What Happened in March?

Physicist Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket.

Herbert Hoover is inaugurated as the 31st President of the United States.

President Herbert Hoover signed a Public Law that made the "Star-Spangled Banner” the official U.S. national anthem of the United states. The words are from a poem written by Francis Scott Key in 1814. During the War of 1812, on September 13, 1814, Key watched a night-time battle between Great Britain and America that took place in Baltimore, Maryland at Fort McHenry. When he saw the American flag still flying in the morning, he wrote a poem that tells the story of his experience. More

Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr, the 20-month-old son of the famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the nursery on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jersey. More

Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States and delivers his famous "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" speech.

Adolf Hitler orders the rearmament of Germany including military conscription in violation of The Treaty of Versailles. More

German troops re-occupied the Rhineland, a de-militarized zone in Germany according to the Treaty of Versailles that bordered on France. This action was directly against the terms which Germany had accepted after the First World War. Expand +

Hitler orders the invasion of Austria to begin and German soldiers in tanks and armored vehicles crossed the border into Austria, encountering no resistance. Hitler joined the invaded forces as they rushed towards Viena and in Linz, where he had attended school, he called for an immediate Anschluss (Annexation). The next day, Expand +

The three year Spanish Civil War comes to an end as the Republican defenders of Madrid surrender and the victorious Nationalists entered the capital city. It is estimated that up million lives were lost in the most devastating conflict in Spanish history. General Francisco Franco went on to rule Spain as a ruthless dictator until his death in 1975 when Spain finally became a democracy. More

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act, to provide military aid to Allied nations during World War II.

U.S. troops capture the strategic bridge of Remagen in Germany during World War II.

More than three hundred American bombers drop incendiary bombs on Tokyo during a three-hour raid A firestorm greater than that in Dresden erupts, killing 130,000 and displacing a million people. The raid was one of over a hundred such raids that eventually laid waste to sixty percent of the city's total area. More

President Harry S. Truman outlines the U.S. policy to contain Soviet expansion. n a speech to a joint session of Congress, The announcement is referred to as the "Truman Doctrine" and is considered to be the official start of the Cold War. More

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (née Greenglass) are convicted of spying and passing secret information about the atomic bomb and other military information to the Soviet Union during and after World War II, The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953 at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York.  Expand +

The United States Senate ratifies the peace treaty with Japan, officially ending World War II.

Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a U.S. national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio which is known as “infant paralysis” because it mainly affects children, The first Polio epidemic in the U.S, took place in Vermont in the summer of 1894 and thousands being affected annually by the 20th century. The number of cases is 1952 were 58,000. A massive Polio Vaccine Trial Begins in U.S. More

The Supreme Court rules that segregation on buses in Alabama is unconstitutional in the case of Browder v. Gayle.

The EEC is created by the signing of the Treaties of Rome. France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg . building on the success of the Coal and Steel Treaty, expand their cooperation to other economic sectors by signing two treaties, creating the European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). These bodies come into being on January 1, 1958. It was one of the first steps to the eventual creation of the European Union (EU). More

Tibetans rebel in Lhasa against the Chinese government which had invaded Tibet in1950. Chinese troops launched a counter-offensive against the Tibetans ,capturing Lhasa and resulting in the deaths of some 2,000 Tibetan rebels. The Chinese government dissolved the Tibetan government headed by the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama assumed control of the Tibetan government on April 5, 1959. The Dalai Lama and some 80 supporters fled into exile to India. Some 87,000 Tibetans and 2,000 Chinese government troops were killed, and some 100,000 Tibetans fled as refugees to India, Nepal, and Bhutan during the conflict.

The Sharpeville massacre in South Africa occurs as police open fire on a crowd of approximately 5,000 demonstrating against apartheid, resulting in at least 91 people killed and 238 people wounded. Many people were shot in the back as they fled from the police. More