March 4

March 4 is the Expression error: unrecognised punctuation character "{"th day of the year Expression error: unrecognised punctuation character "{" in the Gregorian calendar. There are Expression error: unrecognised punctuation character "{" days remainingExpression error: unrecognised punctuation character "{".

From 1793 - 1933, March 4 was Inauguration Day for the President of the United States. Beginning in 1937, Inauguration Day has been January 20.

Events

• 51 - Nero, later to become Roman Emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth).
• 303 or 304 - Martyrdom of Saint Adrian of Nicomedia.
• 852 - Croatian Duke Trpimir I issued a statute, a document with the first known written mention of the Croats name in Croatian sources.
• 932 - Translation of the relics of martyr Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, Prince of the Czechs.
• 1152 - Frederick I Barbarossa is elected King of the Germans.
• 1215 - King John of England makes an oath to the Pope as a crusader to gain the support of Innocent III.
• 1238 - The Battle of the Sit River was fought in the northern part of the present-day Yaroslavl Oblast of Russia between the Mongol Hordes of Batu Khan and the Russians under Yuri II of Vladimir-Suzdal during the Mongol invasion of Russia.
• 1275 - Chinese astronomers observe a total eclipse of the sun.
• 1351 - Ramathibodi becomes King of Siam.
• 1386 - Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) was crowned King of Poland.
• 1461 - Wars of the Roses in England: Lancastrian King Henry VI is deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then becomes King Edward IV.
• 1492 - King James IV of Scotland concludes an alliance with France against England.
• 1493 - Explorer Christopher Columbus arrives back in Lisbon, Portugal aboard his ship Niña from his discovery voyage to America. He returned to Spain on March 15.
• 1519 - Hernan Cortes arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and their wealth.
• 1570 - King Philip II of Spain bans foreign Dutch students.
• 1611 - George Abbot is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 1621 - Jakarta, Java is renamed Batavia.
• 1629 - Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had the role of colonizing the Americas, is granted a Royal charter.
• 1634 - Samuel Cole opens the first tavern in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1665 - English King Charles II declares war on The Netherlands which marked the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
• 1675 - John Flamsteed appointed first Astronomer Royal of England.
• 1681 - Charles II of England grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania.
• 1774 - First sighting of Orion Nebula by William Herschel.
• 1776 - The American War of Independence: The Americans capture "Dorchester Heights" dominating the port of Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1778 - The Continental Congress voted to ratify both the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance with France. The two treaties were the first entered into by the United States government.
• 1789 - In New York City, the first U.S. Congress meets and declares the new Constitution of the United States is in effect.
• 1790 - France is divided into 83 départements, which cut across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on noble ownership of land.
• 1791 - Vermont is admitted as the 14th U.S. state.
• 1791 - A Constitutional Act is introduced by the British House of Commons in London which envisages the separation of Canada into Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario).
• 1793 - French troops conquer Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.
• 1794 - The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress.
• 1797 - In the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, John Adams is sworn in as President of the United States, succeeding George Washington.
• 1804 - The Battle of Vinegar Hill, colony of New South Wales (Australia), when Irish convicts (some of whom had been involved in Ireland’s Battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798) led the colony’s only significant convict uprising. [1]
• 1813 - Russian troops fighting the army of Napoleon reach Berlin in Germany and the French garrison evacuate the city without a fight.
• 1814 - Americans defeat the British at the Battle of Longwoods between London and Thamesville near present-day Wardsville, Ontario.
• 1824 - The "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck" was founded in the United Kingdom, later to be renamed The Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1858.
• 1837 - Chicago becomes incorporated as a city.
• 1848 - Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia
• 1877 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake premiers at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
• 1882 - Britain's first electric trams run in East London.
• 1887 - Gottlieb Daimler unveils his first automobile which he test runs in Esslingen and Cannstatt, Germany.
• 1890 - The longest bridge in the United Kingdom, the Forth Bridge (railway) (1,710 ft) in Scotland is opened by the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII. [2]
• 1893 - Congo Free State: The army of Francis, Baron Dhanis attacks the Lualaba, enabling him to transport his troops across the Upper Congo and, capture Nyangwe almost without an effort.
• 1894 - Great fire in Shanghai. Over 1,000 buildings are destroyed.
• 1899 - Cyclone Mahina sweeps in north of Cooktown, Queensland, with a 12 m wave that reaches up to 5 km inland - over 300 dead.
• 1902 - In Chicago, the American Automobile Association is established.
• 1904 - Russo-Japanese War: Russian troops in Korea retreat toward Manchuria followed by 100,000 Japanese troops.
• 1908 - The Collinwood School Fire, Collinwood near Cleveland, Ohio, kills 174 people.
• 1911 - Victor Berger (Wisconsin) becomes the first socialist congressman in U.S..
• 1917 - Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.
• 1917 - Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia's renunciation of the throne is made public, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia publicly issues his abdication manifesto. The victory of the February Revolution.
• 1925 - Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio.
• 1929 - Charles Curtis becomes the first native-American Vice President.
• 1930 - Terrible floods ransack Languedoc and the surrounds in south-west France, resulting in twelve departments being submerged by water and causing the death of over 700 people.
• 1931 - The British Viceroy of India, Governor-General Edward Frederick Lindley Wood and Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) meet to sign an agreement envisaging the release of political prisoners and allowing that salt is freely used by the poorest layers of the population.
• 1933 - Frances Perkins becomes United States Secretary of Labor, first female member of the United States Cabinet.
• 1933 - Bertha Wilson is appointed as first woman to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada.
• 1933 - The Parliament of Austria is suspended because of a quibble over procedure - Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss initiates authoritarian rule by decree (see Austrofascism).
• 1941 - The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands, during World War II.
• 1941 - Adolf Hitler applies pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Tripartite Pact.
• 1944 - First U.S. daylight bombing of Berlin and Anti-Germany strikes in northern Italy.
• 1945 - In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, later to become Queen Elizabeth II, joins the British Army as a driver.
• 1945 - Lapland War: Finland declares war on Nazi Germany.
• 1954 - Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, announces the first successful kidney transplant.
• 1957 - The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90.
• 1959 - U.S. Pioneer IV misses Moon and becomes the second (U.S. first) artificial planet.
• 1960 - French freighter 'La Coubre' explodes in Havana, Cuba killing 100. Fidel Castro blames the U.S.
• 1962 - United States Atomic Energy Commission announces that the first atomic power plant at McMurdo Station in Antarctica is in operation.
• 1966 - Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8-43 explodes on landing at Tokyo International Airport, killing 64 people.
• 1970 - French submarine Eurydice explodes.
• 1972 - Libya and the Soviet Union sign a cooperation treaty.
• 1976 - The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland resulting in direct rule of Northern Ireland from London via the British parliament.
• 1977 - The 1977 Bucharest Earthquake in southern and eastern Europe kills more than 1,500.
• 1977 - The first Cray-1 supercomputer is shipped to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
• 1979 - The first encyclical written by Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (Latin for "The Redeemer of Man") is promulgated less than five months after his installation as pope.
• 1980 - Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister.
• 1982 - NASA launches "Intelsat V".
• 1985 - The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States.
• 1991 - Sheikh Saad Al-Abdallah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, returned to his country for the first time since Iraq's invasion.
• 1994 - Space shuttle STS-62 (Columbia 16) launches into orbit.
• 1994 - Bosnia's Croats and Moslems sign an agreement to form a federation in a loose economic union with Croatia.
• 1997 - US President Bill Clinton bans federally funded human cloning research.
• 1998 - Gay rights: Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.
• 2001 - 4 March 2001 BBC bombing: a massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring 11 people. The attack was attributed to the Real IRA.
• 2001 - Hintze Ribeiro disaster, a bridge collapses in northern Portugal, killing up to 70 people.
• 2002 - Canada bans human embryo cloning but permits government-funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions.
• 2002 - Multinational Force in Afghanistan: Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers are killed as they attempt to infiltrate the Shahi Kot Valley on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission.
• 2005 - The car of released Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena is fired on by US soldiers in Iraq, causing the death of an Italian Secret Service Agent and injuring two passengers.
• 2005 - United Nations warns that about 90 million Africans could be infected by the HIV virus in the future without further action against the spread of the disease.
• 2006 - Final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network. No response was received.
• 2007 - Estonian parliamentary election, 2007: Approximately 30,000 voters take advantage of electronic voting in Estonia, the world's first nationwide voting where part of the votecasting is allowed in the form of remote electronic voting via the Internet.

Births

• 1188 - Blanche of Castile, wife of Louis VIII of France (d. 1252)
• 1394 - Henry the Navigator (d. 1460)
• 1492 - Francesco de Layolle, Italian composer (d. c.1540)
• 1525 - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Italian composer of Renaissance music (d. 1594)
• 1610 - William Dobson, English portraitist and painter (d. 1646)
• 1651 - John Somers, 1st Baron Somers (d. 1716)
• 1665 - Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, Swedish soldier (d. 1694)
• 1678 - Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer (d. 1741)
• 1702 - Jack Sheppard, English burglar and escapee (d. 1724)
• 1706 - Lauritz de Thurah, Danish architect and architectural writer (d. 1759)
• 1715 - James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave, British statesman (d. 1763)
• 1719 - George Pigot, Baron Pigot, British governor of Madras (d. 1777)
• 1745 - Charles Dibdin, English composer (d.1814)
• 1746 - Kazimierz Pułaski, American Revolutionary War general (d. 1779)
• 1756 - Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish painter (d. 1823)
• 1781 - Rebecca Gratz, American educator and philanthropist (d. 1869)
• 1782 - Johann Rudolf Wyss, Swiss folklorist (d. 1830)
• 1792 - Samuel Slocum, American inventor (d. 1861)
• 1793 - Karl Lachmann, German philologist (d. 1851)
• 1817 - Edwards Pierrepont, American statesman, jurist and lawyer; 34th United States Attorney General (d. 1892)
• 1819 - Charles Oberthur, German-born harpist (d. 1895)
• 1822 - Jules Antoine Lissajous, French mathematician (d. 1880)
• 1826 - John Buford, American Civil War Union cavalry officer (d. 1863)
• 1826 - Theodore Judah, American railroad engineer (d. 1863)
• 1835 - John Hughlings Jackson, English neurologist (d. 1911)
• 1847 - Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist (d. 1904)
• 1854 - Sir Napier Shaw, British meteorologist (d. 1945)
• 1856 - Toru Dutt, English and French poet and author (d. 1877)
• 1856 - Alfred William Rich, English painter (d. 1921)
• 1859 - Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist (d. 1905)
• 1862 - Jacob Robert Emden, Swiss astrophysicist and meteorologist (d. 1940)
• 1863 - Reginald Innes Pocock, British zoologist (d. 1947)
• 1863 - John Henry Wigmore, American jurist and expert in the law of evidence (d. 1943)
• 1864 - David W. Taylor, U.S. Navy architect (d. 1940)
• 1870 - Thomas Sturge Moore, English poet (d. 1944)
• 1871 - Boris Galerkin, Russian mathematician (d. 1945)
• 1873 - Guy Wetmore Carryl, American humorist and poet (d. 1904)
• 1873 - John H. Trumbull, 54th Governor of the U.S. state of Connecticut (d. 1961)
• 1875 - Mihály Károlyi, former Prime Minister of Hungary and President of Hungary (d. 1955)
• 1876 - Léon-Paul Fargue, French poet (d. 1947)
• 1876 - Theodore Hardeen, Magician and stunt performer, founder of the Magician's Guild (d. 1945)
• 1877 - Alexander Fyodorovich Gedike, Russian composer (d. 1957)
• 1877 - Fritz Graebner, German ethnologist (d. 1934)
• 1877 - Garrett Morgan, American inventor (d. 1963)
• 1878 - Egbert Van Alstyne, American songwriter and pianist (d. 1951)
• 1878 - Peter D. Ouspensky, Russian philosopher (d. 1947)
• 1878 - Arishima Takeo, Japanese novelist, short-story writer and essayist (d. 1923)
• 1879 - Josip Murn Aleksandrov, Slovenian poet (d. 1901)
• 1880 - Channing Pollock, American playwright and critic (d. 1946)
• 1881 - Todor Aleksandrov, 19th century Bulgarian revolutionary (d. 1924)
• 1881 - Maude Fealy, American actor (d. 1971)
• 1881 - Thomas Sigismund Stribling, American writer (d. 1965)
• 1881 - Richard C. Tolman, American mathematical physicist (d. 1948)
• 1882 - Nicolae Titulescu, Romanian diplomat, government minister, and former President of the League of Nations (d. 1941)
• 1883 - Sam Langford, Canadian boxer (d. 1956)
• 1884 - Red Murray, American professional baseball player (d. 1958)
• 1886 - Paul Bazelaire, French cellist (d. 1958)
• 1887 - Violet MacMillan, American Broadway theatre actress (d. 1953)
• 1888 - Jeff Pfeffer, American professional baseball pitcher (d. 1972)
• 1888 - Knute Rockne, American football player and coach (d. 1931)
• 1889 - Oscar Chisini, Italian mathematician (d. 1967)
• 1889 - Oren E. Long, 10th Territorial Governor of Hawai'i (d. 1965)
• 1889 - Pearl White, American actress (d. 1938)
• 1891 - Dazzy Vance, American Major League Baseball pitcher (d. 1961)
• 1891 - Lois Wilson, founder of Al-Anon (d. 1988)
• 1895 - Bjarne Brustad, Norwegian violinist (d. 1978)
• 1895 - Milt Gross, American comic book illustrator (d. 1953)
• 1895 - Shemp Howard, American comedian (Three Stooges) (d. 1955)
• 1897 - Lefty O'Doul, American baseball player (d. 1969)
• 1898 - Georges Dumézil, French philologist (d. 1940)
• 1899 - Emilio Prados, Spanish poet and editor (d. 1962)
• 1900 - Herbert Biberman, American screenwriter (d. 1971)
• 1901 - Charles Goren, American bridge player and writer (d. 1991)
• 1901 - Jean Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy/French poet (d. 1937)
• 1903 - Luis Carrero Blanco, Spanish statesman (d. 1973)
• 1903 - William C. Boyd, American immunochemist (d. 1983)
• 1903 - Dorothy Mackaill, British-born actress (d. 1990)
• 1903 - John Scarne, American magician (d. 1985)
• 1904 - George Gamow, Ukrainian-born physicist (d. 1968)
• 1904 - Joseph Schmidt Austrian-Hungarian tenor and actor (d. 1942)
• 1904 - Chief Tahachee, American-born Old Settler Cherokee Indian stage and film actor (d. 1978)
• 1906 - Meindert DeJong American author (d. 1991)
• 1906 - Georges Ronsse, Belgian national cyclo-cross and world champion road bicycle racer (d. 1969)
• 1906 - Charles Rudolph Walgreen, Jr., American businessman (d. 2007)
• 1907 - Eleanor "Sis" Daley, wife of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley (d. 2003)
• 1908 - T.R.M. Howard, American civil rights leader (d. 1976)
• 1909 - Harry Helmsley, American real estate entrepreneur (d.1997)
• 1912 - Afro Basaldella, Italian painter (d. 1976)
• 1912 - Judith Furse, British character actress (d. 1974)
• 1912 - Carl Marzani, American documentarian (d. 1994)
• 1913 - Taos Amrouche, Algerian writer and singer (d. 1976)
• 1913 - John Garfield, American actor (d. 1952)
• 1913 - Willie Johnson (guitarist), American guitarist (d. 1995)
• 1914 - Gino Colaussi (Luigi Colaussi), Italian footballer (d. 1991)
• 1914 - Ward Kimball, American cartoonist (d. 2002)
• 1914 - Robert R. Wilson, American physicist, sculptor and architect (d. 2000)
• 1915 - Carlos Surinach, Spanish composer (d. 1997)
• 1916 - William Alland, American actor, producer, writer and director (d. 1997)
• 1916 - Giorgio Bassani, Italian writer (d. 2000)
• 1916 - Hans Eysenck, German-born psychologist (d. 1997)
• 1917 - Clyde McCullough, American baseball player (d. 1982)
• 1918 - Margaret Osborne duPont, Ame