What Happened in March?

The French - Algerian war or the the War of Algerian independence comes to an end with the signing of a peace agreement to end the seven-year Algerian War and bringing an end to 130 years of colonial French rule in Algeria. Between 500,000 and a million Algerians had been killed, out of an estimated population of just three million before the war. French losses were also high; between 150,000 and 200,000 French soldiers lost their lives, with the vast majority of them dying in hospitals. More

The Alcatraz Federal Prison in San Francisco Bay closes. The first batch of 137 prisoners had arrived at Alcatraz on August 11, 1934 from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. During its 29 year history, Alcatraz held some of the most dangerous civilian prisoners, including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz”. More

Civil rights marchers, including John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr., are attacked by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in what becomes known as "Bloody Sunday." More

The first American combat troops arrive in Vietnam - 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade arrived in Da Nang to protect the U.S. airbase and to allow the Vietnamese troops then guarding the base from Viet Cong attacks to return to combat. More

On March 18, 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov was the first man ever to walk in space when he exited the spacecraft on a tether and floated for approximately 12 minutes, 9 seconds outside the capsule. He was the pilot of the Voskhod 2 mission, part of the Soviet Union's attempt in competition with the US to reach the moon.

President Lyndon B. Johnson places the Alabama National Guard under federal control to protect a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery to the state capital. 2,500 U.S. Army troops and 1,900 Alabama National Guard troops, along with FBI agents and U.S. Marshals were dispatched to provide protection for the marchers. On March 7, demonstrators sought to march there to protest the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black man shot by a state trooper. State and local police had attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas. Televised scenes of “Bloody Sunday” outraged many Americans. More

Martin Luther King Jr. leads his first anti-war march in Chicago. Reinforcing the connection between war abroad and injustice at home: “The bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America”. More

Mauritius achieves independence from British rule.

Vietnamese villagers including women and children are killed by U.S. soldiers in the village of My Lai by members of an army platoon commanded by Lt. William Calley. On September 5, 1969, he was charged with the premeditated murder in the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.  Expand +

Lt. William Calley is convicted of murder in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. He was sentenced to be dismissed from the Army and to be confined at hard labor for life. On August 1971, Lieutenant General Albert O. Connor, commanding general of Third U.S. Army, reduced Calley’s sentence to twenty years confinement.  Expand +

Pioneer 10 is launched to study Jupiter. It was NASA's first mission to the outer planets. The mission was a spectacular success and the spacecraft notched a series of firsts unmatched by any other robotic spacecraft to date. More

All 346 occupants of a Turkish Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC 10 were killed after the plane suffered an explosive decompression when an improperly secured hold door detached passing 12000ft in the climb shortly after departing Paris Orly airport. A similar DC10 explosive decompression in Canada two years earlier, had identified an identical fault in the door closure mechanism which had allowed it to indicate and appear secured. Non-mandated corrective actions promulgated after that investigation had not been completed on the aircraft at the time of the accident. More

The Arab oil ministers agree to end the embargo against the United States, Europe, and Japan on March 18, 1974, on the condition that the United States also promotes Israeli-Syrian disengagement. 

A peace treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt at the White House, ending 31 years of conflict between the two countries. The historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, was agreed to by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat and was based on the Camp David Accords mediated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

The Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melts down. This was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history. A combination of equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and worker errors led to TMI-2’s partial meltdown and very small off site releases of radioactivity. More

U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States was boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Despite Carter's efforts to recruit allies, several key nations, including Britain and France, did not join the boycott. In the end, 65 nations skipped the games. Expand +

President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in Washington, D.C. More

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil and causing one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history. More

Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union. He had served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 and additionally as head of state beginning in 1988 and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989. He was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize 1990. Gorbachev resigned form the presidency on December 25, 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated. More