April 2

• April 2, 568
  The Kingdom of the Lombards in Italy is founded by king of the Lombards Alboin
• April 2, 742
  Charlemagne, King of the Franks, is born
• April 2, 1453
  Mahmed II begins the siege of Constantinople
• April 2, 1513
  Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida and claims it for Spain
• April 2, 1801
  The British navy defeats the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen
• April 2, 1872
  George Brayton, an American engineer, invents the constant pressure engine, the basis for the gas turbine
• April 2, 1905
  Railway from Cairo in Egypt to Capetown, South Africa, opens
• April 2, 1941
  Hungarian Prime Minister Pal Teleki kills himself, rather than agree to Adolf Hitler's demand to allow passage of German troops to Yugoslavia, however, the Hungarian Chief of General Staff accedes to the demand
• April 2, 1979
  A Soviet biowarfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk accidentally releases airborne anthrax spores, killing 66 plus an unknown amount of livestock
• April 2, 2005
  Pope John Paul II dies at his home in the Vatican, following complications from the flu

March 15

• March 15, 44 BC
  Julius Caesar, dictator of the Roman Republic, is assassinated by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus in the Portico of the Theater of Pompey
• March 15, 493
  Odoacer, a Germanic soldier and the first King of Italy, is murdered by king of the Germanic Ostrogoths Theoderic while they shared a meal
• March 15, 933
  Henry the Fowler, King of East Francis, routes the raiding Magyars at the Battle of Riade
• March 15, 1493
  Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after first new world voyage
• March 15, 1672
  King Charles II enacts Royal Declaration of Indulgence suspending the execution of the penal laws that punished recusants from the Church of England
• March 15, 1697
  Hannah Duston, a 40-year-old colonial Massachusetts Puritan woman, in what is now New Hampshire is attacked and captured by 12 Indians who kills her daughter
• March 15, 1781
  British suffer heavy losses at the Battle of Guilford Court House, South Carolina
• March 15, 1848
  In Hungary an uprising against Habsburg rule begins in front of the national museum in Budapest
• March 15, 1867
  The Austro-Hungarian Compromise establishes of the dual monarchy known as Austria-Hungary, with separate parliaments and prime ministers in the regions and a single head of state
• March 15, 1906
  British Charles Rolls and Henry Royce form Rolls Royce Ltd., a car-manufacturing company
• March 15, 1907
  Finland becomes first European country to give women the right to vote
• March 15, 1915
  In response to the attack on Columbus, President U.S. President Woodrow Wilson orders General John J. Pershing to proceed into Mexico with over 5,000 men to capture or kill Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa
• March 15, 1917
  Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicates the throne in his royal train going towards Petrograd, as a result of the February Revolution, bringing an end to the czarist autocracy in Russia
• March 15, 1939
  German troops enter Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, after which Adolf Hitler proclaims from Prague Castle Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate
• March 15, 1969
  Hundreds die during violent Chinese-Russian border dispute
• March 15, 1986
  Funeral services are held for Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, murdered by an assailant on a street in Stockholm
• March 15, 1988
  NASA reports accelerated breakdown of ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons
• March 15, 1990
  Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union
• March 15, 1994
  U.S. troops are withdrawn from Somalia
• March 15, 2003
  In Bangui, Central African Republic, ex-chief of army General François Bozizé and 1000 troops stage a military coup against President Ange-Felix Patassé, Ange-Félix Patassé

March 1

• March 1, 293
  Roman emperor Diocletian introduces tetrarchy, dividing power among four individuals and marking the end of the Crisis of the Third Century and the recovery of the Roman Empire
• March 1, 1260
  Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, conquers Damascus
• March 1, 1562
  Over 80 Huguenots, members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France, are massacred by the ultra-Catholic Duke of Guise Francis in Wassy-sur-Blaise, marking the start of the First War of Religion in France
• March 1, 1565
  Estácio de Sá, a Portuguese soldier and officer, founds Rio de Janeiro in Brazil as the basis of military operations against the France Antarctique colony
• March 1, 1579
  Sir Francis Drake waylaid a Spanish treasure galleon, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, off the coast of Panama
• March 1, 1801
  The London stock exchange is founded, with still the only British government debt traded
• March 1, 1811
  In Egypt the Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha massacres the Mameluke leaders of Egypt, invited to a banquet at the citadel of Cairo in honor of his son, for plotting against him
• March 1, 1864
  Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron patents a movie machine that was never built
• March 1, 1872
  Yellowstone National Park, the world's first national park, is established under the act signed into law by President Ulysses Grant
• March 1, 1896
  Ethiopia defeats Italy at the Battle of Adwa during the First Italo-Ethiopian War and ensures the first victory of an African state over a European colonial power
• March 1, 1910
  An avalanche of snow hits two trains stranded for seven days outside the Cascade Tunnel below Stevens Pass, near Wellington, Washington, USA, killing 96 and becomes the deadliest one in United States history
• March 1, 1934
  Puyi, the last Emperor of China, is crowned emperor of Manchuria
• March 1, 1936
  Hoover Dam, a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, is completed
• March 1, 1938
  Detective Comics pays Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster $130 to transfer exclusive rights to the use of the comic character "Superman", who has its first appearance in comics
• March 1, 1995
  Yahoo! web site is founded in Santa Clara, California
• March 1, 2007
  International Polar Year, a US$1.5 billion research program to study both the North Pole and South Pole, is launched in Paris, France