Today is March 15, the 74th day of the year. There are 292 days remaining in the year.
Julius Caesar assassinated on the Ides of March In 44 bce Roman dictator Julius Caesar was launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated this day, the Ides of March, by a group of nobles, among whom were Cassius and Brutus.
1781 American revolutionaries won a strategic victory over the British at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.
1802 The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York— one of the oldest service academies in the world— was originally founded as a training centre for the U.S. Corps of Engineers.
1917 During the first phase of the Russian Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, thus ending the rule of the Romanov dynasty.
1945 U.S. Marines captured the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II.
1965 About a week after a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, was halted due to violent opposition, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his We Shall Overcome speech, in which he introduced voting rights legislation that was passed later that year.
1968 On this day in 1968, during the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers dispatched on a search-anddestroy mission killed as many as 500 unarmed villagers in the hamlet of My Lai, considered a stronghold of the Viet Cong.
1972 The Godfather, an epic drama about organized crime, premiered to universal acclaim; the Academy Award-winning film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Al Pacino and Marlon Brando.
1978 On the 100th day of a national coal strike involving 160,000 miners, the bargaining council of the United Mine Workers voted 22-17 to accept the terms of a new contract negotiated with representatives of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association .
1990 The Congress of People's Deputies of the U.S.S.R. elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the newly created post of president of the Soviet Union.
1993 A Liberian freighter loaded with ore bound for Tampa, Fla., sinks off the coast of Nova Scotia while being battered by high waves in hurricane-force winds; the crew of 33 is believed to have abandoned the foundering vessel, but rescue workers recover only the body of one sailor, an insulated immersion suit, and two damaged life rafts.
2002 A seven-foot bronze statue of John Lennon is unveiled at the airport in Liverpool, England. Liverpool was the hometown of the Beatles.
2014 In a popular referendum, Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation; despite opposition from numerous countries, Russia later annexed the region.