TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Thursday, March 15, the 74rd day of 2018. There are 291 days left in the year.

1672 Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.

1783 In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d’état never takes place. 1819 French physicist Augustin- Jean Fresnel wins a contest at the Académie des Sciences in Paris by proving that light behaves like a wave. The Fresnel integrals, still used to calculate wave patterns, silence skeptics who had backed the particle theory of Isaac Newton.

1875 Archbishop of New York John McCloskey is named the first cardinal in the United States.

1877 First ever official cricket test match is played: Australia vs England at the MCG Stadium, in Melbourne, Australia.

1878 Restoration of the Scottish Catholic hierarchy, broken off back in 1603. 1906 Rolls- Royce Limited is incorporated.

1917 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne ending the 304- year Romanov dynasty.

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.

1927 The first Women’s Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place on The Isis in Oxford.

1933 Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the Austrofascist dictatorship.

1939 Carpatho- Ukraine declares itself an independent republic, but is annexed by Hungary the next day.

1951 – Iranian oil industry is nationalized.

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 At the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, South Africa announces that it will withdraw from the Commonwealth when the South African Constitution of 1961 comes into effect.

1985 The first Internet domain name is registered

( symbolics. com). 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

2008 Stockpiles of obsolete ammunition explode in a village in Albania, killing 26 people. No other event has caused more deaths in postWorld War II Albania.