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“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.”
~ John Milton
Wikiquote (John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.)
March 6th, 12 BC
Roman Empire:
12 BC - Roman Emperor Augustus is named Pontifex Maximus, incorporating the position into that of the Emperor.
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
March 6th, 961
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
961 - Conquest of Chandax by Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros Phokas, end of the Emirate of Crete.
Wikipedia Image: The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace); Mural of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan Monastery, Bulgaria; Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna; The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine Navy during the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from the Madrid Skylitzes, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid); Alexios I, founder of the Komnenos dynasty.
Photo: Byzantine Empire is the great church of Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople (562).
March 6th, 1454
Thirteen Years' War: Delegates of the Prussian Confederation pledge allegiance to King Casimir IV of Poland who agrees to commit his forces in aiding the Confederation's struggle for independence from the Teutonic Knights.
Wikipedia Painting: Jan Długosz, sent by King Casimir IV Jagiellon of Poland on diplomatic missions to the Papal and Imperial courts, and was involved in the King's negotiations with the Teutonic Knights during the Thirteen Years' War (1454–66) and at the peace negotiations.
March 6th, 1521
Portuguese explorers:
1521 - Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam.
Wikipedia Painting: Map of the Straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego in South America; Ferdinand Magellan; Ships of Ferdinand Magellan Rounding Tierra del Fuego to Circumnavigate the Earth 1519 - 1521; Straits of Magellan.
March 6th, 1788
1788 - The British First Fleet carrying convicts from England to Australia, arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.
Wikipedia Image: Austrlian satellite; Whole Earth, satellite image, credit Science Photo Library.
Painting: The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships that sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787
March 6th, 1820
Missouri Compromise is signed into law by United States President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, but makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
Wikipedia Image: Henry Clay, Stock Montage / Hulton Archive / Getty Images ● Sojourner Truth: A freed slave, Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) pioneered the abolitionist and women's rights movements, campaigning for both causes all over the United States (painting based on a photograph from 1864). (Bettmann / Corbis) ● Map of the Missouri Compromise Line, Red = Free states / Green = Slave states Map (Bowdoin.edu)
March 6th, 1834
York Upper Canada (Ontario) is incorporated as Toronto.
Wikipedia Canada satellite image, @copy; Geology.com ● The creation of Upper and Lower Canada (1791)
Toronto the largest city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario: ● Downtown Toronto featuring the CN Tower and Financial District from the Toronto Islands, ● City Hall, ● the Ontario Legislative Building, ● Casa Loma, ● Prince Edward Viaduct, and the ● Scarborough Bluffs.
March 6th, 1836
Texas Revolution:
1836 - Battle of the Alamo; After a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.
Wikipedia Painting: The Fall of the Alamo; by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1903), depicts Davy Crockett wielding his rifle as a club against Mexican troops who have breached the walls of the mission.
March 6th, 1857
1857 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. (The Dred Scott Decision, was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent brought into the United States and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the Constitution and were not U.S. citizens.)
Wikipedia Photo: United States Supreme Court building; Guardian of Law, by James Earle Fraser, U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, DC, USA.
March 6th, 1869
Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
Wikipedia Image: Periodic table is a tabular display of the chemical elements, organized on the basis of their atomic numbers, electron configurations, and recurring chemical properties (Elements are presented in order of increasing atomic number)
March 6th, 1899
Bayer registers aspirin as a trademark.
Wikipedia Image: Bayer logo.
March 6th, 1912
The Oreo cookie is introduced by Nabisco.
Wikipedia Image: Oreo cookie by Nabisco.
March 6th, 1945
World War II:
1945 - The Cologne is captured by American Troops.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
March 6th, 1946
Ho Chi Minh: signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
Wikipedia Photo: The leader of the Vietnamese delegation Ho Chi Minh (sixth from the left) poses with French president of the provisional government Georges Bidault (fourth from the left) after talks, in June 1946 in Paris, France., credit Foreign Policy (FP); First Indochina War. (1946-1954); French soldiers march to a prisoner of war camp after they surrender to the Viet Minh forces after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
March 6th, 1951
The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg begins.
Wikipedia Picture: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (September 25, 1915 – June 19, 1953) and Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) were American communists who were convicted and executed on June 19, 1953, for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. (Their charges were related to the passing of information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.)
March 6th, 1953
Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.
Wikipedia Photo: Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (December 18, 1878 – March 5. 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 until his death in 5 March 1953 ● Young Ioseb, 1894, aged 16 (left) and 23 (right) 1902 ● Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the tsarist government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Tsarist secret police in Saint Petersburg ● Stalin and Vladimir Lenin in 1919 ● A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin. ● Stalin in 1941, about 63 years of age.
March 6th, 1962
Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962: begins on the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States.
Wikipedia Image: Land Hurricane: United States NOAA Satellite; Huge wave slams the lighthouse on Grand Marais Harbor credit, Minnesota.publicradio.org.
March 6th, 1964
Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.
Wikipedia Photo: Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship with a 7th round TKO of Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964 in Miami.
March 6th, 1975
Assassination of John F. Kennedy:
1975 - For the first time, ever, the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.
Wikipedia Photo: Dealey Plaza, with Elm Street on the right and the underpass in the middle; President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas Governor John Connally in the presidential limousine, minutes before the President's assassination; Texas School Book Depository; Aerial view of Dealey Plaza, credit Paullee.com - A - "The Sniper's Nest", south-east corner window of the 6th floor (5th floor for Europeans) of the Texas School Book Depository Building B - "The Grassy Knoll", speculated location of second gunman C - Approximate location of limousine at time of first shot D - Approximate location of limousine at time of the "neck wound" shot E - Approximate location of limousine at time of fatal head wound F - James Tague's location. Note how far away he is from the shots! G - Abraham Zapruder's filming location, on top of a stone pedestal, James Altgen's Press Photograph; Secret Service agent Clint Hill climbs onto the presidential limousine, seconds after the fatal shot. Associated Press photo open-topped limo in Dallas, Time Magazine; Mary Moorman's Polaroid photo taken a fraction of a second after the fatal shot; Zapruder film at moment of fatal head shot.
March 6th, 1975
Iran–Iraq War: Algiers Accord; Iran and Iraq announce a settlement of their border dispute.
Wikipedia Photo: Iran–Iraq War (also known as the First Persian Gulf War and by various other names) was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the longest conventional war of the 20th century.
March 6th, 1981
After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
Wikipedia Image: Walter Cronkite’s title as the "Most Trusted Man in America", Time Magazine Cover.
March 6th, 1983
The first United States Football League (USFL) game is played.
Wikipedia Image: The United States Football League (USFL) was an American football league which was in active operation from 1983 to 1987 (It played a spring/summer schedule in its first three seasons and a traditional autumn/winter schedule.)
March 6th, 1988
1988 - Operation Flavius: Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers are killed by Special Air Service on the territory of Gibraltar.
Wikipedia Photo: Irish Republican Army; Belfast, Northern Ireland.
March 6th, 1992
Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers.
Wikipedia Image: Computer virus
March 6th, 2008
Modern conflicts in the Middle East:
2008 - Mercaz HaRav massacre; A Palestinian gunman shoots and kills 8 students and critically injures 11 in the library of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, in Jerusalem, Israel.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)