TODAY IN HISTORY ― MARCH 2

March 2 is the 61st day of the year (62nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 304 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56).

NATIONAL OLD STUFF DAY  

537 – Siege of Rome: The Ostrogoth army under King Vitiges begins the siege of the capital. Belisarius conducts a delaying action outside the Flaminian Gate; he and a detachment of his bucellarii are almost cut off. 

1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's fleet visits the Island of Mozambique.

1657 – Great Fire of Meireki: A fire in Edo (now Tokyo), Japan, lasted more than three days and claimed over 100,000 lives.

1807 – The U.S. Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, disallowing the importation of new slaves into the country.

1836 – Texas Revolution: Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico.

1867 – The U.S. Congress passes the first Reconstruction Act after the Civil War.

1877 – U.S. presidential election, 1876: Just two days before inauguration, the U.S. Congress declares Rutherford B. Hayes the winner of the election even though Samuel J. Tilden had won the popular vote on November 7, 1876.

1917 – The enactment of the Jones–Shafroth Act grants Puerto Ricans United States citizenship.

1919 – The first Communist International (First Congress of the Comintern)meets in Moscow.

1937 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee signs a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel, leading to unionization of the United States steel industry.

1943 – World War II: Battle of the Bismarck Sea–United States and Australian forces sink Japanese convoy ships.

1949 – Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress, Lucky Lady II, in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

1969 – In Toulouse, France, the first test flight of the Anglo-French Concorde is conducted.

1972 – The U.S. space probe, Pioneer 10, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.

1989 – Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.

1995 – Researchers at Fermilab announce the discovery of the top quark, the most massive of all observed elementary particles.

1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

2004 – War in Iraq: Al-Qaeda carries out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

2012 – A tornado outbreak (spawning a total of 41 tornadoes) occurred over a large section of the Southern United States and into the Ohio Valley region, resulting in 40 tornado-related fatalities.

BORN TODAY

1793 – Sam Houston, American soldier and politician, 1st President of the Republic of Texas (d. 1863)

1824 – Bedřich Smetana, Czech pianist and composer (d. 1884)

1901 – Grete Hermann, German mathematician and philosopher (d. 1984)

1922 – Frances Spence, American computer programmer (d. 2012)

1931 – Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian lawyer and politician, President of the Soviet Union, Nobel Prize laureate (instead of Ronald Reagan)

1931 – Tom Wolfe, American journalist and author

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.