TODAY IN HISTORY ― MARCH 31

March 31 is the 90th day of the year (91st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 275 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Sunday or Monday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Wednesday or Friday (56).    

NATIONAL CRAYON DAY 

627 – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan. 

1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra Decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

1774 – American Revolutionary War: Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.


1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda andHakodate to American trade.  

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened. At the time, it surpassed the Washington Monument to become the tallest man-made structure in the world.

1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.

1909 – Construction of the ill fated RMS Titanic begins in Belfast, Ireland.

1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.

1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.

1931 – TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.

1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.

1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.

1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.


1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.


1990 – Approximately 200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.

1991 – Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.

1992 – The WWII battleship USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1994 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.


BORN TODAY

1596 – René Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher (d. 1650)

1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German organist and composer (d. 1750)

1732 – Joseph Haydn, Austrian pianist and composer (d. 1809)

1809 – Nikolai Gogol, Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, novelist, and playwright (d. 1852)

1927 – Cesar Chavez, American labor union leader and activist (d. 1993)

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