World/nation trivia: The week of March 9-15

March 9:

1841, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. The Amistad, ruled 7 to 1 in favor of a group of illegally enslaved Africans who were captured off the U.S. coast after seizing control of a Spanish schooner, La Amistad. The justices ruled the Africans should be set free.

1916, more than 400 Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing 18 Americans.

1945, during World War II, over 300 U.S. B-29 bombers began Operation Meetinghouse, a massive firebombing raid on Tokyo. The raid killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, left 1 million homeless and destroyed 16 square miles of the city.

1997, rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) was killed in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles at age 24.

March 10:

1864, President Abraham Lincoln assigned Ulysses S. Grant, who had just received his commission as lieutenant general, to the command of the Armies of the United States.

1913, abolitionist and Underground Railroad “conductor” Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia in Auburn, New York.

1959, thousands of Tibetans rebelled against occupying Chinese forces, surrounding the Dalai Lama’s palace to protect him from potential harm. Fierce fighting between Tibetans and Chinese forces ensued in the following days, causing the Dalai Lama to flee Tibet for India, where he remains in exile today.

March 11:

1918, what was believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas; 46 soldiers would die. (The influenza outbreak would ultimately kill an estimated 20 million to 40 million people worldwide.)

1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act, which provided war supplies to Allied countries during World War II.

1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami struck Japan’s northeastern coast, killing nearly 20,000 people and severely damaging the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

March 12:

1912, the Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia, founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides.

1930, Mohandas Gandhi began his 24-day, 240-mile “Salt March” to the Indian village of Dandi (then called Navsari) as an act of non-violent civil disobedience to protest the salt tax levied by colonial Britain.

1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.)

2003, Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee.

March 13:

1781, the seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, was discovered by astronomer William Herschel.

1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved the Butler Act, which prohibited public schools from teaching the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure March 21; the bill was challenged in court later that year in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Tennessee ultimately repealed the law in 1967.)

2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the papal name Francis. He was the first pontiff from the Americas, and the first from outside Europe since Pope Gregory III’s death in the year 741.

2020, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

March 14:

1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized the American cotton industry.

1967, the body of President John F. Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

1973, future U.S. senator and presidential candidate John McCain was released from North Vietnamese captivity after being held as a prisoner of war for over five years.

2018, Stephen Hawking, the best-known theoretical physicist of his time, died at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of 76 after living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for 55 years.

March 15:

44 B.C., on the “ides of March,” Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by Roman senators, including Brutus and Cassius, who feared Caesar was working to establish a monarchy.

1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, addressing a joint session of Congress, called for new legislation to guarantee every American’s right to vote. The result was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

2012, convicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich entered a federal prison in Colorado, where the 55-year-old Democrat began serving a 14-year sentence for corruption. (He was released in February 2020 after President Donald Trump commuted his sentence; Trump pardoned Blagojevich in February 2025.)

2019, a gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, streaming the massacre live on Facebook.

– Associated Press