All Events

Historical Events on March 15

  • Christopher Columbus

    1493

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

  • American Revolutionary War

    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.

  • Augustin-Jean Fresnel

    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.

  • American Civil War

    1864

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

  • Egypt

    1922

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

  • Lyndon B. Johnson

    1965

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

  • Somalia

    1978

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

  • Mikhail Gorbachev

    1990

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

  • Syrian Civil War

    2011

    Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.