This Week in History – March 7-13
March 7, 203 – Perpetua, a Christian about 22 years old, her slave, Felicitas, and several others are martyred at the arena in Carthage. They were flogged, attacked by hungry leopards, and finally beheaded. Perpetua remains one of early Christianity’s most famous martyrs.
March 7, 1274 – Thomas Aquinas, one of the most significant theologians of all time, dies at age 48. Known for his adaptation of Aristotle’s writings to Christianity, he became famous for his massive Summa Theologiae (or “summation of theological knowledge”). Thomas proceeded to distinguish between philosophy and theology and between reason and revelation.
March 7, 1827 – Birth of Alfred Edersheim, English biblical scholar. Converted to Christianity from Judaism before age 20, Edersheim later published “The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah”, a Christian classic still in print.
March 7, 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for the telephone.
March 7, 1939 – Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians first record “Auld Lang Syne.”
March 8, 1920 – The U.S. Supreme Court settles a boundary squabble between Minnesota and Wisconsin over control of the Duluth harbor, finding in Minnesota’s favor.
March 8, 1948 – In a distortion of American history, the result of which hastened the moral deterioration in government-run (“public”) schools, Justice Hugo Black handed down a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that unconstitutionally ruled religious education a violation of the First Amendment, an amendment originally intended to protect the free exercise of religion. The ruling of the McCollum v. Board of Education said that allowing children “release time,” even with parental consent, to receive religious instruction during school hours on school property was a violation of the “separation of church and state,” a phrase which is neither written nor implied in the Constitution.
March 8, 1983 – President Ronald Reagan delivers his famous “Evil Empire” speech (in reference to the Soviet Union) to a gathering in Orlando. Siberian gulag prisoner, Natan Sharansky, a dissident Jew, called it “the brightest, most glorious day…the beginning of a new revolution, a freedom revolution—Reagan’s Revolution.” The speech set afire a chain of events that led to the demise of Soviet communist rule in 1991.
March 8, 2018 – President Donald Trump, protecting jobs for miners and factory workers, authorizes tariffs on steel and aluminium to restore the balance squandered by the Obama administration.
March 8, 2021 – Democrat President Joe Biden issues two Executive Orders establishing and promoting his policies concerning transgenderism in society as a whole and specifically in government-run (“public”) schools.
March 9, 320 – Roman soldiers leave Christian soldiers naked on the ice of a frozen pond in Sebaste, Armenia. They placed baths of hot water around them to tempt them to renounce their faith. When one did so, a pagan guard—inspired by the fortitude of the remaining Christians—converted and joined the freezing Christians. They were all killed.
March 9, 1776 – Adam Smith publishes the landmark influential economics book The Wealth of Nations.
March 9, 1831 – Evangelist Charles Finney concludes a six-month series of meetings in Rochester, NY. The meetings, which have been called “the world’s greatest single revival campaign,” led to the closing of the town’s theater and taverns, a two-thirds drop in crime, and a reported 100,000 conversions.
March 9, 2009 – Democrat President Barack Obama issues Executive Order 13505 removing restrictions against using aborted babies for embryonic stem cell research, thus encouraging abortion expansion in the U.S.
March 10, 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.
March 10, 1747 – John Newton, the captain of a slave ship, converts to Christianity during a huge storm at sea. He had been reading Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, and was struck by a line about the “uncertain continuance of life.” He eventually became an Anglican clergyman, the author of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace,” and a zealous abolitionist, pivotal in ending slavery in Britain, decades before it was abolished in the U.S. “That 10th of March is a day much to be remembered by me; and I have never allowed it to pass unnoticed since the year 1748. For on that day the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.”
March 10, 1804 – The Upper Louisiana Territory, including present-day Minnesota, west of the Mississippi River, is formally transferred from France to the United States in a ceremony in St. Louis.
March 10, 1862 – The first issue of U.S. government paper money occurred as $5, $10, and $20 bills began circulation.
March 10, 1880 – Commissioner George S. Railton and seven women arrive in New York City to establish the Salvation Army in the United States. The organization was first founded in England by William Booth and operates today in 90 countries.
March 10, 1913 – Harriet Tubman, known as “Grandma Moses,” for her work rescuing slaves and guiding them to the north on what was dubbed “the Underground Railroad,” dies. Although modern liberal educators have secularized her efforts, her 19 rescues (of about 300 slaves) were successful, she said, because God showed her the way. “‘Twant me, ’twas the Lord,” said the diminutive woman who herself escaped slavery. “I always told him, ‘I trust to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,’ and he always did.”
March 11, 1779 – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is first established.
March 11, 1918 – The Spanish influenza first reached America as 107 soldiers become sick at Fort Riley, KS. One quarter of the U.S. population eventually became ill from the deadly virus, resulting in 500,000 deaths. The death toll worldwide approached 22 million by the end of 1920.
March 11, 1941 – During World War II, the Lend-Lease program began allowing Britain to receive American weapons, machines, raw materials, training and repair services. Ships, planes, guns and shells, along with food, clothing and metals went to the embattled British while American warships began patrolling the North Atlantic and U.S troops were stationed in Greenland and Iceland.
March 11, 2020 – President Donald Trump issues Proclamation 9996—Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Certain Additional Persons Who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus
March 12, 1816 – Birth of Robert Lowery, American Baptist clergyman and hymnwriter. He is chiefly remembered today for writing and composing the hymns “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus and “I Need Thee Every Hour.”
March 12, 1877 – Duluth, MN, having suffered a loss of population, reverts from a city back into a town.
March 12, 1999 – Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic became full-fledged members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) less than ten years after exchanging communist rule for democracy and ending their Cold War military alliances with Soviet Russia.
March 12, 2019 – The defeat of ISIS. The Trump administration did what the Obama administration wouldn’t do, as more than 3,000 ISIS fighters surrendered amid battle for last ISIS stronghold in Baghouz, Syria.
March 13, 1852 – The popular Uncle Sam caricature made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly.
March 13, 1877 – Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs, four years after inventing them at age 15.
March 13, 1943 – Nazis liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków; Oskar Schindler with advance information, saves his workers by keeping them in his factory overnight.
March 13, 2020 – President Donald Trump issues Proclamation 9994—Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID–19) Outbreak