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Events, deaths, births, of MAR 10
[For Mar 10 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Mar 20 — 1700s: Mar 21 — 1800s: Mar 22 — 1900~2099: Mar 23]
ALTERNATE SITES    ALL FOR 030310      ANY DAY  OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY     ART “4” MAR 10
• First Ford Mustang car… • La perle de l'Egypte… • Masaryk “suicided” by the Communists... • Abortionist is murdered by pro–lifer... • First Book–of–the–Month Club selection... • First telephone call... • Edison's assistant Upton dies... • ESPN plans Web site... • US starts futile war crimes trial of US soldiers... • Vietnam Communists surround Ban Me Thuot... • Anti–trust suit against Northern Securities... • $13 million to compensate for redlining... • US attempt to broker WW II peace... • 100'000 Tokyo civilians killed by US firebombing... • US gets half of Mexico... • Russian aggressors advance 4 km in Finland... • Dumb tsar provokes revolution... • Gandhi convicted... • Martin Luther King's killer is guilty... • Scarscale diet doctor murdered... • Battle of Neuve Chapelle... • Pedro de Alarcón is born...
Sassou NguessoOn a March 10:
2002 In the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), President Denis Sassou-Nguesso [< photo] “wins” an election from which his main rivals are excluded. General Sassou-Nguesso (born in 1943) became a Soviet-backed Marxist dictator in a 1979 coup, lost a 1992 election, seized power again on 16 October 1997 after a civil war.
2001 El primer ministro japonés Yoshiro Mori anuncia a los líderes de su partido (PLD) su intención de abandonar el cargo gubernamental y también la presidencia de su formación política.
2000 Chechen patriots counterattack the Russian aggressors in Saadi-Khutor.
2000 The NASDAQ Composite Index closes at a record 5048.63, its all-time high for years to come. The bubble is soon to burst, which was inflated by heavy technology spending to combat the Y2K false alarm, and exuberant optimism about the Internet. The NASDAQ index's calendar year lows would be 2332.78 on 18 December 2000, 1423.19 on 17 September 2001, 1108.48 on 10 October 2002. [1998~2002 chart >]. NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) was started in 1971 (with its index at 100) by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) to improve the transparency of what was then known as the over-the-counter market for unlisted stocks. The Nasdaq Composite Index covers all 5000-or-so common stocks listed on Nasdaq, each one weighed by its market capitalization.
1999 El día en que se conmemora el 40º aniversario del fracasado alzamiento en el Tibet contra la ocupación china, el Dalai Lama propone a las autoridades de Pekín una negociación sobre una "verdadera autonomía" para el territorio a cambio de su renuncia a la independencia.
1997 $13 million to compensate for redlining.    ^top^
      Nationwide Insurance agrees to pay out a handsome settlement and settle a discrimination case against their company by the US Justice Department. The government’s suit charged Nationwide with "redlining," the practice of refusing to hand out policies based on the location of a person’s home. Under the terms of the settlement, Nationwide consented to funnel $13 million into various inner-city areas. However, even in the wake of the settlement, Nationwide’s President Richard Crabtree refused to concede his company’s guilt. "Certainly we do not believe we committed any illegal acts nor did our employees or agents," Crabtree insisted. "We have not been able to discover [anything] through extensive investigation internally." Despite the size of the settlement, which officials deemed the heftiest total meted out under the auspices of the Federal Fair Housing Act, advocates for equal housing opportunities remained skeptical. Shanna Smith of the National Fair Housing Alliance predicted that the government’s failure to take "punitive" measures would ultimately mean that Nationwide would return to redlining in the future.
1996 Hezbollah guerrillas launched a wave of bomb and rocket attacks on Israeli troops in south Lebanon.
1995 ESPN plans Web site    ^top^
      Newspapers reported that ESPN would launch a sports online service with the backing of Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's Starwave Internet Company. The sports service planned to launch in conjunction with the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament, and it later became one of the Web's most popular sites.
1991 Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Moscow, demanding that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev resign.
1990 El criminal dictador chileno Augusto Pinochet abandona la presidencia y el Palacio de la Moneda tras las elecciones presidenciales que conceden la victoria a Patricio Aylwin.
1988 José Manuel Caballero Bonald gana el IV Premio Internacional de Novela Plaza y Janés con la obra En la casa del padre.
1986 Cristóbal Zaragoza obtiene el premio Plaza & Janés con Al fin, la libertad.
1985 El presidente de Grecia, Konstantinos Karamanlis, dimite de la jefatura del Estado.
1983 Reelección del general Suharto, candidato único a la presidencia de Indonesia.
1982 Sygyzy: all 9 planets aligned on same side of Sun. Los Angeles is not destroyed as a result of the so-called alignment of “Jupiter ... with Mars and with the other seven planets of the solar system” , nor do other cataclysmic events occur which astrophysicist (?) John Gribbin had predicted in The Jupiter Effect. (The planets, as seen from Earth, are, at their closest on this day, spread across 130º of the sky)
1980 L'île de Philae est réouverte au public.    ^top^
      Après 10 ans d’étude et de travaux, l’île de Philae est réouverte au public. Cette petite île de 460 mètres de longueur sur 150 mètres de largeur, est surnommée la perle de l’Égypte. C’est une des bosses de l’énorme barre de roches granitiques qui, sur plusieurs kilomètres, constitue la première cataracte du Nil, au sud immédiat d’Assouan. En ce lieu consacré à la déesse Isis, Nectanébo Ier fit construire un élégant pavillon vers 370 (A.C.N.), à la pointe méridionale de l’île. Le monument principal est cependant le temple d’Isis qui en occupe la partie centrale; il a été édifié par les souverains lagides sur un sanctuaire antérieur, qui serait l’œuvre d’Amasis, pharaon de la XXVIème dynastie dont le nom est attesté sur de nombreux blocs de remploi. Limitée de part et d’autre par un portique à colonnes, une allée donnait accès au premier pylône du temple, haut de 18 mètres ; les reliefs de sa façade évoquent des exploits guerriers : en présence des divinités Isis, Horus d’Edfou et Hathor, le roi Ptolémée XII Néos Dionysos massacre les ennemis captifs, thème classique de l’iconographie pharaonique. En avant subsistent les restes endommagés de deux lions de granite, comme il y en a souvent devant les temples du Soudan et de Nubie ; ils étaient primitivement accompagnés de deux obélisques.
      Sur le côté ouest de la grande cour se dresse le mammisi, décoré par Ptolémée VIII Évergète II et achevé sous le règne de Tibère. Ce petit bâtiment annexe, consacré à la déesse Isis et au dieu-enfant Horus-Harpocrate — auquel était identifié le roi —, servait de cadre à la célébration du mystère de la naissance divine. Le temple d’Isis est entouré d’un portique ; au-dessus des murs d’entrecolonnement, les colonnes dressent leurs chapiteaux, aux thèmes floraux très variés, que surmontent les têtes hathoriques coiffées d’une sorte de naos : la protection de la déesse de l’amour convenait particulièrement à ce sanctuaire de la naissance ; en traversant une cour et deux salles, on parvenait au sanctuaire où sont figurés l’enfance d’Horus-Harpocrate ; d’autres représentations du mammisi illustrent la naissance d’Horus et des scènes de musique devant le nouveau-né.
      Par un deuxième pylône, où l’on voit Ptolémée XII faisant des offrandes devant plusieurs divinités, on pénétrait dans une autre cour du temple d’Isis, suivie d’un vestibule à colonnes et d’antichambres. Dans le saint des saints subsiste le Naos, tabernacle en granite qui autrefois abritait la statue cultuelle d’Isis. Un escalier conduit à la chapelle d’Osiris, où des cérémonies étaient célébrées pour la mort du dieu. À l’ouest, une porte monumentale édifiée par l’empereur Hadrien est ornée de scènes osiriennes et d’une représentation célèbre des sources du Nil. À l’est du temple d’Isis se trouvait le petit sanctuaire d’Hathor, déesse de l’Amour, commencé par les Ptolémées et continué par Auguste. Sur les colonnes, des animaux jouant d’instruments de musique semblent annoncer les reliefs grotesques de certains chapiteaux romans. Le dieu Bès, protecteur de l’amour et des accouchements, danse et joue du tambourin ou de la double flûte afin de chasser les démons malfaisants. Plus au sud, le kiosque de Trajan dresse ses élégantes colonnes. Sur l’île s’élevaient encore bien d’autres monuments, comme le temple d’Harendotès, c’est-à-dire " Horus vengeur de son père ", ou celui d’Auguste ; un autre était consacré à Imhotep, l’architecte de Djéser, divinisé par la suite ; deux nilomètres permettaient de mesurer le niveau du fleuve.
      La renommée de Philae fut immense dans l’Antiquité. De très loin on venait en pèlerinage dans le temple d’Isis. Même pendant la période Chrétienne des premiers siècles. Les chefs-d’œuvre d’architecture de Philae apparurent condamnés lorsqu’au début de ce siècle on érigea le barrage d’Assouan ; les ruines devaient être désormais immergées presque totalement durant la plus grande partie de l’année ; elles ne devenaient accessibles que pendant quelques semaines d’été, lorsqu’on ouvrait le barrage pour permettre aux eaux limoneuses et fertilisantes de s’écouler dans la vallée.
      Paradoxalement, Philae a pu être sauvée grâce au haut barrage d’Assouan (le Sadd al‘Ali) construit à quelques kms en amont. Pour sauver les monuments de la Nubie, on avait pensé tout d’abord protéger l’île par une série de trois barrages annexes qui prendraient appui sur la rive du fleuve d’une part et sur la grande île de Biggeh d’autre part. Mais les difficultés techniques et surtout le coût de l’opération ont fait écarter ce projet. La solution finalement adoptée fut celle du transfert des temples de Philae dans la petite île d’Agilkia, à 300 mètres plus au nord. Cette entreprise gigantesque a été menée grâce au concours de l’UNESCO qui a lancé une campagne internationale en vue de réunir les fonds nécessaires. La première phase des travaux, commencés en 1972, a consisté à édifier des batardeaux préserver temporairement les monuments de Philae tout en aménageant l’îlot d’Agilkia en vue de sa nouvelle destination. L’opération de démontage a duré trois années pleines de mai 1974 à mai 1977, et deux ans furent ensuite nécessaires pour reconstituer minutieusement le puzzle sur Agilkia. Depuis le 10 mars 1980, jour de l’inauguration du site, Philae est de nouveau accessible aux visiteurs.
1979 Toma posesión el nuevo presidente de Venezuela, Luis Herrera Campins.
1977 Rings of Uranus discovered during occultation of SAO.
1977 Indonesia continúa el establecimiento de su red de telecomunicaciones, que abarcará la totalidad de las islas que forman el estado, gracias a la puesta en órbita del satélite Palapa 2.
1975 Communists surround Ban Me Thuot in Vietnam.  ^top^
      The North Vietnamese surround and attack the city of Ban Me Thuot, as heavy fighting erupts in the Central Highlands. This action, initiated in late January 1975, just two years after a cease-fire was established by the Paris Peace Accords, was part of what the North Vietnamese called Campaign 275. The battle for Ban Me Thuot began on March 4, when North Vietnamese encircled the city with five main force divisions and effectively cut it off from outside support. The South Vietnamese 23rd Division was vastly outnumbered and quickly succumbed to the Communists. As it became clear that the Communists would take the city and probably the entire province, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu decided to withdraw his forces in order to protect the more critical populous areas. Accordingly, he ordered his forces in the Central Highlands to pull back from their positions. Abandoning Pleiku and Kontum, the South Vietnamese forces began to move toward the sea, but what started out as an orderly withdrawal soon turned into panic and the South Vietnamese forces rapidly fell apart. The North Vietnamese were successful in both the Central Highlands and further north at Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang. The South Vietnamese soon collapsed as a cogent fighting force and the North Vietnamese continued the attack all the way to Saigon. South Vietnam surrendered unconditionally on 30 April.
1971 US Senate approves amendment lowering voting age to 18.
1971 Los tupamaros secuestran al fiscal general uruguayo, Guido Berro.
1970 Ineffective US trial of US war criminals begins.   ^top^
      The US Army accuses Capt. Ernest Medina and four other soldiers of committing crimes at My Lai in March 1968. The charges ranged from premeditated murder to rape and the "maiming" of a suspect under interrogation. Medina was the company commander of Lt. William Calley and other soldiers charged with murder and numerous crimes at My Lai 4 in Song My village. The My Lai massacre became the most publicized war atrocity committed by US troops in Vietnam. Allegedly, a platoon had slaughtered between 200 and 500 unarmed villagers at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets in the coastal lowlands of I Corps Tactical Zone. This was a heavily mined region where Viet Cong guerrillas were firmly entrenched and numerous members of the participating platoon had been killed or maimed during the preceding month. The company had been conducting a search-and-destroy mission.
      In search of the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion, the unit entered My Lai but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers. During the attack, several old men were bayoneted, some women and children praying outside the local temple were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped before being killed. Many villagers were systematically rounded up and led to a nearby ditch where they were executed. Reportedly, the killing was only stopped when Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an aero-scout helicopter pilot, landed his helicopter between the Americans and the fleeing South Vietnamese, confronting the soldiers and blocking them from further action against the villagers. The incident was subsequently covered up, but eventually came to light a year later. An Army board of inquiry headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 people who knew of the atrocity. Only 14, including Calley and Medina, were eventually charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, who was found guilty of murdering 22 civilians. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a "scapegoat," Calley was paroled in 1974 after having served about three years.
1969 Ray pleads guilty to Martin Luther King assassination    ^top^
      James Earl Ray pleads guilty to the assassination of African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and is sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.
      On 04 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. Three months later, James Earl Ray, a Memphis citizen with a history of petty crime, was arrested in London, England, charged with the King assassination, and extradited to the United States. US authorities reported that Ray’s fingerprints matched those found on a rifle at the scene of the crime and that some of Ray’s belongings had also been found along with the murder weapon. In addition, the authorities produced an eyewitness, Charles Stephens, who claimed that he had seen Ray leaving the boarding house from where the shot was allegedly fired.
      After his extradition, Ray maintained his innocence, arguing that he had not killed King but had been set up as part of a larger conspiracy. He claimed that shortly before the assassination he had been approached by a mysterious man named "Raoul" who recruited him into a smuggling enterprise. After King’s assassination, whether on a smuggling mission or on a flight from the assassination investigators, Ray made his curious way to London via Atlanta, Canada, and Portugal.
      Back in the United States, Ray spent eight months in prison while investigators apparently gathered more conclusive evidence against him. His first and second attorney both pressured him to enter a guilty plea, and finally on 10 March 1969 (his 41st birthday), Ray agreed, fearing that an innocent plea under his current counsel would result in his execution. Just three days later, he hired a new attorney and filed a motion to vacate his plea and obtain a trial. The motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a jury trial over the next twenty-nine years.
      In the last decades of his life, inconsistencies in the case against him and in the official analysis of the King assassination led some to support Ray’s theory that he was a scapegoat in a larger conspiracy. During the 1990s, the family of Martin Luther King, Jr., met with Ray and joined him in unsuccessfully petitioning the government to grant him a jury trial. Coretta Scott King, the widow of the assassinated civil rights leader, called the death of James Earl Ray on 23 April, 1998, "a great tragedy."
1966 North Vietnamese capture US Green Beret Camp at Ashau Valley
1957 Thousands of soccer fans riot in Italy
1956 Peter Twiss sets new world air record 1823 km/h.
1952 El general Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar da un golpe de Estado en Cuba.
1949 Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars "Axis Sally" is convicted of treason, in Washington D.C.. She would serve 12 years in prison. [so much for free speech, though she got off easy compared with Irish “Lord Haw-Haw” who was executed by the British]
1945 Les japonais s'emparent de l'Indochine.
1945 En el transcurso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, trescientos aviones estadounidenses bombardean Tokio durante seis horas, con efectos devastadores.
1941 El mariscal Henri Philippe Benomi Omer Pétain solicita a EE.UU. que procedan al envío de trigo a la Francia no ocupada.
1940 Neutral US attempts to broker peace in World War II.   ^top^
      US Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, after a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berlin, visits London to discuss a peacemaking proposal with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to prevent a widening of the European war. Sumner Welles, a diplomat and expert on Latin America, spent his early professional life promoting the United States' "Good Neighbor" foreign policy as attaché to the US embassy in Buenos Aires, chief of Latin American affairs of the State Department, and commissioner to the Dominican Republic. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him assistant secretary of state, sending him to Cuba, where Welles successfully mediated opposing groups attempting to overthrow the government of Gerardo Machado. He was promoted to undersecretary of state in 1937, serving as a delegate to several Pan-American conferences.
      But in 1940, the stakes were raised for Welles. War had broken out in Europe with the German invasion of Poland, and Welles was sent on a fact-finding tour of Berlin, Rome, Paris, and London, in the hopes of keeping the war contained, at the very least, and ideally brought to an end. After a trip to Rome to chat with Benito Mussolini, Welles met with Hitler on 01 to 03 March. Hitler feared that Welles would try to drive a wedge between himself and Axis partner Italy by convincing Mussolini to keep out of the conflict completely. As a result, the Fuhrer bombarded Welles with a propagandistic interpretation of recent events, putting the blame for the European conflict on England and France. Welles informed Hitler that he and Mussolini had engaged in a "long, constructive, and helpful" conversation, and that the Duce believed "there was still a possibility of bringing about a firm and lasting peace." Hitler agreed that there would be peace-after a German victory in Europe. Welles left Berlin and arrived in London on March 10. He briefed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on Hitler's intransigence, arguing that the only hope for a lasting peace was the progressive disarmament of the belligerents, primarily Germany. Chamberlain's foreign ministers were less than impressed with the suggestion, believing that even a "disarmed" Germany could still invade a smaller, weaker nation. In short, Welles' trip accomplished nothing.
1940 Germany invades the Benelux countries.
1938 En el transcurso de la Guerra Civil española, el cuerpo de ejército marroquí toma Belchite, mientras que las tropas nacionales prosiguen su avance por Aragón.
1933 Una comisión parlamentaria proclama que el Gobierno español no ordenó los fusilamientos de Casas Viejas.
1926 First Book-of-the-Month Club selection is published   ^top^
      Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman, the first Book-of-the-Month Club selection, is published by Viking Press. The book was written by English novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, who had intended to become a musicologist, not a writer. To that end, she edited a 10-volume work called Tudor Church Music. Warner claimed she became a poet and fiction writer accidentally when she ran across a piece of paper with "a particularly tempting surface." She was intensely interested in established religions and the occult and used her knowledge of witchcraft in Lolly Willowes, a story about a widow who scandalizes her relations by moving to a town involved in witchcraft. The Book-of-the-Month Club's 4000-plus members were not pleased with the novel. However, Warner was used to being controversial. Openly lesbian in the early 1900s, she was the object of much hostility throughout her life. Warner later published 144 short stories in the New Yorker, as well as more novels, poetry, and translations. She died in 1978 in Dorset, England.
1924 El general Alvaro Obregón anuncia que se ha establecido el orden en México.
1923 Se detectan en Málaga cuatro casos de peste bubónica.
1922 Gandhi convicted of civil disobedience.     ^top^
      Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement, is convicted for allegedly inciting Indians into violence against the British rulers of his country, and one week later, is sentenced to six years imprisonment.
      Born in India and educated in England, Gandhi traveled to South Africa in 1893 to practice law under a one-year contract. For the next twenty years Gandhi remained in South Africa, campaigning against South African legislation that discriminated against its Indian population.
      In 1915, Gandhi returned to India where he became an important figure in the movement for independence. Increasingly in the international spotlight, Gandhi gave up Western ways to lead a life of abstinence and spirituality and began an effective campaign of civil disobedience against Britain’s oppressive rule. Always nonviolent, he asserted the unity of all people under one God and preached Christian and Muslim ethics along with his Hindu teachings. The British authorities jailed him several times, but his following was so great that his threats to fast until death usually forced his release.
      After World War II, he was a leading figure in the negotiations that led to Indian independence in 1947. Although hailing the granting of Indian independence as the "noblest act of the British nation," he was distressed by the religious partition of the former Mogul Empire into India and Pakistan. When violence broke out between Hindus and Muslims in India in 1948, he resorted to fasts and visits to the troubled areas in an effort to end India’s religious strife.
      On January 30, 1948, he was on one such prayer vigil in New Delhi when he was fatally shot by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist who objected to Gandhi’s tolerance for the Muslims. Known as Mahatma, or "the great soul," during his lifetime, Gandhi’s methods of nonviolent civil disobedience were influential to leaders of civil rights movements around the world, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., of the United States.
1917 Tsar Nicholas II unwittingly turns unrest into revolution (on 25 February Julian = 10 March Gregorian)    ^top^
     On 08 March (23 February Julian) thousands of women textile workers in Petrograd shut down their factories, partly in commemoration of International Women's Day but mainly to protest bread shortages, thus adding to the already large number of men and women on strike. Strikers marched through the streets shouting "Give us bread" (Daite khleb and Khleba, khleba). Crowds headed toward the city center. Demonstrators -- who were in a nasty mood -- broke store windows, halted street-cars, and forced other workers to join them. During the next two days, encouraged by hundreds of experienced rank-and-file socialist activists, workers in factories and shops throughout the capital went on strike.
     By 10 March, virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd is shut down, as are many commercial and service enterprises. The demands -- visible on banners and audible in the shouts of demonstrators and in speeches at rallies -- escalate, again with the encouragement of activists, from demands for bread to appeals to end the war and abolish the autocracy.
      Demonstrators march and protest all the more boldly when police and cossacks, under orders to show restraint, hesitate to stop them. Students, white-collar workers, and teachers join workers in the streets and at public meetings. Although the protests and meetings are generally peaceful, the potential for mass violence is barely contained: some workers carry sticks, nuts, bolts, screws, pieces of metal, and, occasionally, pistols; crowds smash shop windows, especially the windows of food and bread stores; looters become more common; demonstrators attack and beat police officers -- fatally on a couple of occasions. Although socialist activists condemn the violence and vandalism, the outbreaks become more frequent. Meanwhile, liberal and socialist deputies in the Duma shrilly denounce the current government and again demand a responsible cabinet of ministers.
      Nicholas receives ambiguous information about the seriousness of events. Reports are also partially overshadowed by news that his children have been stricken with measles just after he left Tsarskoe Selo. On 09 and 10 March, word of the disturbances reached him at Headquarters -- in Alexandra's letters and in telegrams from War Minister Mikhail Beliaev, Minister of Internal Affairs Protopopov, and the military commander of Petrograd, General Sergei Khabalov. Alexandra discounts the disturbances: "Its a hooligan movement, young boys and girls running about and screaming that they have no bread, only to excite -- and then the workmen preventing others from work -- if it were very cold they would. probably stay indoors. But this will all pass and quiet down -- if the Duma would only behave itself".
      Although the official reports are more thorough in describing the scale of the disturbances -- the spreading strikes, the demands for bread, the mass demonstrations on Nevsky Prospect (Petrograd's main throughfare and the symbol of its urbanity), and the attacks on police officers -- they also assure Nicholas that the police and the army are having no difficulty in controlling the disorders. This is far from accurate.
      About 21:00 on 10 March, General Khabalov receives a telegram from Nicholas that would transform the unrest into revolution: "I command you tomorrow to stop the disorders in the capital, which are unacceptable in the difficult time of war with Germany and Austria." Meeting with his unit commanders an hour later, Khabalov ordered them to use all necessary force to disperse crowds, including firing at demonstrators, and he issued a proclamation to the population, posted the next morning, banning demonstrations and warning that this order would be enforced with arms. He also publicly warned strikers that they would be conscripted and sent to the front if they did not return to work by the 13 March. In the evening of 10 March, the Council of Ministers is informed of the tsar's command to use military force to restore order. A majority of the ministers dismiss Protopopov's sanguine assurances that all would be well and suggest forming a new cabinet in consultation with the Duma as the only way to end the disorders. They delegate two members to begin negotiations with the Duma.
     Five days later, the Petrograd insurgents have taken over the capital and Czar Nicholas II is forced to abdicate.
      A provisional government composed mainly of moderates is established, and the Soviet--a coalition of workers’ and soldiers’ committees--calls for an end to violent revolutionary activity. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik revolutionary party, leaves his exile in Switzerland and crosses German enemy lines to arrive at Petrograd on 16 April 1917. The Bolshevik Party, founded in 1903, was a militant group of professional revolutionaries who sought to overthrow the czarist government of Russia and set up a Marxist government in its place.
      On 06 November 1917, the Bolsheviks seize control of the Russian state in the October Revolution, and Lenin becomes virtual dictator of the country. However, civil war and foreign intervention delay complete Bolshevik control of Russian until 1920. Lenin’s Soviet government nationalizes industry and distributes land, and on December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USS.R.) is established.
      In the USSR, the Communist Party controls all levels of government, and the Party’s politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary, effectively rules the country. Soviet industry is owned and managed by the state, and agricultural land is divided into state-run collective farms. In the decades after its establishment, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grows into one of the world’s most powerful and influential states, and eventually encompasses fifteen republics--Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
1902 In Edison v. American Mutoscope Company, the US Court of Appeals rules that Thomas Edison did not invent the movie camera, but only the sprocket system that moves perforated film through the movie camera.
1902 Anti-trust suit against Northern Securities    ^top^
      Attorney General Philander Knox joins President Theodore Roosevelt's new battle against "Big Business," and files an anti-trust suit against J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities Company. The ensuing court case revolved around whether or not Northern Securities, a New Jersey-based holding concern for Morgan's sizable western railroad business, violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In early 1904, the Supreme Court ruled against Northern Securities, handing Roosevelt and Knox a high-profile victory in their war on trusts. Thanks to the Northern Securities case, as well as his role in the stunning breakup of the Standard Oil combine in 1907, the president's reputation as a "trustbuster" grew particularly prodigious. However, Roosevelt's critics are quick to point out that he was less focused on taming the magnitude of business than on simply asserting the federal government's right to regulate corporate America. Moreover, some derided the president's "crusade" as an elaborate and popular bit of political theater that did little to curb the rise of over-sized business combines.
1893 Ivory Coast becomes a French colony.
1893 New Mexico State University cancels it's first graduation ceremony, its only graduate Sam Steele was robbed and killed the night before.
1885 Se presenta a Alfonso XII, Rey de España, la Memorial des Greuges o Memoria en defensa de los intereses de Cataluña.
1880 Le premier groupe de Salutistes ou membres de l'Armée du Salut s'embarque pour les États Unis. Fondées par un jeune prédicateur méthodiste, William Booth, l'Armée du Salut prend ce nom en 1878. De sévères bagarres opposent ses membres à des bandes de voyous qui manifestent à coups de fruits pourris ou même de pierres au cours des réunions en plein air organisées par William Booth et de ses fidèles. Le but de l'Armée du Salut était d'apporter aux pauvres, aux déshérités, une aide à la fois matérielle et morale.
1876 First telephone call    ^top^
      Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant Thomas Watson, who was on another floor of Bell's Boston residence, saying, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Bell had received the first telephone patent three days before. Later that year, Bell and Watson would succeed in making a telephone call over outdoor lines, from Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bell founded the Bell Telephone Company in 1877 and was immediately hit by lawsuits contesting his telephone patent. Although the suits continued for many years, Bell's claims were upheld.
     The first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before. Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, a leading authority in public speaking and speech correction. The young Bell was trained to take over the family business, and while still a teenager he became a voice teacher and began to experiment in sound. In 1870, his family moved to Ontario, Canada, and in 1871 Bell went to Boston to demonstrate his father's method of teaching speech to the deaf. The next year, he opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.
      In his free time, Bell experimented with sound waves and became convinced that it would be possible to transmit speech over a telegraph-like system. He enlisted the aid of a gifted mechanic, Thomas Watson, and together the two spent countless nights trying to convert Bell's ideas into practical form. In 1875, while working on his multiple harmonic telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. He designed a device to transmit speech vibrations electrically between two receivers and in June 1875 tested his invention. No intelligible words were transmitted, but sounds resembling human speech were heard at the receiving end. On 14 February 1876, he filed a US patent application for his telephone. Just a few hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat with the US Patent Office about his intent to seek a similar patent on a telephone transmitter and receiver. Bell filed first, so on 07 March he was awarded US patent 174'465, which granted him ownership over both his telephone instruments and the concept of a telephone system.
      Three days later, on 10 March, Bell successfully tests his telephone for the first time in his Boston home. In May, he publicly demonstrated the invention before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and in June at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In October, he successfully tested his telephone over a two-mile distance between Boston and Cambridgeport. In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company with two investors, and the first commercial applications of the telephone took place. Within a few months, the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell's telephone patent began. The US Supreme Court eventually upheld Bell's claims, and the Bell Telephone Company enjoyed a monopoly on the telephone until the expiration of the patent in 1894.
      After 1878, however, the legal battles were out of Alexander Graham Bell's hands because he sold his company to a group of financiers. The company, which after 1899 was led by the parent American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), eventually grew into the largest corporation in the world. Alexander Graham Bell continued his experiments in communication, inventing the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays, and the graphophone, which recorded sound. He continued to work with the deaf, including the educator Helen Keller, and used the royalties from his inventions to finance several organizations dedicated to the oral education of the deaf. He later served as president of the National Geographic Society. Beginning in 1895, he experimented with the possibility of flight and built giant man-carrying kites and a hydrofoil craft. He died in 1922 at his summer home and laboratory on Cape Breton Island, Canada.
1865 Siege of New Madrid, Missouri continues.
1865 Engagement at Monroe's Cross Roads, South Carolina.
1865 Union General Sherman's "army group" occupies Fayetteville, North Carolina
1864 Ulysses S. Grant becomes commander of the Union armies during the US Civil War.
1862 Battle of Kinston (Wise's Fork), North Carolina concludes.
1862 first paper money issued by US gov't—$5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000.
1857 La révolte des Cipayes, en Inde, ébranle la Pax Britannica.    ^top^
      Les cipayes, de l’anglais sepoy, venu du persan sipahi (le français spahi n’a pas d’autre origine), étaient les mercenaires autochtones de l’armée britannique de l’Inde au XIXe siècle. Les expressions péjoratives de "révolte des cipayes" et de "mutinerie indienne", utilisées respectivement en français et en anglais, désignent un événement capital qui a marqué l’Inde au siècle dernier et que l’on nomme sur place la "grande rébellion", la "première révolution indienne" ou la "première guerre d’indépendance indienne". Le point de départ en fut effectivement une mutinerie de soldats indiens de la garnison de Meeruth (10 mars 1857), que leurs officiers britanniques voulaient contraindre à déchirer de leurs dents de nouvelles cartouches enduites de graisse de bœuf (animal sacré des hindous) ou de porc (animal impur des musulmans comme des hindous). La révolte gagne rapidement les autres garnisons, dont celle de Delhi, et se transforme en un soulèvement général de toute la population de la plaine du Gange contre l’occupant étranger. Les Britanniques sont assiégés dans leurs quartiers. Hindous et musulmans, citadins et paysans appauvris, artisans ruinés par l’industrie anglaise, fonctionnaires démis, princes dépossédés, tous ont des griefs qui les unissent contre la domination coloniale.
      Plusieurs personnalités de premier plan se révèlent dans l’action dont la rani (reine) de Jhansi, qui meurt à la tête de ses troupes et est célébrée comme une Jeanne d’Arc de l’Inde moderne. Mais le mouvement ne peut gagner tout le pays et reste limité à l’Inde du Nord et du Centre. La supériorité technique et logistique des Britanniques l’emporte, appuyée sur d’autres mercenaires : Gurkhas du Népal, Afghans et Sikhs du Punjab, par exemple. Mais l’armée britannique met plus d’un an à rétablir l’ordre colonial ; officiellement, cet ordre revient le 8 juillet 1858 ; en fait, le conflit persiste jusqu’en 1859, cela au prix d’atrocités nombreuses, les atrocités des Britanniques surpassant celles des révoltés, car elles sont commises systématiquement, en nombre, et à froid : sac de Delhi et massacre de centaines d’Indiens attachés à la bouche des canons. Cette première révolution indienne oblige la puissance britannique à infléchir considérablement sa politique en Inde. Le gouvernement supprime la Compagnie des Indes, le pays est administré directement, et le souverain anglais ceint la couronne impériale de l’Inde. Sur place, au lieu de tendre à évincer les princes locaux, l’administration s’appuie sur eux et renforce leurs privilèges ; par crainte des anciens cadres administratifs musulmans de l’Empire moghol, les Britanniques favorisent pour un temps leur remplacement par des hindous. Quant aux Indiens, ces événements leur auront donné confiance en eux-mêmes, en montrant à quel prix l’occupant pouvait être mis en difficulté. A condition d’unir la nation et de maîtriser le progrès technologique.
1849 Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent; only US president to do so.
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ratified    ^top^
      The US Senate votes thirty-eight to fourteen to ratify the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican War and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean.
      The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the US government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January of 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved Polk's declararation of war against Mexico. On September 14, 1847, US General Winfield Scott entered Mexico City and raised the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with a massive amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier.
      On 02 February 2, 1848, the two nations signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico agreed to recognize Texas as part of the United States, and ceded some 1'300'000 square km of territory to the US, including all of the future states of California, Nevada, and Utah, almost all of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. In return the US agreed to pay Mexico $15'000'000 and to assume all the claims of American citizens against Mexico, amounting to $7'000'000, and the claims of Mexican citizens against Native-Americans from the United States, eventually amounting to some $30'000'000.
      One month later, with the removal of a treaty article that would have granted Mexicans living in US territory unique rights, the US Senate voted to ratify the treaty. In 1853, the United States and Mexico signed the Gadsden Purchase, in which the US acquires approximately 80'000 square km of land in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona, establishing the modern border of the southern United States.
1814 Fernando VII abole la Constitución española de 1812.
1794 Robespierre, qui estime depuis plusieurs mois qu'il faut arrêter de faire des concessions aux sans-culottes dont certains que l'on nommait les "indulgents" prêchaient la clémence et la paix avec l'étranger. Il fait arrêter Danton et les Montagnards. Ils seront exécutés le 05 Apr.
1793 C'est la révolte en Vendée. Exaspérées par le décret sur la levée de 300'000 hommes voté par la Convention le 24 Feb 1793, et aussi par la Constitution civile du clergé qui heurte leurs croyances, ainsi que par les difficultés économiques, les populations paysannes, soutenues par les nobles et par les prêtres réfractaires, constituent une armée qu'ils qualifient de "catholique et romaine".
1791 Pope condemns France's Civil Constitution of the clergy.
1785 Thomas Jefferson is appointed US minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.
1681 English Quaker William Penn, 26, received a charter from Charles II, making him sole proprietor of the colonial American territory known today as the state of Pennsylvania.
1629 England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament. He would not call it back for 11 years.
1526 Carlos I se casa en Sevilla con su prima, la infanta Isabel de Portugal. Las cortes de Castilla aprueban la boda ya que es nieta de los Reyes Católicos. La nueva reina y emperatriz se convierte rápidamente en una eficaz colaboradora política de su marido.
1496 Christopher Columbus concludes his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he leaves Hispaniola for Spain.
1126 Alfonso VII entra en León y se proclama rey de Castilla y León.
0418 Jews are excluded from public office in the Roman Empire
--241 -BC Battle of Aegusa: Roman fleet sinks 50 Carthagean ships
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on a March 10:
2002 Israeli Staff Sergeant Kobi Eichelboim, 21, from Givatayim, and Mohammed Katawi, 21, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who, in the morning, attacks the Gaza Strip enclave settlement of Netzarim, wounding Eichelboim (who dies in the afternoon) and is shot by a security officer, whom he had stabbed.
2001 Christie Jeyaratnam Eliezer, 83, in his residence in Melbourne, Australia. Mathematician, Tamil activist. He was born in 1918 in Jaffna. He was honored by the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in October 1997 with the title of Maamanithar (a Great Man) for his contribution to the good of Tamil people both in Tamil Eelam and Australia.
2000 Vicente García Presa, poeta y periodista español
2000 Javier Vilató, pintor español.
1999 Oswaldo Guayasamín, artista ecuatoriano.
1998 Markus Wachtel, 13, strangled by a 19-year-old, in Peine, Germany. Markus's body would be found in a gravel pit, dismembered. The murderer (his name not made public) would be sentenced on 30 April 2001 to 6 years in a youth prison.
1994 Charles Bukowski, escritor estadounidense.
1993 Dr. David Gunn, abortionist, murdered by inconsistent pro-lifer.     ^top^
      Dr. David Gunn is shot and killed during an anti-abortion protest at the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic in Florida. Dr. Gunn had performed abortions at several clinics in Florida and Alabama, and was getting out of his car in the clinic’s parking lot on 10 March when Michael Griffin shouted, "Don’t kill any more babies!" and shot the doctor three times in the back. Griffin immediately surrendered to a nearby police officer. Griffin had attended a prayer service and protest organization meeting three days earlier, and was apparently waiting for Dr. Gunn, the father of two, to appear on the morning of the shooting.
      Rescue America, the group holding the protest, did not exactly strongly condemn the murder of Dr. Gunn. "While Gunn’s death is unfortunate, it’s also true that quite a number of babies’ lives will be saved," said national director Don Treshman after the slaying. Dr. Gunn’s murder was part of a larger occurrence of violence by anti-abortion activists in the early 1990s. Death threats, vandalism, and arson at abortion clinics increased dramatically.
      Rachelle Shelly Shannon began corresponding with Griffin while he was in prison. The man whom she called "the awesomest greatest hero of our time" did nothing to dissuade her from going out and attempting to kill a doctor in Wichita, Kansas. Her shots wounded, but did not kill, and Shannon was arrested and convicted.
      Paul Hill, an activist who went on the Phil Donahue Show and called Dr. Gunn’s murder a "justifiable homicide," attended Shannon’s trial and then got into trouble himself. He killed Dr. John Britton and his escort, James Barrett, in Pensacola in July 1994. Hill was sentenced to death but never expressed remorse for his crime.
      In response to this terrorism, both the federal government and individual states have passed new laws protecting abortion clinics (as if new laws were needed to make the murder of humans — after birth — a crime). Pro-abortion advocates have also successfully sued anti-abortion groups under broad racketeering laws. However, the threat of violence against abortionists has severely limited the number of doctors who practice in the field.
1985 Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, 73, Soviet ruler for just 13 months (following Andropov who had died on 09 February 1984), ill during much of that time. He is immediately succeded by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, 54.
1981 Yaroslav Borisovich Lopatynsky, 74, made advances in partial differential equations.
1980 Herman Tarnower, "The Scarsdale Diet" doctor, murdered.    ^top^
     Dr. Herman Tarnower, the author of the bestselling The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. is shot Dr. Tarnower at his Westchester County, New York, home, by Socialite Jean Harris. Harris claimed that she had been trying to kill herself but that Tarnower was shot when he tried to wrestle the gun away from her. Harris, the headmistress of an exclusive girls' school, and Tarnower had been a couple since they met in 1966. However, Tarnower was a notorious womanizer who never followed through on his vague promises to marry the 56-year-old Harris. In the late 1970s, Harris discovered that Tarnower was having an affair with a younger woman. Nonetheless, she assisted him in writing and editing The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet, which became a surprise sensation, earning Tarnower wealth and fame. Tarnower, however, was not the grateful type. He spurned Harris at the first sign of success.
      After this unceremonious dumping, Harris drove from her school in Virginia to Tarnower's home late at night on March 10. She used her key to get in and went up to his bedroom with a loaded .32 caliber gun. Harris later claimed that she went there with suicidal intentions. However, the fact that Tarnower was shot four times seemed to belie her defense. Rather than maintain that she had killed in the heat of the moment, which would have dealt a manslaughter conviction, Harris insisted that the shooting was an accident. Her gamble (or insistence on principle) failed when the jury convicted her of murder on 24 February 1981. She was sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison. Harris was a model prisoner who used every opportunity to bring attention to the plight of women prisoners. She wrote the well-received They Always Call Us Ladies in 1988, and finally won parole in 1993.
The Scarsdale diet.
      The idea is to lose up to one pound per day following a low-carbohydrate plan rather than portion control or counting calories. A seven- to fourteen-day plan that clearly outlines the types of foods to be consumed at three meals each day. Snacking is not allowed, and herbal appetite suppressants are encouraged. Meals consist of fruit, vegetables, and lean sources of protein in unlimited amounts. upside You don't have to count calories or grams of fat, and there is no limit on portion sizes. Weight loss often occurs rapidly, and you won't have to worry about hunger.
      This plan is dangerously low in carbohydrate and many vitamins and minerals. It eliminates foods that are high in fiber and many nutrients in favor of quick weight loss. Don't be fooled!. A strict meal plan must be followed exactly. Herbal appetite suppressants are often encouraged; these can be dangerous for people with heart disease or high blood pressure and have been linked to death when used in large amounts or in conjunction with other stimulants such as caffeine.
1962 Juan March, político, empresario y financiero español.
1948 Evgeny Evgenievich Slutsky, 67, developped statistical theories, which he applied to economics and to sciences.
1948 Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, “suicided”.     ^top^
      The Communist-controlled government of Czechoslovakia reports that Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk has committed suicide. The story of the nonCommunist Masaryk's death was greeted with skepticism in the West. Masaryk was born in 1886, the son of Czechoslovakia's first president. After World War I, he served as foreign minister in the new Czech government. Later he served as the Czech ambassador to Great Britain. During World War II, he once again took the position of foreign minister, this time with the Czech government-in-exile in London. After the war, Masaryk returned to Czechoslovakia to serve as foreign minister under President Eduard Benes.
      It was a tense time in Masaryk's native country. The Soviet Union had occupied the nation during World War II and there were fears that the Soviets would try to install a Communist government in Czechoslovakia, as it had in Poland, East Germany, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Masaryk, however, was skillful in dealing with the Soviets, assuring them that a democratic Czechoslovakia posed no security threat to Russia. In 1947, though, Masaryk made a fatal mistake. When the United States unveiled the Marshall Plan — the multimillion-dollar aid program for postwar Europe — Masaryk indicated Czechoslovakia's interest in participating. When he informed the Soviets, they absolutely refused to give their approval.
      This was quickly followed, in February 1948, by a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. President Benes was forced to accept a Communist-dominated government. Masaryk was one of the few non-Communists left in place. On 10 March 1948, the Czech government reported that Masaryk had committed suicide by jumping out of a third-story window at the Foreign Ministry.
      The reaction in the West was characterized by deep suspicion. Secretary of State George Marshall stated that Czechoslovakia was under a "reign of terror," and that Masaryk's "suicide" indicated "very plainly what is going on." Despite suspicions that the Communists had murdered Masaryk, nothing has been proven definitively and his death remains one of the great mysteries of the Cold War era.
1945: 100'000 civilians, 243 US airmen: “acceptable losses” in the firebombing of Tokyo    ^top^
     US warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo 40% of which is destroyed. Some 40 square kilometers in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80'000 and 130'000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history. Early on 09 March, Air Force crews met on the Mariana Islands of Tinian and Saipan for a military briefing. They were planning a low-level bombing attack on Tokyo that would begin that evening, but with a twist: Their planes would be stripped of all guns except for the tail turret. The decrease in weight would increase the speed of each Superfortress bomber-and would also increase its bomb load capacity by 65%, making each plane able to carry more than seven tons. Speed would be crucial, and the crews were warned that if they were shot down, all haste was to be made for the water, which would increase their chances of being picked up by US rescue crews. Should they land within Japanese territory, they could only expect the very worst treatment by civilians, as the mission that night was going to entail the deaths of tens of thousands of those very same civilians. "You're going to deliver the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen," said US Gen. Curtis LeMay.
      The cluster bombing of the downtown Tokyo suburb of Shitamachi, a densely populated area of traditional working-class communities, had been approved only a few hours earlier. Shitamachi was composed of roughly 750'000 persons living in cramped quarters in wooden-frame buildings. Setting ablaze this "paper city" was a kind of experiment in the effects of firebombing; it would also destroy the light industries, called "shadow factories," that produced prefabricated war materials destined for Japanese aircraft factories. The denizens of Shitamachi never had a chance of defending themselves. Their fire brigades were hopelessly undermanned, poorly trained, and poorly equipped. At 17:34, Superfortress B-29 bombers took off from Saipan and Tinian, reaching their target at 00:15 on 10 March.
      334 bombers, flying at a mere 150 meters altitude, dropped their loads, creating a giant bonfire fanned by 30-knot winds that helped raze Shitamachi and spread the flames throughout Tokyo. Masses of panicked and terrified Japanese civilians scrambled to escape the inferno, most unsuccessfully. The human carnage was so great that the blood-red mists and stench of burning flesh that wafted up sickened the bomber pilots, forcing them to grab oxygen masks to keep from vomiting. The raid lasted slightly longer than three hours. "In the black Sumida River, countless bodies were floating, clothed bodies, naked bodies, all black as charcoal. It was unreal," recorded one doctor at the scene. Only 243 American airmen were lost-considered acceptable losses.
1940 Day 102 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland.     ^top^
More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
Difficult negotiations in Moscow.
Major attack and advance of 4 kilometers by enemy in Vilajoki sector.
       The situation in Viipurinlahti bay remains critical: the Red Army is constantly funnelling new troops and equipment into the area. The Russians are working to extend their bridgehead on the western side of the bay. The aim of the Soviet troops is to use the bridgehead as a staging post to get round to the west of Viipuri and cut the Finnish troops defending the city off from their vital supply lines to the interior. The enemy is attempting to take the city of Viipuri itself by a straight frontal assault, while the troops to the northeast of the city are making a drive towards Antrea.
      During the course of the afternoon the enemy breaks through the Finnish defences in the western part of Nisalahti village and carries on three kilometres to the north. The unfolding events in Viipurinlahti bay mean the Finnish troops have lost use of the main defensive positions on the Isthmus and will have to fight from now on in totally unprepared positions. Some of the Finnish troops are suffering from battle fatigue, while others are raw, inexperienced troops; the chain of command and the responsibilities of the officers are also having to be constantly reworked.
     Fresh troops are concentrated around Viipurinlahti bay, including a cavalry brigade from Ladoga Karelia.
      Aerial reconnaissance reports 200 enemy assault tanks in Pullinniemi.
      On the Karelian Isthmus, the enemy overruns the countryside around Leitimo manor on the Tali Isthmus. The Soviet troops launch their assault in the morning and break through the Finnish defences to a depth of 4 kilometers.
      The Soviet force in Ladoga Karelia is able to establish a good grip on the southern tips of the Lapoinniemi and Kuivaniemi promontories on the shores of Lake Ladoga. As night falls, the defending Finnish troops withdraw.
  In Vuosalmi the enemy is concentrating its efforts on the Liete meadows to the northeast of Vasikkasaari.
      Finland's former president, P.E. Svinhufvud is in Berlin to seek help for Finland, but is unable to gain access to members of the German leadership.
      The Finnish and Soviet negotiators meet for a second round of talks in the Kremlin at 14:00 today. The meeting lasts two hours. Finland is in an awkward negotiating position. Contact with the Government at home has to be conducted via Stockholm and telegrams can take up to 12 hours to reach their destination. The Finnish negotiators attempt to haggle over the Soviet terms, but without success.
      The deadline of 12 March set by the Allies is also getting ominously close.
Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton valtuuskunnat kokoontuvat neuvotteluun Moskovassa Talvisodan 102. päivä, 10.maaliskuuta.1940
        Tilanne Viipurinlahdella jatkuu kriittisenä: Neuvostoarmeija tuo alueelle koko ajan lisää kalustoa ja joukkoja. Puna-armeija pyrkii laajentamaan sillanpääasemaansa lahden länsirannalla. Neuvostojoukkojen tavoite on sillanpääasemasta käsin pyrkiä Viipurin länsipuolelle ja katkaista suomalaisille elintärkeät yhteydet sisämaahan. Viipurin kaupungin vihollinen pyrkii valtaamaan suoralla rintamahyökkäyksellä, ja kaupungin koillispuolella venäläisten tavoiteena on Antrea.
      Iltapäivällä vihollinen murtaa suomalaisten puolustusasemat Nisalahden kylän länsiosassa ja etenee kolme kilometriä pohjoiseen.
      Kehitys Viipurinlahdella merkitsee sitä, että suomalaiset ovat menettäneet pääpuolustusaseman ja joutuvat jatkossa taistelemaan täysin varustamattomissa asemissa.
      Osa suomalaisista joukoista on taistelun uuvuttamia ja osa taisteluihin tottumattomia, myös johtosuhteita ja tehtäviä joudutaan muuttelemaan yhtenään.
      Lentorykmentti 1:n tiedustelu-lentojen perusteella todetaan Pullinniemessä olevan 200 vihollisen hyökkäysvaunua.
      Karjalan kannaksella vihollinen valtaa Leitimon kartanon maaston Talin kannaksella.
      Neuvostojoukot aloittavat aamulla hyökkäyksen ja murtautuvat 4 kilometriä puolustusaseman syvyyteen.
      Laatokan Karjalassa neuvostojoukot pääsevät pureutumaan Laatokan rannikolla Lapoinniemen ja Kuivaniemen eteläosiin. Yön tullessa suomalaiset vetäytyvät.
      Viipurinlahdelle keskitetään uusia joukkoja mm. Ratsuväkiprikaati Laatokan-Karjalasta.
      Entinen presidentti P. E. Svinhufvud on Suomen asioissa matkalla Berliinissä, mutta ei onnistu tapaamaan Saksan johtohenkilöitä.
      Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton valtuuskunnat kokoontuvat toiseen neuvotteluun Moskovan Kremlissä klo 14. Tapaaminen kestää kaksi tuntia. Suomen neuvottelutilanne on hankala. Yhteydet omaan hallitukseen on hoidettava Tukholman kautta ja sähkeet saattavat viipyä matkalla jopa 12 tuntia. Suomen neuvottelijat yrittävät tinkiä vastapuolen ehdoista. - Tuloksetta.
      Vuosalmella vihollisen toimien painopiste on Lietteen niityillä Vasikkasaaresta koilliseen.
     Myös liittoutuneiden antama lopullinen määräpäivä 12. maaliskuuta lähestyy uhkaavasti.
Finlands och Sovjetunionens delegationer förhandlar i Moskva Vinterkrigets 102 dag, den 10 mars 1940
      Situationen i Viborgska viken är fortfarande kritisk: den sovjetiska armén förser hela tiden området med mera förnödenheter och flera trupper. Röda Armén strävar efter att utvidga sin brohuvudställning på den västra stranden av viken. Sovjettruppernas mål är att utifrån brohuvudet tränga in väster om Viborg och skära av de för finnarna livsviktiga förbindelserna till inlandet. Fienden försöker inta Viborgs stad med ett direkt frontangrepp. Nordost om staden är målet att inta S:t Andree.
      På eftermiddagen krossar fienden Finlands försvarsställning i den västra delen av Nisalahti by och rycker fram tre kilometer norrut.
      Utvecklingen i Viborgska viken innebär att finnarna har förlorat huvudförsvarsställningen och är tvungna att i fortsättningen strida i fullständigt obefästa ställningar.
      En del av finnarna är utmattade av striderna och en del ovana att strida, man tvingas också ändra på ledningen och uppgifterna hela tiden.
      Flygregemente 1:s spaningsflygare konstaterar att det finns 200 av fiendens stridsvagnar i Pulliniemi.
      På Karelska näset erövrar fienden terrängen som hör till Leitimo gård på Tali näs. De ryska trupperna går till attack på morgonen och gör en 4 kilometers kil i försvarsställningen.
      I Ladoga-Karelen biter sig ryska trupper fast i Ladogas kust vid de södra delarna av Lapoinniemi och Kuivaniemi. När det blir natt drar sig finnarna tillbaka.
      Nya trupper koncentreras till Viborgska viken, bl.a. en kavalleribrigad från Ladoga-Karelen.
      Förra presidenten P. E. Svinhufvud har rest till Berlin i Finlands ärenden, men lyckas inte träffa Tysklands ledare.
      Delegationerna för Finland och Sovjetunionen samlas till den andra förhandlingen i Kreml kl. 14. Mötet räcker två timmar. Det är svårt för Finland att förhandla. Kontakterna till den egna regeringen sker via Stockholm och ibland räcker det till och med 12 timmar för telegrammen att gå fram. Den finska delegationen försöker pruta på motpartens villkor. Utan resultat.
      Också det slutliga datumet som fastställts av de västallierade, den 12 mars, närmar sig hotfullt.
      I Vuosalmi fokuserar fienden på ängarna i Liete nordost om Vasikkasaari.
1930 Miguel Primo de Rivera, militar y político español.
1921 Francis Robbin Upton, assistant of Edison.   ^top^
68, worked with Edison on mathematical problems associated with devices such as the incandescent lamp, the watt-hour meter and large dynamos.
1921 Francis Upton, Edison's assistant, dies Francis Upton studied at Princeton and Berlin University. He joined Edison in 1878, working at Edison's Menlo Park laboratory on mathematical problems relating to the development of the light bulb. He later became a partner and general manager of the Edison Lamp Company. Upton's articles for Scientific American and Scribner's Monthly introduced many of Edison's inventions to the public.
1915 The first casualties in the battle of Neuve Chapelle in WW I.    ^top^
     In early March 1915, General Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, agreed to a plan put forward by General Joseph Joffre, commander of the French Army, to capture the heights of Aubers Ridge at Neuve Chapelle. General Sir Douglas Haig, and four divisions of Britain's First Army, advanced along a 3km front on the morning of 10th March. At Neuve Chapelle the British were able to break through a line held by a division of the German Sixth Army. However, after three days of fighting, the British had gained land from the Germans totalling 2000 m wide by 1200 m deep for 7000 British and 4000 Indian casualties. Count Prince Rupprecht quickly counter-attacked, and although Haig was able to retain Neuve Chapelle, he had to abandon plans to advance towards Aubers Ridge. At the end of the offensive, the British Expeditionary Force gained 2 square kilometres of land at a cost of 13'000 casualties.
1913 Harriet Tubman abolitionist, conductor on Underground RR, in NY
1906 Some 1060 by coal dust explosion at Courrières, France.
1888 Thomas Roof, Black, lynched in Dade County, Georgia, accused of assaulting a White woman in the attempt to rape her.
1872 Giuseppe Mazzini, escritor y patriota italiano.
1871 Anton Einsle, Austrian artist born in 1801.
1865 William H. C. Whiting, Confederate general.   ^top^
      Confederate General William Henry Chase Whiting, 40, dies in prison from wounds suffered during the fall of Fort Fisher, North Carolina. Born in 1824 in Biloxi, Mississippi, Whiting was educated in Boston and at Georgetown College in Washington, where he graduated first in his class at age 16. He then entered the US Military Academy, where in 1845 he again topped his graduating class. Whiting joined the Corps of Engineers and designed coastal fortifications in the West and South, including the defenses for the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. During this project, he got married and settled in Wilmington, North Carolina.
      When the war began, Whiting offered his services to the new Confederate States of America. He was at Fort Sumter when the Union garrison surrendered at the start of the war. He returned to Wilmington in the summer of 1861 to supervise the construction of defenses for the city, and then moved to northern Virginia as chief engineer for the Confederate army forming there. Whiting was responsible for moving troops from the Shenandoah Valley to Manassas in time for the First Battle of Bull Run on 21 July. His work was a vital component of the Confederate rout of Union troops there.
      Whiting was given command of a division, and his leadership during the Seven Days' battles in June 1862 earned him the praise of the top Confederate leaders. In November 1862, he was given command of the District of Wilmington, allowing him to return to his North Carolina home. He set about strengthening the city's defenses and constructing Fort Fisher at the Cape Fear River's mouth. Partly due to his efforts, Wilmington was one of the most important blockade running ports for the Confederates throughout the war. Whiting spent the rest of the war in Wilmington, with the exception of a few months in 1864 spent shoring up the defenses around Petersburg, Virginia.
      Whiting's Fort Fisher was a formidable barrier to the Union capture of Wilmington. General Benjamin Butler led a Yankee force against Fort Fisher in December 1864, but the garrison fended off the attack. The next month, General Alfred Terry launched another assault; this time, Fort Fisher fell to the Yankees. Whiting was badly wounded and captured during the attack. He was able to write his report of the battle three days later, but his health failed when he was shipped to New York and confined in prison at Governor's Island.
1864 Jack Slade, hanged in Virginia City by vigilantes, for no greater cnime than firing his guns in bars and making idle threats.
1856 Ludovico Lipparini, Italian artist born on 17 February 1800.
1855 Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, pretendiente carlista al trono de España.
1826 Juan VI, Rey de Portugal.
1821 Juan Germán Roscio, político y jurista venezolano.
1745 Jan-Peter van Bredael I, Flemish artist born on 28 April 1654.
1573 Hans Mülich (or Mielich), German painter born in 1515. — LINKS
1592 Michiel van Coxcie “the Flemish Raphäel”, born in 1499, he studied under Bernaert van Orley. — MORE ON VAN COXCIE AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS — The Circumcision of Christ (detail) — Original Sin — The Torture of St George
1528 Balthaser Hubmaier, 48, German reformer and chief writer for the Anabaptist movement. Arrested in Moravia, Hubmaier had been condemned at Vienna and is burned at the stake.
0483 Saint Simplicius, Pope
Births which occurred on a March 10:
1965 The Odd Couple, play byNeil Simon, opens on Broadway.
1964 The first Ford Mustang car is produced.    ^top^
      The first Ford Mustang was produced on this day. The Mustang wasn’t released to the public until 16 April 1964, however, when it made, as one journalist described it, "the most sensational introduction of modern times." The Mustang was the result of Ford’s desire to make a small, sporty car which was inexpensive enough to appeal to young car buyers, an increasingly important market. The Mustang was the brainchild, or at least the mouthchild, of Ford executive Lee Iacocca. David Halberstam explained Iacocca’s relationship to the Mustang: "Outside the industry, Iacocca, who controlled the publicity for the car, was always considered the father of the Mustang… Within Ford, however, Don Frey, the product manager, was seen as the brains behind it." But to sell short Iacocca’s impact as a salesman would be a mistake. The car’s development never would have made it past the reluctant upper echelons of Ford management without Iacocca’s push.
      The Mustang was not an entirely new line of car in the traditional sense. In fact, Iacocca’s production team intended to make a car readily adaptable to existing Ford parts. By making the Mustang a Ford Falcon under the hood, Iacocca’s team cut their costs dramatically. Iacocca called the Mustang a Ford Falcon with "a whole new skin and greenhouse." He would never have called it that during its development, however. Iacocca stressed the Mustang as a whole new breed of Ford: muscular, small, and young. The base price of the car was only $2368, but buyers averaged over $1000 of extra features. Iacocca said, "People want economy so badly they don’t care how much they pay for it." Over it first two years the Mustang earned $1.1 billion in profits for Ford. Iacocca created an astounding media blitz surrounding the car’s release. He and the Mustang made the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the car appeared in every major business and automotive publication. Historian Gary Witzenburg explained, "No new car in history had ever received the publicity and attention that the media lavished on Ford’s sporty small car." One of the US’s most popular car models, then, is a testament to one of the US’s greatest salesman.
1946 Gérard Garouste, French artist.
1940 David Rabe, playwright.
1936 Manuel Vicent, escritor y periodista español.
1935 José Antonio Labordeta, cantautor, escritor y político español, diputado por la Chunta Aragonesista.
1932 Lecciones de introducción al psicoanálisis de Sigmund Freud se publica.
1920 Boris Vian, à Ville d’Avray, écrivain français non conformiste, inventeur du Verlan.    ^top^
      Si l’on pouvait le rapprocher d’un grand homme de sciences et de lettres français, ce serait de ce philosophe du XVIIIe siècle, Diderot ; par sa soif de connaissances et leur étendue, par sa certitude qu’aujourd’hui, autant qu’hier et davantage, chacun peut et doit être un Pic de la Mirandole. Ingénieur de l’École centrale des arts et manufactures, féru de mathématiques à l’instar de son ami Raymond Queneau (et pareil à Diderot), ouvert aux recherches les plus audacieuses de la cybernétique, de l’électronique, de l’astrophysique, l’angoisse certes le saisit devant l’usage meurtrier de la science et il ne cesse de pousser des cris d’alarme contre sa monopolisation par les chefs d’État et les militaires; il n’en reste pas moins convaincu qu’elle peut libérer l’homme de ses tâches serviles, réduire à presque rien la durée du travail, ouvrir l’ère du loisir, de l’activité créatrice non répétitive, en un mot du bonheur (car il ose ce mot). S’il est vrai qu’il a été un pionnier de l’écologie, c’est qu’à ses yeux toute erreur, tout abus de la science peut être corrigé par la science, à la condition expresse que l’homme (et non les seuls " spécialistes ") en conserve la maîtrise et entende la faire servir à sa liberté et à son plaisir. Il est mort le 23 juin 1959.
1915 Harry Bertoia, Italian-born US sculptor and designer who died on 06 November 1978.
1910 Pablo Serrano, escultor español.
1903 Clare Boothe Luce, US playwright and politician, was born. Shr died on 09 October 1987.
1892 Arthur Honegger Le Havre France, composer (King David; film scores: Crime and Punishment)
1869 Benjamin Fedorovich Kagan, worked on the foundations of geometry; died in 1953
1864 William Fogg Osgood, his main work was on the convergence of sequences of continuous functions, solutions of differential equations, the calculus of variations and space filling curves. He died in 1943.
1858 Henry W. Fowler, English lexicographer and philologist who died on 26 December 1933.
1853 Luigi Rossi, Swiss artist who died on 06 August 1923.
1845 (26 February Julian) Aleksandr Aleksandrovich III , second son of Aleksandr II who was assassinated on 13 March (01 March Julian) 1881. He inherited the next day the autocratic power and used it to try to Russify the national minorities in the Russian empire and to persecute religions other than the Orthodox. He died on 01 November 20 October Julian) 1894.
1843 Hugo Oehmichen, German artist who died in 1932.
1833 Pedro Antonio de Alarcón y Ariza, Spanish writer.    ^top^
      Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, born in Guadix, Spain, would die on 10 July 1891 in Valdemoro. He would grow up to be a writer remembered for his novel El sombrero de tres picos (1874). Alarcón had achieved a considerable reputation as a journalist and poet when his play El hijo pródigo was hissed off the stage in 1857. The failure so exasperated him that he enlisted as a volunteer in the Moroccan campaign of 1859-60. The expedition provided the material for his eyewitness account Diario de un testigo de la guerra de Africa (1859), a masterpiece in its way as a description of campaigning life.
      On his return Alarcón became editor of the anticlerical periodical El Látigo, but in the years 1868-1874 he ruined his political reputation by rapid changes of position. His literary reputation, however, steadily increased. El sombrero de tres picos, a short novel inspired by a popular ballad, is notable for its skillful construction and pointed observation and is a masterpiece of the costumbrismo literary genre. Manuel de Falla based his ballet of the same title on the story, and Hugo Wolf wrote an opera so titled. Alarcón's other major novels are El final de Norma (1855), El escándalo (1875), and El niño de la bola (1880).
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón en seguida comenzó a escribir Literatura. Se desengañó de la política. Fue profundamente católico. Evolucionó de la política liberal a la conservadora. Escribió crónicas de viajes, poesías, un drama (que fracasó), artículos periodísticos, cuentos y novelas. La capital de sus novelas es la narración misma, más que los personajes, el ambiente; en este sentido, no es propiamente realista, a pesar de ciertos detalles técnicos, y tiene una clara raíz romántica: El escándalo, El niño de la bola, El sombrero de tres picos, El Capitán Veneno, Historietas nacionales. Tiene un gran sentido dramático.
— Painting El niño de la bola by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (27 Feb 1863 – 11 Aug 1923)
—   P.A. de A. y A. is not to be confused with Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza, (1581– 04 Aug 1639), author of La Verdad Sospechosa, Mexican-born Spanish dramatist of the colonial era who was the principal dramatist of early 17th-century Spain after Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina.
1822 Willem Roelofs I, Dutch painter who died on 12 May 1897. — LINKS
1814 Julián Sanz del Río, escritor y pensador español.
1808 José Francisco de Castro y Orozco, literato y político español.
1791 Ángel de Saavedra Ramírez de Baquedano, duque de Rivas, político liberal y escritor romántico español.
1789 Augustin Alexandre Thierrat, French artist who died on 13 April 1870.
1787 William Etty, British painter specialized in nudes, who died on 13 November 1849. — LINKS — Reclining Female Nude, — The Storm
1787 Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, político español.
1772 Friedrich von Schlegel, German writer and critic who died on 12 January 1829.
1760 Leandro Fernández de Moratín, dramaturgo español.
1748 John Playfair among the first in Britain to teach modern analysis; died in 1819.
1629 Alejo Mijailovitch, zar de Rusia.
1622 Johann Heinrich Rahn, first to use the symbol ÷ for division in his algebra book published in 1659; died in 1676.
1549 San Francisco Solano, "apóstol de Perú", misionero español.
1538 Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk; son of poet Henry Howard earl of Surrey (born in 1517, executed on 19 January 1547 for being a Catholic and alledgedly intriguing to have his father succeed Heny VIII), executed by order of Queen Elizabeth on 02 June 1572 for being a Catholic and allegedly intriguing against her..
1503 Fernando I de Alemania, fundador del Imperio Austriaco.
Holidays Dominica, St Lucia : Independence Day (1967) / Laos : Teachers' Day
Religious Observances RC: the 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste, Armenia / RC: St John Ogilvie, Scottish Jesuit / Santos Cayo, Víctor, Alejandro, Pablo, Anecto, Simplicio y Macario.
Thought for the day: “There is no tyranny so despotic as that of public opinion among a free people.” — Donn Piatt, US journalist (1819-1891).
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