March 12 holidays in 2016

Historical Events on March 12

• 1854: A United States Naval Fleet featuring thirteen Ironclad vessels and seven Gunboats, plus an assortment of support vessels, enter the Red River – thereby starting the Red River Campaign of the American Civil War.
• 1868: An assassination attempt is made on Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh.
• 1868: The U.K annexes Basutoland (it is known today as Lesotho).
• 1881: Andrew Watson becomes the first black international footballer and captain in Scotland on this day.
• 1894: Joseph A. Biedenharn bottles and sells Coca-Cola for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
• 1912: In the U.S., the Girl Guides is established. This organization would later be renamed the Girls Scouts of America.
• 1928: The St. Francis Dam in California fails and kills approximately 431 people.
• 1930: Mahatma Gandhi starts the Salt March. This two hundred mile march was to protest the British monopoly on salt in India.
• 1930: United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt begins his “fire-side chats” on this day.
• 1938: Austria is occupied by German forces.
• 1942: The American-British-Dutch-Australian Command in Bundung in the Dutch East Indies surrenders to the Japanese, thereby ending the Battle of Java during WWII.
• 1993: Three hundred people are killed and hundreds more are injured when several bombs go off in Mumbai, India.
• 1993: North Korea announces its plan to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It also refuses to allow inspectors to inspect its nuclear sites.
• 1994: The first female priest is ordained by the Church of England.
• 2014: 70 people are injured and 8 people are killed when a gas explosion erupts in East Harlem in New York City.

Famous Birthdays on March 12

• American author and poet, Jack Kerouac is born in 1922.
• Japanese physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, Leo Esaki is born in 1925.
• English actress Lesley Manville is born in 1956.
• American actor Titus Welliver is born in 1961.