March 12 in History

Historical Events on March 12

1550 Several hundred Spanish and indigenous troops under the command of Pedro de Valdivia defeat an army of 60,000 Mapuche at the Battle of Penco during the Arauco War in present-day Chile

1864 American Civil War: The Red River Campaign begins as a US Navy fleet of 13 Ironclads and 7 Gunboats and other support ships enter the Red River

1918 Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years.

1922 Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan form the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic

1928 In California, the St. Francis Dam fails; the resulting floods kills 431 people.

1930 Mahatma Gandhi begins the Salt March, a 200-mile march to the sea to protest the British monopoly on salt in India

1933 Great Depression: Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This is also the first of his "fireside chats".

1942 Pacific War: The Battle of Java ends with an ABDACOM surrender to the Japanese Empire in Bandung, West Java, Dutch East Indies.

2003 WHO officially released global warning on pandemic SARS disease.

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Famous Birthdays on March 12

1864 W. H. R. Rivers

1947 Mitt Romney

1978 Casey Mears

1994 Christina Grimmie

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Famous Deaths on March 12

604 Pope Gregory I

1925 Sun Yat-sen

2015 Michael Graves

2015 Terry Pratchett

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