Beware the Ides of March? A look at March 15 in history
Julius Caesar was forewarned about the "Ides of March." March 15 wasn't his best day.
Today is March 15 -- known as the Ides of March in the Roman calendar. This was not a good day for Julius Ceasar.
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Today is Monday, March 15, the 74th day of 2009. There are 291 days left in the year.
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Highlights in history on this date:
44 B.C. - Roman dictator Julius Caesar is assassinated by a group of Roman senators including Cassius and his friend Brutus. Caesar had been forewarned of the 'Ides of March.'
1493 - Christopher Columbus returns to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.
1603 - Samuel de Champlain, French navigator and explorer, sails for the New World.
1776 - U.S. Congress resolves that authority of British Crown should be suppressed.
1848 - Hungarian intellectuals stage bloodless revolution in Budapest against Austro-Hungarian empire. It is put down by Russian troops the next year.
1874 - France assumes protectorate over central Indochina region of Annam, which breaks off vassalage to China.
1875 - The Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York City, John McCloskey, is named the first American cardinal by Pope Pius IX.
1894 - France and Germany agree on boundaries between French Congo and Cameroons.
1903 - British conquest of northern Nigeria is complete.
1913 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson holds the first open presidential news conference.
1916 - U.S. force of 12,000 soldiers under Gen. John Pershing is ordered to Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.
1917 - Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates after humiliating defeat by the Germans. The Russian state and military begin to dissolve.
1919 - The American Legion is founded in Paris.
1937 - The world's first blood bank is established at Chicago's Cook County Hospital by Dr. Bernard Fantus. It is a breakthrough for surgical procedures and emergency treatments.
1938 - Nazi Germany seizes Czechoslovakia with little resistance, after having annexed the Sudetenland, with its fortifications, the previous year.
1988 - Israeli authorities impose travel ban on Palestinians in occupied territories.
1989 - Soviet Union's President Mikhail S. Gorbachev calls for rapid measures to ease chronic Soviet food shortages.
1990 - Iraq executes London newspaper reporter, Farzad Bazoft, after a closed-trial conviction for spying.
1991 - Serbian President Borisav Jovic resigns after the collective presidency fails to declare a nationwide state of emergency.
1992 - A second earthquake in a short time strikes eastern Turkey, killing an estimated 800 people.
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