TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Thursday, March 8, the 67th day of 2018. There are 298 days left in the year.

1010 Ferdowsi completes his epic poem Shahnameh.

1576 Spanish explorer Diego García de Palacio first sights the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán.

1618 Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.

1702 Queen Anne, the younger sister of Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

1736 Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.

1817 The New York Stock Exchange is founded.

1910 French aviator Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot’s license. 1917 International Women’s Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution ( February 23rd in the Julian calendar).

1917 The United States Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule. 1920 The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.

1921 Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid.

1957 Egypt re- opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.

1963 The Ba’ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d’état by a clique of quasileftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.

1965 Thirty- five hundred United States Marines are the first American land combat forces committed during the Vietnam War.

1966 Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin, Ireland, destroyed by a bomb.

1971 The Fight of the Century between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali commences. Frazier wins in 15 rounds via unanimous decision.

1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.

1979 Philips demonstrates the compact disc publicly for the first time.

1983 Cold War: While addressing a convention of Evangelicals, US President Ronald Reagan labels the Soviet Union an “evil empire”.

1985 A supposed failed assassination attempt on Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.

2004 A new constitution is signed by Iraq’s Governing Council.

2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying a total of 239 people, disappears en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

2017 The Azure Window collapsed in a stormy weather.