March 31

Events

Pre-1600

• 307 - After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, daughter of the retired Roman emperor Maximian.
• 1146 - Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
• 1174 - A conspiracy against Saladin, aiming to restore the Fatimid Caliphate, is revealed in Cairo, involving senior figures of the former Fatimid regime and the poet Umara al-Yamani. Modern historians doubt the extent and danger of the conspiracy reported in official sources, but its ringleaders will be publicly executed over the following weeks.
• 1492 – Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile sign the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, ordering all Jews in their kingdoms to either convert to Christianity or leave the country.
• 1521 - Ferdinand Magellan and fifty of his men came ashore to present-day Limasawa to participate in the first Catholic mass in the Philippines.

  1601–1900

• 1657 - The Long Parliament presents the Humble Petition and Advice offering Oliver Cromwell the British throne, which he eventually declines.
• 1706 - The last session of history of the Catalan Courts, the parliamentary body of the Principality of Catalonia, ends. Catalonia's constitutional modernisation passed by the Courts aims to improve the guarantee of individual, political and economic rights.
• 1717 - A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, preached in the presence of King George I of Great Britain, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
• 1761 - The 1761 Lisbon earthquake strikes off the Iberian Peninsula with an estimated magnitude of 8.5, six years after another quake destroyed the city.
• 1774 - American Revolution: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
• 1814 - The Sixth Coalition occupies Paris after Napoleon's Grande Armée capitulates.
• 1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
• 1885 - The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
• 1889 - The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.
• 1899 - Philippine–American War: Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.

  1901–present

• 1901 - Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák premieres at the National Opera House in Prague.
• 1905 - Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany declares his support for Moroccan independence in Tangier, beginning the First Moroccan Crisis.
• 1906 - The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
• 1909 - Serbia formally withdraws its opposition to Austro-Hungarian actions in the Bosnian Crisis.
• 1913 - The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.
• 1917 - According to the terms of the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, the islands become American possessions.
• 1918 - Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
• 1918 - Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
• 1921 - The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
• 1930 - The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty-eight years.
• 1931 - An earthquake in Nicaragua destroys Managua; killing 2,000.
• 1931 - A Transcontinental & Western Air airliner crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.
• 1933 - The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
• 1939 - Events preceding World War II in Europe: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pledges British military support to the Second Polish Republic in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany.
• 1942 - World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
• 1945 - World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
• 1949 - The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
• 1951 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
• 1957 - Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
• 1958 - In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
• 1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
• 1964 - Brazilian General Olímpio Mourão Filho orders his troops to move towards Rio de Janeiro, beginning the coup d'état and 21 years of military dictatorship.
• 1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
• 1966 - The Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins the 1966 United Kingdom general election.
• 1968 - American President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to the nation of "Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam" in a television address. At the conclusion of his speech, he announces: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
• 1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
• 1980 - The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
• 1986 - Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 crashes into the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range near the Mexican town of Maravatío, killing 167.
• 1990 - Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
• 1991 - Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1991 - The Warsaw Pact formally disbands.
• 1992 - The, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
• 1992 - The Treaty of Federation is signed in Moscow.
• 1993 - The Macao Basic Law is adopted by the Eighth National People's Congress of China to take effect December 20, 1999.
• 1995 - Selena is murdered by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas.
• 1995 - TAROM Flight 371, an Airbus A310-300, crashes near Balotesti, Romania, killing all 60 people on board.
• 1998 - Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license.
• 2004 - Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
• 2005 - The dwarf planet Makemake is discovered by a team led by astronomer Michael E. Brown at the Palomar Observatory.
• 2016 - NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko return to Earth after a yearlong mission at the International Space Station.
• 2018 - Start of the 2018 Armenian revolution.
• 2018 - Baldi's Basics in education and learning was publicly released.
• 2023 - A historic tornado outbreak occurs in the American Midwest and South.

  Births

Pre-1600

• 1360 - Philippa of Lancaster
• 1499 - Pope Pius IV
• 1504 - Guru Angad, Indian religious leader
• 1519 - Henry II of France
• 1536 - Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Japanese shōgun
• 1596 - René Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher

  1601–1900

• 1601 - Jakov Mikalja, Italian linguist and lexicographer
• 1621 - Andrew Marvell, English poet and politician
• 1651 - Charles II, Elector Palatine, German husband of Princess Wilhelmine Ernestine of Denmark
• 1675 - Pope Benedict XIV
• 1685 - Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer
• 1718 - Mariana Victoria of Spain
• 1723 - Frederick V of Denmark
• 1730 - Étienne Bézout, French mathematician and theorist
• 1732 - Joseph Haydn, Austrian pianist and composer
• 1740 - Panoutsos Notaras, Greek politician
• 1747 - Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, German pianist and composer
• 1777 - Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist and engineer
• 1778 - Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist and ornithologist
• 1794 - Thomas McKean Thompson McKennan, American lawyer and politician, 2nd United States Secretary of the Interior
• 1809 - Edward FitzGerald, English poet and translator
• 1809 - Otto Lindblad, Swedish composer
• 1813 - Félix María Zuloaga, Mexican general and unconstitutional interim president
• 1819 - Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst
• 1823 - Mary Boykin Chesnut, American author
• 1833 - Mary Abigail Dodge, American writer and essayist
• 1835 - John La Farge, American artist
• 1847 - Hermann de Pourtalès, Swiss sailor
• 1847 - Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev, Russian mathematician and theorist
• 1851 - Francis Bell, New Zealand lawyer and politician, 20th Prime Minister of New Zealand
• 1855 - Alfred E. Hunt, American businessman
• 1859 - Emil Fenyvessy, Hungarian actor and screenwriter
• 1865 - Anandi Gopal Joshi, Indian physician
• 1871 - Arthur Griffith, Irish journalist and politician, 3rd President of Dáil Éireann
• 1872 - Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet manager and critic, founded the Ballets Russes
• 1874 - Benjamín G. Hill, Mexican revolutionary general, governor of Sonora
• 1874 - Henri Marteau, French violinist and composer
• 1876 - Borisav Stanković, Serbian author
• 1878 - Jack Johnson, American boxer
• 1884 - Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer and academic
• 1885 - Pascin, Bulgarian-American painter and illustrator
• 1890 - Ben Adams, American jumper
• 1890 - William Lawrence Bragg, Australian-English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1891 - Victor Varconi, Hungarian-American actor and director
• 1893 - Clemens Krauss, Austrian conductor and manager
• 1893 - Herbert Meinhard Mühlpfordt, German physician and historian
• 1895 - Vardis Fisher, American author and academic
• 1900 - Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester