On This Day (March 17)

[MSFixR]

• 45 BCE – Caesar's civil war: Julius Caesar scored his final military victory at the Battle of Munda, defeating the Optimate forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger.
• 461 or 493 - Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland died.
• 624 – History of Islam: The Muslims of Medina defeated the Quraysh of Mecca at the Battle of Badr in Badr, present-day Saudi Arabia, a victory that has been attributed to divine intervention or the genius of Muhammad.
• 1845 - The rubber band is patented.
• 1853 - Christian Doppler, Austrian physician and mathematician died. (b. 1803) (The Doppler effect.)
• 1938 - Rudolf Nureyev, Russian-born dancer and choreographer born. (d. 1993)
• 1942 - John Wayne Gacy, American serial killer born. (d. 1994)
• 1945 - The strategically important captured railway Bridge at Remagen, having sped the end of WW-II, but ironically no longer taking artillery fire, collapses ten days into the battle rendering the lodgement on the Germany bank of the Rhine dependent entirely on pontoon bridges.
• 1958 – Vanguard 1 (pictured), the first solar-powered satellite, was launched. It is the oldest human-launched object still in Earth orbit today.
  
  
  Vanguard 1
  
  
• 1966 - Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the Alvin submarine finds a missing American 1.45 megaton hydrogen bomb lost in a refueling accident.
• 1969 – Golda Meir of the Labor Party became the first female Prime Minister of Israel.
• 2004 – Unrest in Kosovo broke out, resulting in more than 20 killed, 200 wounded, and the destruction of several Serb Orthodox churches and shrines.
  
  On This Day (March 16)
  
  
• 1660 – The Long Parliament, originally called by King Charles I of England in 1640 following the Bishops' Wars, dissolved itself.
• 1750 - Caroline Herschel, German-born English astronomer born. (d. 1848)
  
  
  Caroline Herschel
  
  
• 1789 - Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist born. (d. 1854) (As a high school teacher, Ohm started his research with the recently invented electrochemical cell, invented by Italian Count Alessandro Volta. Using equipment of his own creation, Ohm determined that there is a direct proportionality between the potential difference (voltage) applied across a conductor and the resultant electric current which flows through it -- which we now know as Ohm's law.)
• 1867 - First publication of an article by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery, in The Lancet.
• 1872 – In the first-ever final of the FA Cup, the world's oldest football (soccer) competition, Wanderers F.C. defeated Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.
• 1911 - Dr. Josef Mengele, German, accused Nazi war criminal born. (d. 1979)
• 1926 – At the then-Asa Ward Farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, American scientist Robert H. Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket, a 10-foot (3 m) cylinder that reached an altitude of about 41 feet (12 m) and flew for two-and-a-half seconds before falling to the ground.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: American soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Sơn Mỹ village in the Sơn Tịnh district of South Vietnam.
• 1978 – The oil tanker Amoco Cadiz split in two after running aground on Portsall Rocks, about 3 miles (5 km) off the coast of Brittany, France, resulting in one of the largest oil spills ever.
  
  On This Day (March 15)
  
  
• 44 BC – Dictator Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic was stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
• 1311 – The Catalan Company defeated Walter V of Brienne in the Battle of Halmyros and took control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.
• 1877 – Cricketers representing England and Australia began the first match in Test cricket at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• 1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (pictured) was forced to abdicate in the February Revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
  
  
  Tsar Nicholas II
  
  
• 1937 - H. P. Lovecraft, American writer died. (b. 1890) (An author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction.)
• 1939 – Nazi German troops began their occupation of Czechoslovakia and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
• 1962 - Arthur Compton, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate died. (b. 1892) (An American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his discovery of the Compton effect. In physics, Compton scattering or the Compton effect is the decrease in energy (increase in wavelength) of an X-ray or gamma ray photon, when it interacts with matter.)
• 1988 – Iran-Iraq War: Iraqi forces began attacking the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons, killing up to 5,000 people.
• 2004 - Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed.

[Blackmask]

1845 - The rubber band is patented.

Right up there with the brilliance of the paper clip