This Week In History
Feb 28, 1953
James Watson and Francis Crick discovered that the structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes, was a double helix with two intertwining strands
1971: Men in Liechtenstein defeated a referendum on votes for women
1986: Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead as he walked home with his wife from a cinema in Stockholm
1991: The First Gulf War ended after 42 days
2001: Foot-and-mouth disease was found in imported British sheep in Germany, confirming fears it had crossed from the UK to Europe
March 1, 1872
Yellowstone National Park was founded in the US, becoming the world’s first national park. It is renowned for its geysers and strikingly coloured hot springs
1926: Britain’s first 22 public telephone boxes appeared in London
1966: The Soviet space probe Venera become the first manmade object to impact the surface of another planet
1996: US researchers transmitted a trillion bits of information a second through an optical fibre
2007: Archaelogists in Greece said they had discovered a 2,200-year-old statue of the goddess Hera in the ruins of a city under Mount Olympus
March 02, 1931
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforming policies of perestroika and glasnost contributed to the end of the Cold War, was born
1801: The War of the Oranges between Spain and Portugal began
1836: Texas declared independence from Mexico
1986: Queen Elizabeth II signed a bill formally severing the last constitutional ties between Australia and Britain
2020: The death toll from Covid-19 reached 3,000, mostly in China, with almost 90,000 cases worldwide. A year on over 2 million have died and cases have topped 100 million
March 3, 1931
The Star-spangled Banner was adopted as the US national anthem. Francis Scott Key wrote it after seeing a fort under attack by British troops in the War of 1812
1938: ANE w Zealand mining engineer discovered oil i n Saudi Arabia
1996: Britain offered all permanent residents of Hong Kong visa-free entry after the handover to China
1999: The US threatened import duties o n EU goods if the EU continued to favour Wes ti ndian banana so ver American ones
2005: Steve Fossett completed the first solo nonstop flight round the world in his Global Flyer aircraft
March 4, 1971
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, 51, secretly married 22-year-old Margaret Sinclair. Their eldest son, Justin, is Canada’s current prime minister
1991: Miners in the two largest Soviet coalfields went on strike demanding pay rises and the resignation of President Mikhail Gorbachev
2001: Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to join the EU
2006: A new species of shark was discovered off Mexico
2018: A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury
Picture: Newscom
March 5, 1936
The Spitfire, Britain’s most strategically important single-seat fighter of WWII, was unveiled. It played a key role in winning the Battle of Britain in 1940 1946: Winston Churchill coined the term “iron curtain” to describe Soviet influence over Eastern Europe after World War II
1981: Sinclair’s ZX81, a pioneering British home computer which sold over 1.5 million units, was launched
2016: US airstrikes targeted an al-shabab training camp in Somalia
2020: Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline, collapsed as the impact of Covid-19 saw flight bookings plunge
March 6, 1836
Mexican troops captured the mission fort at the Alamo, which was defended by a small force of Texans, including Davy Crockett, who were all killed in the battle
1946: Ho Chi Minh agreed that Vietnam would be recognised as an autonomous state within French Indochina
1967: Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Sovi et dictator Joseph Stalin, requested asylum in the U.S.
2006: Poland confirmed its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, in two wild swans
2011: The arrest of young boys over anti-government graftiti in Deraa led to the outbreak of Syria’s civil war