ON THIS DAY, MARCH 3

1284 Wales becomes a part of England.

1627 Dutch privateer Piet Heyn attacks and conquers 22 Portuguese ships in Bay of Salvador, Brazil.

1859 The two-day Great Slave Auction, the largest in US history, concludes.

1910 Oil tycoon John D Rockefeller jr announces his retirement from managing his businesses so that he can devote his time to philanthropy. 1917 German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admits that the ‘Zimmermann Telegram’ is genuine, which support for a US declaration of war on Germany.

1919 Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, is appointed principal of the South African School of Mines and Technology, in Johannesburg, which goes on to become the University of the Witwatersrand. 1922 Eight Whites are killed in Brakpan in fights between government forces and revolutionaries during the Rand Revolt.

1923 TIME magazine is first published.

1932 Miriam Makeba, the first internationally famous African artist, is born in Johannesburg.

1934 US gangster John Dillinger breaks out of jail using a wooden pistol.

1938 Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia. 1939 Mohandas Gandhi begins a hunger strike over autocratic rule in British India.

1942 Ten Japanese planes raid Broome, Western Australia, killing more than 100 people.

1943 In London, 173 people are killed in a crush while trying to enter an air-raid shelter at the same time.

1945 The RAF accidentally bombs the The Hague, Netherlands, killing 511 people.

1971 SABC lifts its ban on the Beatles 1991 LA police officers severely beat motorist Rodney King, the beating is captured on amateur video and leads to riots when the police officers are acquitted.

2005 Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly an airplane around the world solo without any stops or refueling.

2013 A 2-year-old US girl becomes the first child born with HIV to be cured. | THE HISTORIAN