topped
the charts
More ...
1967 "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone"
by the Supremes topped the charts
More ...
1968 Otis Redding posthumously receives gold record
for "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay"
More ...
1972 "Without You" by Nilsson topped
the charts
More ...
1978 "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water"
by Andy Gibb topped the charts
More ...
1985 Mikhail S Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko
as Soviet leader
More ...
1986 One million days since traditional foundation
of Rome, 4/21/753 BC
1986 NFL adopts instant replay
rule
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1987 Wayne Gretzky scores 1,500th NHL point
1989 "Lost in Your Eyes" by Debbie Gibson
topped the charts
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1997 Ashes of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry
are launched into space
1997 Beatle Paul McCartney knighted Sir Paul by
Queen Elizabeth II
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2006 After a record 'dry spell' of 143 days, it
rains in Phoenix, AZ
2007 2007 Daylight Savings Time falls back
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