TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2017

It is International Day of Happiness (United Nations) On this day in history:

0141 - The 6th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet took place.

1616 - Walter Raleigh was released from Tower of London to seek gold in Guyana. 1760 - The great fire of Boston destroyed 349 buildings. 1792 - In Paris, the Legislative Assembly approved the use of the guillotine.

1802 - English explorer Matthew Flinders names Spencer Gulf in South Australia.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris after his escape from Elba and began his “Hundred Days” rule.

1902 - France and Russia acknowledged the Anglo-Japanese alliance. They also asserted their right to protect their interests in China and Korea.

1915 - The French called off the Champagne offensive on the Western Front.

1933 - The first German concentration camp was completed at Dachau. 1940 - The British Royal Air Force conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.

1942 - US General Douglas Macarthur first makes his famous “I shall return” speech at Terowie, South Australia. 1943 - The Allies attacked Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.

1947 - A blue whale weighing 180-metric tons was caught in the South Atlantic.

1956 - Tunisia gained independence from France. 1972 - 19 mountain climbers were killed on Japan’s Mount Fuji during an avalanche. 1990 - Namibia became an independent nation ending 75 years of South African rule. 1995 - In Tokyo, 12 people were killed and more than 5500 others were sickened when packages containing the nerve gas Sarin was released on five separate subway trains. The terrorists belonged to a doomsday cult in Japan. 1999 - Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first men to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon. The non-stop trip began on March 3 and covered 26,500 miles. 2003 - US and British forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait.