Also on this date
the Revolutionary War Siege of Boston ended as British forces evacuated the city.
Pittsburgh’s Great St. Patrick’s Day Flood began as the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers and their tributaries, swollen by rain and melted snow, started exceeding flood stage; the high water was blamed for more than 60 deaths.
the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in the wake of a failed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule.
a U.S. Navy midget submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb that had fallen from a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain. (It took several more weeks to actually recover the bomb.)
Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel.
the United States cast its first veto in the U.N. Security Council, killing a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failing to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.
edging to the brink of war, President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave his country. Iraq rejected Bush’s ultimatum, saying that a U.S. attack to force Saddam from power would be “a grave mistake.”
U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained by North Korea while reporting on North Korean refugees living across the border in China. (Both were convicted of entering North Korea illegally and were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor; both were freed in August 2009 after former President Bill Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.)
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its final print edition.
The U.N. Security Council paved the way for international air strikes against Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, voting to authorize military action to protect civilians and impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
Bowing to years of public pressure, SeaWorld Entertainment said it would no longer breed killer whales or make them perform crowd-pleasing tricks.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, more movie theaters closed nationwide; the nation’s largest chain, AMC, said its theaters would close for at least six to 12 weeks. (They didn’t reopen till August 2020.)