TODAY IN HISTORY ― MARCH 8

March 8 is the 67th day of the year (68th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 298 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56).  

NATIONAL PROOF READING DAY 

1010 – Ferdowsi (Ḥakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Ferdowsī Țusī) completes his epic poem Shahnameh, the longest epic poem in history attributed to one man.

1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.

1775 – An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes "African Slavery in America", the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery. – From The Constitution Society

1862 – The American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads,Virginia.

1910 – French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot's license.

1917 – International Women's Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (so named because it was February on the Julian calendar). 

1920 – The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.

1949 – Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") is condemned to prison for treason.

1957 – Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.

1965 – 3,500 United States Marines are the first land combat forces committed during the Vietnam War.

1983 – While addressing a convention of Evangelicals, U.S. President Ronald Reagan labels the Soviet Union an "evil empire".

1985 – A supposed failed assassination attempt on Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.

2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The aircraft is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia with the loss of all 239 people aboard.

BORN TODAY

1714 – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German pianist and composer (d. 1788)

1822 – Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Polish inventor and businessman, invented the Kerosene lamp (d. 1882)

1839 – Josephine Cochrane, American inventor, first commercially successful automatic dishwasher (d. 1913)

1841 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., American colonel, lawyer, and jurist (d. 1935)

1886 – Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1972)

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