March 31

is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining.

Events

307 - After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
1717 - A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
1774 - American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act.
1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1866 - The Spanish Navy bombs the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile..
1885 - The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
1889 - The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.
1906 - The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States.
1909 - Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1917 - The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the U.S. Virgin Islands.
1918 - Daylight Savings Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
1930 - The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next forty years.
1931 - An earthquake destroys Managua Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1933 - The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.
1942 - In World War II, Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
1949 - The Dominion of Newfoundland joins Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1957 - Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1964 - The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco, begins.
1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1968 - President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not run for re-election.
1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
1970 - Eight terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.
1979 - The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands.
1986 - A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 166.
1986 - Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England.
1994 - The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (see Human evolution).
1996 - The community eWorld created by Apple Computer officially shut down at 12:01 am Pacific Time.
1998 - Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
1999 - The Matrix, first episode of the Matrix trilogy movies, is released in theaters.
2004 - Google announces Gmail, the first web-based mail service to offer 1 gigabyte of storage.
2004 - In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.

Births

250 - Constantius Chlorus, Roman Emperor (d. 306)
1499 - Pope Pius IV (d. 1565)
1504 - Guru Angad Dev, second Sikh guru (d. 1552)
1519 - King Henry II of France (d. 1559)
1536 - Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Japanese shogun (d. 1565)
1596 - René Descartes, French mathematician (d. 1650)
1621 - Andrew Marvell, English poet (d. 1678)
1651 - Karl II, Elector Palatine (d. 1685)
1675 - Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758)
1718 - Marianne Victoria of Borbón, queen regent of Portugal (d. 1781)
1723 - King Frederick V of Denmark (d. 1766)
1732 - Franz Josef Haydn, Austrian composer (d. 1809)
1777 - Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist (d. 1859)
1778 - Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist (d. 1858)
1809 - Edward FitzGerald, English poet (d. 1883)
1811 - Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German chemist and inventor (d. 1899)
1819 - Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1901)
1871 - Arthur Griffith, President of Ireland (d. 1922)
1872 - Alexandra Kollontai, Russian ambassador to Norway (d.1952)
1878 - Jack Johnson, American boxer (d. 1946)
1885 - Pascin, Bulgarian painter (d. 1930)
1890 - William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
1891 - Victor Varconi, Hungarian film actor (d. 1976)
1906 - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979)
1911 - Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (d. 1986)
1914 - Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)
1915 - Albert Hourani, English historian (d. 1993)
1922 - Richard Kiley, American actor and singer (d. 1999)
1924 - Leo Buscaglia, American author (d. 1998)
1926 - John Fowles, English author (d. 2005)
1927 - César Chávez, American labor activist (d. 1993)
1927 - William Daniels, American actor
1928 - Lefty Frizzell, American singer and songwriter (d. 1975)
1928 - Gordie Howe, Canadian hockey player
1929 - Lucille Bliss, American voice actress
1929 - Liz Claiborne, Belgian fashion designer
1929 - Bertram Fields, American lawyer
1931 - Miller Barber, American professional golfer
1933 - Nichita Stănescu, Romanian poet (d. 1983)
1934 - Richard Chamberlain, American actor
1934 - Shirley Jones, American singer and actress
1934 - Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1935 - Herb Alpert, American trumpeter and band leader
1935 - Judith Rossner, American author
1936 - Bob Pulford, Canadian hockey player
1936 - Marge Piercy, American writer
1938 - Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of Delhi
1938 - David Steel, Scottish politician
1939 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia, first President of Georgia (d. 1993)
1939 - Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
1940 - Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senator from Vermont
1940 - Barney Frank, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts
1942 - Michael Savage, talk radio host and commentator
1943 - Christopher Walken, American actor
1945 - Valerie Curtin, American actress, writer, and producer
1945 - Gabe Kaplan, American actor and comedian
1946 - Gonzalo Márquez, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player (d. 1984)
1947 - Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, President of Colombia
1948 - Al Gore, Vice President of the United States
1948 - Rhea Perlman, American actress
1950 - Ed Marinaro, American football player and actor
1950 - Andras Adorjan, Hungarian chess player
1955 - Angus Young, Scottish-born musician (AC/DC)
1957 - Marc McClure, American actor
1963 - Paul Mercurio, Australian actor/dancer
1965 - Tom Barrasso, American hockey player
1966 - Roger Black, British athlete
1971 - Pavel Bure, Russian hockey player
1971 - Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor
1973 - Bold Forbes, Puerto Rican racehorse (d. 2000)
1974 - Stefan Olsdal, Swedish bassist (Placebo)
1974 - Benjamin Eicher, Swiss film director
1976 - Josh Saviano, American actor
1978 - Stephen Clemence, English footballer
1978 - Jérôme Rothen, French footballer
1980 - Chien-Ming Wang, Taiwanese Major League Baseball player
1982 - Philippe Mexès, French footballer
1983 - Paddy McCarthy, Irish footballer

Deaths

1204 - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England (b. 1121)
1340 - Ivan I of Russia, Prince of Moscow (b. 1288)
1567 - Philipp I of Hesse (b. 1504)
1621 - Philip III of Spain (b. 1578)
1631 - John Donne, English writer and prelate (b. 1572)
1671 - Anne Hyde, wife of James II of England (b. 1637)
1703 - Johann Christoph Bach, German composer (b. 1642)
1723 - Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, British Governor of New York and New Jersey (b. 1661)
1727 - Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician and physicist (b. 1643)
1741 - Pieter Burmann the Elder, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1668)
1783 - Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman (b. 1718)
1837 - John Constable, English painter (b. 1776)
1855 - Charlotte Brontë, English author (b. 1816)
1880 - Henryk Wieniawski, Polish composer (b. 1835)
1885 - Franz Wilhelm Abt, German composer (b. 1819)
1913 - John Pierpont Morgan, American financier and banker (b. 1837)
1917 - Emil Adolf von Behring, German physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1854)
1915 - Wyndham Halswelle, British runner (b. 1882)
1931 - Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888)
1945 - Hans Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
1945 - Anne Frank, German-born diarist (b. 1929)
1952 - Wallace H. White, Jr., U.S. Senator from Maine (b. 1877)
1954 - Edwin Armstrong, American electrical engineer and inventor (b. 1890)
1956 - Ralph DePalma, Italian-born race car driver (b. 1884)
1978 - Charles Best, Canadian medical scientist (b. 1899)
1980 - Vladimír Holan, Czech poet (b. 1905)
1980 - Jesse Owens, American athlete (b. 1913)
1981 - Enid Bagnold, British author and playwright (b. 1889)
1984 - Ronald Clark O'Bryan, American murderer (executed) (b. 1944)
1985 - The Singing Nun, Belgian nun and singer (b. 1933)
1988 - William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
1993 - Brandon Lee, American actor (b. 1965)
1995 - Selena, Mexican-American singer (b. 1971)
1998 - Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920)
1998 - Tim Flock, American NASCAR Driver and stock car racing pioneer
1999 - Yuri Knorosov, Russian linguist and epigrapher (b. 1922)
2001 - Clifford Shull, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915)
2002 - Barry Took, British comedian and writer (b. 1928)
2003 - H.S.M. Coxeter, English-born geometer and author (b. 1907)
2003 - Tommy Seebach, Danish singer (b. 1949)
2005 - Stanley J. Korsmeyer, American oncologist (b. 1951)
2005 - Frank Perdue, American poultry farmer (b. 1920)
2005 - Terri Schiavo, cause célèbre for the American right-to-die movement
2006 - Jackie McLean, American jazz saxophonist

Holidays and observances

New Jersey - Thomas Mundy Peterson Day.
César Chávez Day - official holiday in five states and many cities across the U.S.
Freedom Day in Malta.

Liturgical feasts

External links

February 28 - February 29 - (February 30) - March 30 - April 1 - April 30 -- listing of all days

Gourt Home::Gourt :: March 31

Events

Births

Deaths

Holidays and observances

Liturgical feasts

External links