On This Day - 12th March

1812 - Venezuela is wrecked by an earthquake
1913 - Canberra becomes capital of Australia
1921 - Gordon MacRae born
1922 - Jack Kerouac born
1928 - Edward Albee born
1932 - Andrew Young born
1940 - Al Jarreau born
1941 - Barbara Feldon born
1946 - Liza Minnelli born
1948 - James Taylor born
1962 - Darryl Strawberry born

1964 - Jimmy Hoffa, the president of the powerful American Teamsters union is sentenced to eight years on bribery charges.
1969 - Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman are married in a civil ceremony at Marylebone Register Office in London.

1984 - Tens of thousands of Britain's miners are stop work in what looks like becoming a long battle against job losses.
1993 - At least 200 people are killed when a series of devastating bombs explode in India's financial district in Bombay.
1999 - One of the 20th century's finest musicians Yehudi Menuhin dies, aged 82.

On This Day - 11th March

1903 - Lawrence Welk born
1926 - Ralph Abernathy born
1931 - Rupert Murdoch born
1934 - Sam Donaldson born
1942 - Charles W. Swan born
1950 - Bobby McFerrin born
1952 - Douglas Adams born

1955 - Sir Alexander Fleming - the man who first discovered the life-saving drug penicillin - dies of a heart attack.
1974 - Two self-proclaimed British Government spies have escaped from a top-security prison in Ireland where they were serving sentences for armed robbery.
1977 - French film director Roman Polanski is charged with raping a 13-year- old girl in Hollywood.
1979 - Benji and Joel Madden born
1981 - LeToya Luckett born
1982 - Thora Birch born

1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev takes over as Soviet leader following the death of Konstantin Chernenko.
2001 - It is the worst day for new foot-and-mouth cases since the disease was first diagnosed two weeks ago
2004 - 191 people are killed and over 1,800 are injured after powerful explosions tear through three Madrid train stations during the morning rush-hour.

2011 - Sendai and Tokyo in Japan are hit by an 8.9 magnitude Earthquake, triggering a 10m Tsunami warning for the entire Pacific basin.

2011 - Most of Japans northeast coast is left devasted and thousands dead, when the 32 ft Tsunami triggered by the earthquake hits land.

On This Day - 10th March

1903 - Bix Beiderbecke born
1910 - Slavery is abolished in China
1918 - Pamela Mason born
1928 - James Earl Ray born
1940 - Chuck Norris born
1947 - Bob Greene and Kim Campbell born
1956 - Greek Cypriots demonstrate and strike after Britain arrests and deports Archbishop Makarios.
1957 - Osama bin Laden born
1958 - Sharon Stone born
1964 - Jasmine Guy born
1964 - Prince Edward born

1969 - The killer of Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray is jailed for 99 years by a court in Memphis, Tennessee, after admitting the murder of the American civil rights leader.
1973 - The British governor and his assistant have been assassinated in Bermuda, a British-dependent territory in the North Atlantic.
1977 - Shannon Miller born
1988 - The Prince of Wales narrowly avoids death on the ski slopes of Switzerland in an avalanche which kills one of his closest friends.
1990 - A court in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, imposes the death sentence on The Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft.
2011 - The Dalai Lama announces that he will retire as the political leader of the Tibetan government-in exile, to make way for a democratically elected Prime Minister.

On This Day - 9th March

1910 - Samuel Barber born
1918 - Mickey Spillane born
1923 - Lenin retires due to ill health after several strokes
1926 - Irene Papas born
1932 - Keely Smith born
1934 - Yuri Gagarin born
1936 - Mickey Gilley born
1940 - Raul Julia born
1943 - Bobby Fischer born
1945 - Robin Trower born

1956 - The British authorities order the deportation of the Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios, in the hope of restoring law and order to the island.
1964 - Juliette Binoche born

1967 - Svetlana Stalin, daughter of the Soviet dictator, requests asylum at the United States Embassy in India.
1971 - Emmanuel Lewis born
1973 - The people of Northern Ireland vote overwhelmingly to remain within the United Kingdom.
1976 - A line supporting a cable car snaps killing 42 people, including children, in the Dolomite mountains in northern Italy.
1980 - Chingy born
1981 - The man known as the M5 Rapist, who for three-and-a-half years terrorised women in the south west of England, is sentenced to life behind bars
1995 - The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh pay a symbolic visit to Northern Ireland - their first since the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires came into effect last year.

On This Day - 8th March

1909 - Claire Trevor born
1923 - Cyd Charisse born
1942 - Java captured by Japanese
1943 - Lynn Redgrave born
1945 - Micky Dolenz born
1950 - Car manufacturers Rover unveil the first car powered with a gas turbine engine.
1959 - Aidan Quinn born
1963 - Kathy Ireland born
1971 - British postal workers go back to work after seven weeks on strike.
1972 - A bomb explodes in the cockpit of a Trans World Airlines Boeing 707 at Las Vegas airport.
1976 - Freddie Prinze born
1977 - James Van Der Beek born
1985 - At least 45 people die and 175 are injured in a car bomb explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.
2001 - Divers raise the wreck of Donald Campbell's boat, Bluebird, from the bottom of Coniston Water in Cumbria.

On This Day - 7th March

1849 = Luther Burbank born
1872 - Piet Mondriaan born
1875 - Maurice Ravel born
1930 - Lord Snowdon born
1934 - Willard Scott born
1940 - Daniel J. Travanti born
1942 - Tammy Faye Bakker born
1960 - Ivan Lendl born

1965 - State troopers assault scores of demonstrators demanding better voting rights for blacks as they attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. Also a golden eagle which escaped from Regent's Park Zoo is still on the loose after outsmarting his keepers' latest attempts to recapture him.

1969 - Golda Meir has been elected as the first female prime minister of Israel following Levi Eshkol's death.
1975 - The body of Lesley Whittle, the 17-year-old heiress kidnapped from her Shropshire home 52 days previously, is found at the bottom of a drain shaft.
1977 - Paul Cattermole born
1988 - The IRA confirms the three people shot dead by security forces in Gibraltar yesterday were members of an active service unit.

On This Day - 6th March

1475 - Michelangelo Buonarroti born
1806 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning born
1836 - The Battle of the Alamo
1906 - Lou Costello born
1923 - Ed McMahon born
1926 - Alan Greenspan born
1930 - Lorin Maazel born
1936 - Marion Barry born
1941 - Willie Stargell born
1944 - Kiri Te Kanawa born
1945 - Rob Reiner born
1946 - David Gilmour born
1957 - The people of Ghana celebrate the end of colonial rule and the dawn of their independence.
1959 - Tom Arnold born

1961 - George Formby dies after a heart attack
1963 - D.L. Hughley born
1970 - The British Government announces an indefinite ban on the importation of domestic pets.
1972 - Shaquille O'Neal born
1974 - UK coal workers bring an end to a 16 week dispute following a pay increase of over 30%.
1987 - 193 people are killed when a Townsend Thoresen car ferry 'Herald of Free Enterprise' capsizes just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
1993 - Hundreds of people are reported to have died in clashes between the rebel Unita movement and Angolan government forces in the central town of Huambo.