HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Wednesday, March 15, the 74th day of 2017. There are 291 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1916 – United States President Woodrow Wilson sends 4,800 United States troops over the U.S.–Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa. 1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian
throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar. 1922 – After Egypt gains nominal independence from the
United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt. 1926 – The dictator Theodoros Pangalos is elected President
of Greece without opposition. 1939 – World War II: German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist. 1939 – Carpatho-Ukraine declares itself an independent
republic, but is annexed by Hungary the next day. 1941 – Philippine Airlines, the flag carrier of the Philippines takes its first flight between Manila (from Nielson Field) to Baguio City with a Beechcraft Model 18 making the airline the first and oldest commercial airline in Asia operating under its original name. 1943 – World War II: Third Battle of Kharkov – the Germans retake the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting. 1945 – World War II: Soviet forces begin an offensive to push
Germans from Upper Silesia. 1952 – In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in a 24-hour period, setting a new world record (March 15 through March 16). 1961 – South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of
Nations. 1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, tells U.S. Congress “We shall overcome” while advocating the Voting Rights Act. 1978 – Somalia and Ethiopia signed a truce to end the Ethio
Somali War. 1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered
(symbolics.com). 1985 – Brazilian military government ends. 1986 – Collapse of the Hotel New World: Thirty-three people
die when the Hotel New World in Singapore collapses. 1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of
the Soviet Union. 1991 – The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany comes into effect, granting full sovereignty to the Federal Republic of Germany. 2011 – Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.