On This Day: March 12

This is the 71st day of the year.

Fact of the Day: Greenland golf

Every spring, golfers come from all over the world to compete in the World Ice Golf Championships held in Uummannaq, Greenland. The green is white, so the ball is fluorescent pink or orange. The obstacles are icebergs and polar bears. The temperatures are around -58 degrees Fahrenheit. The shape of the course, which is created anew each year, is dictated by the position of icebergs in the frozen fjord in which the Championships take place. However, during the match, the course also changes as the pack ice drifts and new icy outcrops pop up.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Alphege, St. Bernard of Winchester, St. Gregory, St. Maximilian of Theveste, St. Mura, St. Paul Aurelian, St. Theophanes, and St. Pionius.

Mauritius: Independence Day.

Events

1609 - Bermuda became a British colony.

1664 - New Jersey became a British colony as King Charles II granted the land to his brother James, the Duke of York.

1884 - Mississippi authorized the first state-supported college for women, the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College.

1894 - Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time.

1901 - Industrialist Andrew Carnegie offered the of New York City $5.2 million for the construction of 65 branch libraries.

1912 - Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Guides, which later became the Girl Scouts of America.

1930 - India's Mohandas Gandhi began a defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt and symbolic of his defiance of British rule in India.

1933 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his radio "Fireside Chats."

1938 - German troops marched into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. This was called the "Anschluss."

1947 - President Harry Truman established what became known as the "Truman Doctrine" to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.

1951 - "Dennis the Menace," created by cartoonist Hank Ketcham, made its syndicated debut in 16 newspapers.

1993 - Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female attorney general of the U.S..

1994 - The Church of England ordained its first female priests.

1999 - Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic joined NATO.

Births

1831 - Clement Studebaker, American automobile manufacturer.

1832 - Charles Boycott, Irish estate manager who refused to lower rents in hard times; the tenants retaliated by refusing to do business with Boycott, thus creating the term "boycott."

1858 - Adolph Simon Ochs, American publisher of "The New York Times."

1890 - Vaslav Nijinsky, Russian ballet dancer.

1922 - Jack Kerouac, American poet and novelist, leader of the Beat movement.

1928 - Edward Albee, American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.

1946 - Liza Minnelli, American singer, Academy Award-winning actress.

1948 - James Taylor, American singer, songwriter.

Deaths

1945 - Anne Frank, Dutch Jewish diarist, died of typhus in a Nazi concentration camp.

1955 - Charlie Parker, American jazz saxophonist.