On This Day (March 20)

[MSFixR]

• 43 BCE - Ovid, Roman poet born. (d. 17)
• 687 - St. Cuthbert, patron saint of Northumbria died. (born c. 634).
• 1852 – Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe (pictured) about slavery in the United States before the Civil War, was first published.
  
  
  Harriet Beecher Stowe
• 1883 – Eleven countries signed the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, one of the first intellectual property treaties.
• 1916 - Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity, a gravitational concept. (Space-time is curved)
• 1987 – The antiretroviral drug Zidovudine (AZT) became the first antiviral medication approved for use against HIV and AIDS.
• 1995 – The Aum Shinrikyo sect carried out a poison gas attack on the Tokyo Subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands of others with sarin.
• 2003 – A U.S.–led coalition force invaded Iraq, beginning the Iraq War.
• 2006 - Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country's banana crop.
  
  Today (at 5:48 UTC) is the vernal equinox. An equinox in astronomy is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the center of the Sun can be observed to be directly above the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year.
  
  
  Diagram of the Earth's seasons as seen from the north. Far right: December solstice
  
  The Earth's seasons are caused by the rotation axis of the Earth not being perpendicular to its orbital plane. The Earth's axis is tilted at an angle of approximately 23.44° from the orbital plane. This tilt is called the axial tilt. As a consequence, for half a year (from around 20 March to around 22 September) the northern hemisphere tips toward the Sun, with the maximum around 21 June, while for the other half year the southern hemisphere has this honor, with the maximum around 21 December.

[Blackmask]

# 2003 – A U.S.–led coalition force invaded Iraq, beginning the Iraq War.

5 years and counting. :/

2006 - Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country's banana crop.

Bananas were very expensive that year.