This Week in History – March 14-20
March 14, 1794 – Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin machine, revolutionizing the cotton industry in the southern U.S. states.
March 14, 1879 – Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. His theory of relativity led to new ways of thinking about time, space, matter and energy. He received a Nobel Prize in 1921 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1933 where he was an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany. Believing the Nazis might develop an atomic bomb, he warned President Roosevelt and urged the development of the U.S. Atomic bomb.
March 14, 1899 – German Ferdinand von Zeppelin receives a U.S. patent for a “Navigable Balloon.”
March 14, 1919 – Max Shulman is born in St. Paul. An author and Hollywood screenwriter, he is best remembered for creating the character Dobie Gillis, who appeared in short stories, novels, and a television show, all based on the family that owned Gillis’s Grocery in Minneapolis.
March 14, 2018 – Students across America commemorate the Florida high school shooting of 2016 with mass walkouts across the country—just one of over 173 acts of terrorism with loss of life on U.S. soil during the Barack Obama presidency, with Obama often vilifying law enforcement or trivializing the killings as “workplace violence.” Obama’s whirlwind of executive orders included none aimed at perpetrators of terror. The previous worst presidency for domestic terrorism costing human lives paled in comparison: 23 acts of terror were committed when Bill Clinton presided. The number of such attacks in the U.S. after Obama left office plunged to 11 under President Trump.
March 14, 2023 – Democrat President Joe Biden issues Executive Order 14092 requiring all firearms dealers to become Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) and implement licensee rules that make it nearly impossible for them to remain in business.
March 15, 44 B.C. – Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Senate chamber in Rome by Brutus and fellow conspirators. After first trying to defend himself against the murderous onslaught, Caesar saw Brutus with a knife and asked “Et tu, Brute?” (You too, Brutus?) Caesar then gave up the struggle and was stabbed to death.
March 15, 1767 – Andrew Jackson, the 7th U.S. President was born in Waxhaw, SC. Known for his alarmingly cruel treatment of slaves on his own plantation, Jackson was a staunch defender of slavery and thus helped form the Democrat Party, becoming the first Democrat president, serving from 1829 to 1837.
March 15, 1783 – In an impassioned speech in Newburgh, NY, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy, a plan by some Continental Army officers to challenge the authority of the Confederation Congress. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d’etat never takes place.
March 15, 1927 – The Arrowhead Bridge across the St. Louis River opens, linking West Duluth to Superior, Wisconsin.
March 15, 1941 – Thirty-one people, mostly unsuspecting motorists caught on Minnesota roads, die in a blizzard, the second killer snowstorm of the season.
March 16th – St. Urho’s Day, created by Finnish Americans in Northern Minnesota in the 1950s, is celebrated the day prior to St. Patrick’s Day, who was alleged to have driven the snakes from Ireland. According to the original “Ode to St. Urho” written by Gene McCavic and Richard Mattson, St. Urho was supposed to have cast “tose ‘Rogs” (those frogs) out of Finland by the power of his loud voice, which he obtained by drinking “feelia sour” (sour whole milk) and eating “kala mojakka” (fish soup). Details of the legend have since changed. The legend now states that St. Urho drove away grasshoppers (rather than frogs) from Finland using the incantation “Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä helveteen!” (“Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to Hell!”), thus saving the Finnish grape crops.
March 16, 597 B.C. – Babylonians capture Jerusalem and send Israel into a 70-year captivity as prophesied for decades by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other biblical prophets.
March 16, 1751 – James Madison, the 4th U.S. President was born in Port Conway, VA. He played an important role in the formation of the new U.S. Constitution following the American Revolutionary War. During the War of 1812, President Madison was forced to flee Washington, D.C,. while the British attacked and burned the White House and other important public buildings.
March 16, 2012 – President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13603. Under the guise of “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” it was in reality what Forbes called a “blueprint for a federal takeover of the economy,” giving unprecedented powers to the President, such as authority to declare martial law, rationing and confiscation of food, gas, water and other resources, peacetime conscription, American industry nationalization, and even involuntary seizure of private property. The order mirrors the authority taken by Benito Mussolini, founder of fascism, when he consolidated dictatorial control over Italy in 1924.
March 17th – Celebrated as Saint Patrick’s Day commemorating the patron saint of Ireland.
March 17, 461 – Patrick, missionary to Ireland and that country’s patron saint, dies. Irish raiders once captured Patrick, a Romanized Briton, and enslaved him as a youth of only 16 years of age in 432. He escaped to Gaul (modern France) but returned to Ireland after experiencing a vision calling him back to preach. Patrick enjoyed great success there as a missionary, and only the far south remained predominantly pagan when he died.
March 17, 1776 – Early in the American Revolutionary War the British completed their evacuation of Boston following a successful siege conducted by Patriots. The event is still commemorated in Boston as Evacuation Day.
March 17, 1789 – Birth of Charlotte Elliott, English devotional writer. An illness at age 33 left her an invalid her remaining 50 years, during which she devoted herself to religious writing. Included in her 150 hymns, “Just As I Am.”
March 17, 1841 – Birth of James R. Murray, American sacred music editor. A veteran of the American Civil War, Murray is better remembered today as composer of the hymn tune MUELLER, to which we sing the Christmas carol, “Away in a Manger.”
March 18, 1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Hawaii statehood bill.
March 18, 1974 – The five-month-old Arab oil embargo against the U.S. was lifted. The embargo was in retaliation for American support of Israel during the Yom Kipper War of 1973 in which Egypt and Syria suffered a crushing defeat. In the U.S., the resulting embargo had caused long lines at gas stations as prices soared 300 percent amid shortages and a government ban on Sunday gas sales.
March 18, 1881 – P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey debuts the Barnum & Bailey Circus, travelling as “The Greatest Show on Earth”, at Madison Square Garden, NYC. It would last 146 years before closing in 2017.
March 18, 1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9102, creating the racist War Relocation Authority, overseeing the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.
March 19, 1589 – William Bradford was born in Yorkshire, England. He sailed aboard the Mayflower during its 66-day voyage from Plymouth, England to Massachusetts in 1620. Bradford became the first governor of the new Plymouth Colony, serving a total of 30 years, and was largely responsible for its success.
March 19, 1711 – Death at Longleat, England, of Thomas Ken. He will be remembered by succeeding generations as the author of the doxology “Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow.”
March 19, 1813 – Explorer and medical missionary David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland.
March 19, 1848 – Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth, IL. He became a legendary figure in the Wild West as a lawman and gunfighter, best known for the shootout at the O.K. Corral in 1881, in which the Earp brothers (Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan) fought and defeated the Ike Clanton gang.
March 19, 2003 – The U.S. launched an attack against Iraq to topple dictator Saddam Hussein from power. The attack commenced with aerial strikes against military sites, followed the next day by an invasion of southern Iraq by U.S. and British ground troops. The troops made rapid progress northward and conquered the country’s capital, Baghdad, just 21 days later, ending the rule of Saddam.
March 20, 1852 – Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of famous Congregational minister Lyman Beecher, publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin (which had been serialized in an antislavery newspaper). The book sold one million copies and was so influential in arousing antislavery sentiment that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said upon meeting Stowe in 1863: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”
March 20, 1930 – American fast food restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (“KFC”) is founded by Colonel Harland Sanders in North Corbin, KY.
March 20, 2016 – Democrat President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle arrived in communist Cuba for a three-day vacation despite widespread American criticism.
March 20, 2018 – Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman met with President Donald Trump at the White House culminating with the farthest-reaching commitment ever against financing groups linked to terrorism, and a record $450 billion investment into the U.S. by the Saudis, part of which was $110 billion for military equipment that would otherwise have been obtained from China and Russia.