February 24, 1942: The MV* Struma*, a ship full of Jewish refugee families trying to escape Nazi atrocities, is torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. An estimated 791 die. One person survived. The ship had arrived in Istanbul in December 1941, but the refugees were denied entrance and kept on board. After two months, the disabled ship was towed by Turkish authorities out into the Black Sea and left to float with its human cargo. The next day it was sunk.
February 24, 1942: An order-in-council passed under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act gives the Canadian federal government the power to intern all “persons of Japanese racial origin”.
February 24, 1803: The US Supreme Court for the first time rules a law unconstitutional, in Marbury versus Madison.
February 25, 1870: Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.
February 25, 1862: Paper currency, called greenbacks, is introduced in the US for the first time by President Abraham Lincoln.
February 27, 1908: The Mina Rosita Vieja mine disasteroccurs. 200 miners died in this, Mexico’s deadliest coal mining accident.
February 27, 1964: The Government of Italy asks for help in keeping the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.
March 4, AD 211: Roman Emperor Septimius Severus dies, leaving the Roman Empire in the hands of his two quarrelsome sons, Caracalla and Geta.
March 4, 1908: The Collinwood School Fire, one of the worst school fires in US history, kills 172 children and 2 teachers.
March 4, 1628: The Massachusetts Bay colony is granted a Royal charter.
March 5, 1981: The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.
My first computer.
March 5, 1770: In what became known as the Boston Massacre, British soldiers kill five men in a crowd throwing snowballs, stones and sticks at them on King Street. African American Crispus Attucks is the first to die, later being held up as an early black martyr. The massacre galvanized anti-British feelings.
March 6, 1869: Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
March 9, 1957: The 8.6 Andreanof Islands earthquake off Alaska sends tsunamis to Hawaii
March 9, 1841: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.
March 10, 1906: The Courrieres Mine Disaster kills 1099 miners in France. This is Europe’s deadliest mine disaster.
March 10, 1876: The first successful test of a telephone is made by Alexander Graham Bell.
**March 10, 2016: **At the CNN Republican presidential debate in Miami, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump said that he would be willing to support a massive ground force to take on ISIS. “I would knock out the source of their wealth,” Trump said. “The primary source of their wealth which is oil. And in order to do that, you would have to put boots - I would knock the hell out of them, but I would put a ring around it and take the oil for our country. I would just take the oil.”
Trump made the troop comment in response to a moderator’s question as to whether he would follow a military commander’s advice to increase the number of ground troops to fight the terrorist group.
“We really have no choice,” Trump said. “We have to knock out ISIS. We have to knock the hell out of them. We have to get rid of it and then we have to come back here and rebuild our country, which is falling apart.”
Radio host Hugh Hewitt pressed on specific numbers.
“I would listen to the generals,” Trump said, “but I would - I’m hearing numbers of 20 to 30,000. We have to knock them out fast.”
Trump can go fuck himself.
March 11, 1918: Private Albert Gitchell, a company cook at Fort Riley in Kansas, wakes up and finds himself too sick to report for mess duty. It is the beginning of the Spanish flu epidemic that will kill around 40 million people worldwide.