On March 25, 1957, U.S. Customs officials confiscated over 500 copies of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg as they arrived in San Francisco from a British printer. What began as a government seizure quickly became one of American literary history’s most important…
Read MoreOn March 25, 1911, one of the worst industrial accidents in American history occurred at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City. 146 workers lost their lives from the fire, smoke inhalation, or simply jumping from the Asch Building in Manhattan trying…
Read MoreIn 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach presented a compiled collection of six concertos to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. He called them “Six Concerts à plusieurs instruments (Six Concertos for several instruments). The works were so important to Bach that he wrote out the music…
Read MoreOn March 23, 1933, the German Reichstag passed the Enabling Act (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich), granting Adolf Hitler the authority to enact laws without parliamentary approval. Voted into law under immense political pressure and threats of violence, this moment…
Read MoreOn March 22, 1312, Pope Clement V issued the papal bull Vox in excelso, officially dissolving the Order of the Knights Templar, a once-powerful religious-military institution that had long held significant sway across medieval Christendom. This decree marked the end of a calculated campaign…
Read MoreOn March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed a law that helped launch the American Revolution. Known as “Stamp Act,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History writes that it was enacted “to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years’…
Read MoreIn 1804, legal history took a transformative turn with the adoption of the Napoleonic Code on March 21. Officially known as the Code civil des Français, this legal framework had a profound impact not only on France but also on the development of modern…
Read MoreThe first recorded bank heist in U.S. history took place in 1831 when burglars infiltrated the City Bank of New York (now Citibank) on Wall Street, escaping with an astounding $245,000—an enormous sum in early 19th-century America. This audacious crime, carried out in the…
Read MoreOn March 19, 1965, an underwater archaeologist by the name of E. Lee Spence found the wreckage of the CSS Georgiana, a Confederate blockade runner that was sunk by the Union on the same date 102 years before. Ofren called the “mystery ship of the…
Read MoreOn March 18, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii Admission Act into law, paving the way for Hawaii to become the 50th state of the United States later that year. This landmark legislation was the culmination of decades of political struggle, economic…
Read More