On This Day: March 20

This is the 79th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: Spring

The original English word for the season Spring was 'lent' and this was replaced by Spring only in the 16th century, based on the notion of something beginning or rising, like water 'springs' from the ground. The vernal equinox ('equal night' from Latin aequinoctium), marking the beginning of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, occurs about March 21, when the Sun moves north across the celestial equator.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Cuthbert, St. Wolfram, St. Herbert of Derwentwater, St. Martin of Braga, St. Photina and her Companions, and the Martyrs of Mar Saba.

Tunisia: Independence Day.

Events

1413 - Henry IV of England was succeeded by his son, Henry V.

1602 - The Dutch government founded the Dutch East India Company.

1751 - King George II ascended to the throne of England.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris, returning from his exile on the island of Elba, and began his 100-day rule which ended disastrously.

1816 - The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed its right to review state court decisions.

1841 - Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," considered the first detective story, was published.

1852 - Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel about slavery, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," was published.

1865 - A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct President Abraham Lincoln was foiled when Lincoln changed plans and failed to appear at the Soldier's Home near Washington, D.C. Booth would later assassinate the President while Lincoln was attending a performance at Ford's Theatre in the nation's capital.

1897 - The first intercollegiate basketball game to use five players per team was held; Yale University beat University of Pennsylvania.

1899 - Martha M. Place of Brooklyn, New York, became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair; she had murdered her stepdaughter.

1956 - Tunisia achieved independence from France.

1969 - John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1976 - Kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup.

1982 - American scientists returned from Antarctica with the first land mammal fossils found there.

1987 - The Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of AZT, a drug shown to prolong the lives of some AIDS patients.

1995 - A terrorist group released nerve gas on the Japanese underground subway system, resulting in the death of 12 people and the illness of 5,500 others.

1999 - Bertrand Piccard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of Britain became the first aviators to fly a hot-air balloon around the world nonstop.

2003 - U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait.

Births

43 B.C.E. - Ovid, Roman poet.

1828 - Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright.

1904 - B.F. (Burrhus Frederic) Skinner, American psychologist.

1906 - Ozzie Nelson, American bandleader, actor.

1922 - Carl Reiner, American writer, director, comedian, actor.

1928 - Fred Rogers, American children's television host.

Deaths

1727 - Isaac Newton, English scientist.