Quickly add a free MyWikiBiz directory listing!

MyWikiBiz, Author Your Legacy — Saturday November 22, 2008

March 31 in history:

• 2004: Four private U.S. contractors were murdered and their bodies mutilated by a mob in the city of Fallujah, long a trouble spot for the U.S. forces occupying Iraq; this event and the U.S. military response precipitated a dramatic rise in the violence in the country, and by the end of April more than 100 U.S. troops had died, the deadliest month since the Iraq War began in March 2003.

• 1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson made two surprise announcements: that he would stop the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and seek a negotiated end to the Vietnam War, and that he would not run for reelection.

• 1943: The musical Oklahoma!, a collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opened in New York City; it ran for a record 2,212 performances.

• 1928: Gordie Howe, a hockey legend who amassed 1,850 points (801 goals and 1,049 assists) and played as a professional for more than 30 seasons, was born.

• 1889: The Eiffel Tower, built for the Paris Exposition of that year, opened officially in Paris.

• 1854: U.S. commodore Matthew Perry and representatives of the Japanese government signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, which "opened" Japan to the West in a classic example of 19th-century gunboat diplomacy.

• 1836: The first number of Charles Dickens's serial The Pickwick Papers was published; it required only 400 copies, but the fourth required 40,000.

• 1727: Sir Isaac Newton died, having singlehandedly completed the scientific revolution and molded much of the content and the image of modern science.