March 31

From TheBestLinks.com

March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years). There are 275 days remaining.

Table of contents

1 Events

2 Births

3 Deaths

4 Holidays and observances

Events

307 - After divorcing his wife Minerva, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
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 - Spanish Navy bombs the harbour of Valpara�so, Chile
1885 - The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
1889 - The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.
1903 - Richard Pearse is reputed to have flown a heavier than air machine in powered flight near Pleasant Point, South Canterbury, New Zealand; some claim 1902
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 U.S. Virgin Islands after paying $25 million to Denmark.
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.
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.
1967 - Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar for the first time at London's Astoria Theatre. He is sent to the hospital afterwards for burns on his hands.
1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
1986 - A Mexicana Boeing 727 enroute to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City killing 166
1990 - Thunder Meets Lightning: Julio C�sar Ch�vez defeats Meldrick Taylor to unify boxing's world junior welterweight title in a very controversial fight.
1991 - The Warsaw Pact comes to an end.
1992 - The television news program Dateline NBC premieres.
1993 - Actor Brandon Lee is accidentally killed during the filming of The Crow.
1994 - The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (see Human evolution).
1998 - Netscape gives the code base of its browser under an open source license agreement, thus creating Mozilla, a non-lucrative organization in order to oversee the development.