March 15 in History

Historical Events on March 15

1493 Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1781 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Court House: Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat a mixed American force numbering 4,400 in a Pyrrhic victory.

1819 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel wins a contest at the Académie des Sciences in Paris by proving that light behaves like a wave. The Fresnel integrals, still used to calculate wave patterns, silence skeptics who had backed the particle theory of Isaac Newton.

1864 American Civil War: The Red River Campaign: U.S. Navy fleet arrives at Alexandria, Louisiana.

1922 After Egypt gains nominal independence from the United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt.

1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, tells U.S. Congress "We shall overcome" while advocating the Voting Rights Act.

1978 Somalia and Ethiopia signed a truce to end the Ethio-Somali War.

1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

2011 Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.

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Famous Birthdays on March 15

1767 Andrew Jackson

1933 Ruth Bader Ginsburg

1979 Kevin Youkilis

1993 Paul Pogba

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Famous Deaths on March 15

44 BC Julius Caesar

220 Cao Cao

1921 Talaat Pasha

1937 H. P. Lovecraft

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