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“The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society.”
~ Henrik Ibsen
Wikiquote (Henrik Ibsen (March 20, 1828 – May 23, 1906) a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre.)
March 20th, 235
Roman Empire:
235 - Maximinus Thrax is proclaimed emperor. He is the first foreigner to hold the Roman throne.
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 20th, 1208
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
1208 - Michael IV Autoreianos is appointed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
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 20th, 1600
Linköping Bloodbath: takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden.
Wikipedia Painting: Linköping Bloodbath; was the public execution by beheading of five Swedish nobles in the aftermath of the Battle of Stångebro.
March 20th, 1616
English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment.
Wikipedia Painting: Raleigh in 1588
Photo: Tower of London; The Tower with the River Thames and Tower Bridge to the south (The outer curtain walls were erected in the 13th century); Saint John's Chapel - inside the "White Tower" inside the Tower of London, and was built sometime between 1066 and 1087, credit Neil Alderney, Flickr”
March 20th, 1760
The "Great Fire" of Boston, Massachusetts, destroys 349 buildings.
Wikipedia Photo: Great Boston Fire of 1872; Boston, Massachusetts, after the great fire of November 9-10, 1872. View full size. Albumen print by Joshua Smith.
March 20th, 1815
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1815 - After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
March 20th, 1848
Revolutions of 1848 in the German states King Ludwig I of Bavaria abdicates.
Wikipedia Painting: Germania by Philipp Veit ● Cheering revolutionaries in Berlin, on March 19, 1848.
March 20th, 1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Wikipedia Image: Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. ● Full-page illustration by Hammatt Billings for Uncle Tom's Cabin depicts Eliza telling Uncle Tom that he has been sold and she is running away to save her child. (First Edition: Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1852 ● Eliza is forced to flee dogs and slave-catchers in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Kim Wells, Domestic Goddesse.
March 20th, 1916
Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.
Wikipedia Picture: Albert Einstein Nobel Prize in Physics; Einstein at the age of three in 1882; The mathematician, physicist 1947; Einstein's theory of special relativity; Albert and Elsa Einstein in 1933; Conrad Habicht, Olympia Academy founders, Maurice Solovine and Einstein.
March 20th, 1923
The Arts Club of Chicago hosts the opening of Pablo Picasso's first United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso, becoming an early proponent of modern art in the United States.
Wikipedia Picture: Pablo Picasso ● Pablo Picasso, The Frugal Repast, 1904-1913 ● Self Portrait 1907 ● The Old Guitarist, 1903 by Pablo Picasso
March 20th, 1933
Pre World War II:
1933 - Giuseppe Zangara is executed in Florida's electric chair for fatally shooting Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak in an assassination attempt against President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt.
World War II:
1942 - General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: "I came out of Bataan and I shall return".
Post World War I:
1952 - The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty Japan.
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 20th, 1972
The Troubles:
1972 - The Provisional Irish Republican Army car bomb kills seven and injures 148 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (It was the first of many car bomb attacks by the group.)
1993 - Warrington bomb attacks; A Provisional IRA bomb kills two children in Warrington, England. (It leads to mass protests in both Britain and Ireland.)
Wikipedia Photo: Irish Republican Army; Belfast, Northern Ireland.
March 20th, 1985
Iditarod: Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Wikipedia Image: Iditarod Northern Route Even Years ● Iditarod, credit Nancy Carroll, Glogster.edu ● Nils Hahn's lead dogs turn his team onto Cordova Street from Fourth Avenue during day one of the 2011 Fur Rondy World Championship Sled Dog Races Friday afternoon Feb. 25, 2011 in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Erik Hill - Anchorage Daily News) ● Iditarod musher Peter Kaiser from Bethel, Alaska, races from Safety to Nome, Alaska as the sun sets to finish line of the 2011 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Anchorage Daily News, Bob Hallinen). credit The Atlantic The 2011 Iditarod Sled Dog Race
March 20th, 1995
Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway: kills 12 and wounds 1,300 persons.
Wikipedia Photo: Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway; was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo.
March 20th, 2003
Gulf War - Iraq War:
2003 - In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.
March 20th, 2014
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2014 - Kabul Serena Hotel attack; Four suspected Taliban members attack the luxurious Kabul Serena Hotel, killing at least nine people.
2012 - Iraq attacks; At least 52 people are killed and more than 250 injured in a wave of terror attacks across ten cities in Iraq.
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)
March 20th, 2015
A Solar eclipse, equinox, and Supermoon all occur on the same day.
Wikipedia Photo: A Solar eclipse, equinox, and Supermoon all occur on the same day.