ON MARCH 15 ...
In 44 B.C. Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius.
In 1493 Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.
In 1767 the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson, was born in Waxhaw, S.C.
In 1875 the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, John McCloskey, was named the first American cardinal, by Pope Pius IX.
In 1964 actress Elizabeth Taylor married actor Richard Burton in Montreal; it was her fifth marriage, his second.
In 1975 Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis died near Paris; he was 69.
In 1979 Pope John Paul II issued his first encyclical, saying the arms race, uncontrolled technological advances and materialism threatened mankind with self-destruction.
In 1988 Illinois Sen. Paul Simon defeated Jesse Jackson in the Illinois Democratic presidential primary.
In 1996 the Liggett Group agreed to repay more than $10 million in Medicaid bills for treatment of smokers, settling lawsuits with five states. (The settlement came two days after Liggett, the nation's fifth-largest tobacco company, made history by settling a private class-action lawsuit alleging cigarette makers manipulated nicotine to hook smokers.)
In 1998 Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose child care guidance spanned half a century, died in San Diego; he was 94.
In 1999 an Amtrak train slammed into a steel-filled truck at a crossing in Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 11 people.
In 2003 Hu Jintao was chosen to replace Jiang Zemin as the president of China.
In 2004, 10 days after being convicted in a stock scandal, Martha Stewart resigned from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
In 2005 former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers was convicted in New York of engineering the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history. (He was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.)
In 2012 Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich reported to Federal Correctional Institution-Englewood in Colorado to begin serving a prison sentence on corruption charges.
In 2016, fueled by competitive contests for president and down-the-ballot races, more than 3.3 million ballots were cast in the Illinois primary, eclipsing the recent high-water mark of more than 2.9 million in 2008.