This Month in History: March

By Elena Vlachopoulos

Welcome to the new series of “This Month in History”! The main focus of these articles is to share fun historical knowledge about what was going on in the past on a specific day of the month.

History is a guide to understanding the present and shaping the future. By studying past events, we recognize patterns, learn from mistakes, and see how societies evolve. It teaches us about resilience, progress, and change—helping us make informed decisions and avoid repeating past errors.

Historical facts of the Month of March:

The name, March comes from Martius, the first month of the earliest Roman calendar. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and an ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus.

This month is known for many historical events, but recently, it has come to represent the contributions of women in science. Share your favorites in the comments!

The historical facts are from the CBC archives, “On This Day”, along with “The Canadian Encyclopedia”. Please see references for more info!

Date	Fun Historical Facts
Sunday - 1st March	1927: The Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council awards Labrador to Newfoundland over a claim from Quebec. 1950: Klaus Fuchs, scientist and communist, is sentenced in London to 14 years in prison for giving British and American atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. 1965: A gas explosion in a Montreal apartment block kills 28 people. 2009: Prime Minister Stephen Harper says in an interview with CNN that "frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency" in Afghanistan.
Monday - 2nd March	1796: Napoléon Bonaparte is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the French Army in Italy 1888: The Convention of Constantinople is signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace 1956: French-Moroccan Agreement signed in Paris rescinds the Treaty of Fez, declaring independence of Morocco from France
Tuesday - 3rd March	1857: Second Opium War: France and the United Kingdom declare war on China 1917: First major strike of the Russian "February Revolution" starts at the giant Putilov factory in Petrograd 1939: Mahatma Gandhi begins a fast in Mumbai (Bombay) to protest against autocratic rule in India
Wednesday - 4th March	1971: Pierre Elliott Trudeau marries Margaret Sinclair in Vancouver, becoming the first prime minister to marry while in office. 1975: Television cameras are allowed to record the regular proceedings of Parliament for the first time. 1982: Bertha Wilson makes judicial history when she becomes the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. 1994: Canadian actor John Candy dies of a heart attack while filming in Mexico. He was 43.
Thursday - 5th March	1946: Winston Churchill gives his "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. Said Churchill, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." 1970: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after 43 countries ratify it. 1982: Comic actor John Belushi is found dead of a drug overdose in Hollywood. He was 33. 1982: Steve Podborski of Toronto becomes the first North American to win the World Cup men's downhill skiing championship. He achieved the title with three wins and two seconds in the 10-race event. Later that year, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.
Friday - 6th March	1837: The British government introduces the Ten Resolutions, allowing the governor of Lower Canada to pay the salaries of government officials without the approval of the assembly in Britain. 1857: The U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision rules that a slave is property, not a citizen, and he could not sue for his freedom in federal court. 1957: The Supreme Court of Canada declares Quebec's so-called Padlock Law unconstitutional. The Quebec law had empowered the attorney general to close, for one year, any building suspected of being used to promote communism. 1967: The daughter of Josef Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, appears at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and declares her intention to defect to the West.
Saturday - 7th March	1936: Nazi Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles by occupying the Rhineland. Under the treaty, the region was to remain under control of the Allied nations for five to 15 years after the end of the First World War, with Germany forbidden to militarize the area. But after the last Allied troops, the French, withdrew in 1930, Adolf Hitler moved quickly to build up troops there. 1963: The Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) begins its campaign of violence by hurling Molotov cocktails at three armouries. 1965: Roman Catholic churches in Canada celebrate mass in English, instead of Latin, for the first time. 2022: The official global death toll from COVID-19 tops six million.
Sunday - 8th March	1867: The British Parliament passes the British North America Act. The act received royal assent on March 29 and Queen Victoria set July 1 as the date for Confederation. 1911: Fingerprint evidence is introduced as a crime detection tool in a New York City case against a suspected burglar, who was convicted. 1915: About 10,000 people march on the Ontario Legislature to present a huge petition — 825,572 signatures — demanding Prohibition. 2014: A Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people, including two Canadians, vanishes on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Monday - 9th March	1933: US Congress is called into special session by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning its "100 days" in which it passes 77 laws 1961: Soviet flight Sputnik 9 carries and returns from orbit a dog named Chernushka (Blackie), frogs and a guinea pig 1918: Russian Bolshevik Party becomes the Communist Party
Tuesday - 10th March	241 BC: First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands - The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end 1876: First telephone call; Alexander Graham Bell says "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" to his assistant Thomas Watson 1900: Stanley Cup, Montreal Arena, Westmount, Quebec: Montreal Shamrocks outclass Halifax Crescents, 11-0 to sweep challenge series, 2-0
Wednesday - 11th March	1959: Ernie Richardson's Regina team wins the first world men's curling championship in Scotland. The Brier winners beat the Scottish champions five straight times in the inaugural Scotch Cup matches. The Richardson team repeated as Canadian and world champions in 1960, '62 and '63. 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev, at 54, the youngest member of the ruling Politburo, becomes the leader of the Soviet Union following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. 1996: The Montreal Canadiens play their last game at the Montreal Forum, their home for more than 70 years. They defeat the Dallas Stars 4-1. 2011: A 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake strikes Japan, triggering a massive tsunami that hits the country's northeastern coast. The disaster left more than 21,000 people dead or missing and thousands of buildings and homes damaged or destroyed. After a tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant, three of its six reactors later melted down, releasing massive amounts of radiation and forcing the government to order the evacuation of a 20-kilometre radius around the plant.
Thursday - 12th March	1795: William Lyon Mackenzie, who led the 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada, now Ontario, is born in Dundee, Scotland. He became Toronto’s first mayor in 1834. 1883: The first steel arrives in Port Moody, B.C., for construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. 1997: Eaton's announces plans to close or sell 31 of its 85 department stores across Canada as part of major restructuring. 2018: Cross-country skier Brian McKeever becomes the most decorated winter Paralympian in Canadian history when he wins gold in the men's visually impaired 20-km event in Pyeongchang, South Korea. It was his 11th Paralympic gold medal and 14th overall. (Before the Games ended, McKeever added two more gold medals and a bronze.)
Friday - 13th March	1914: Canadian writer W.O. Mitchell is born in Weyburn, Sask. The author of Who Has Seen the Wind and Jake and the Kid died in Calgary in 1998. 1953: The Soviet Union vetoes a recommendation by the UN Security Council that Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson be named UN secretary-general. Days later, Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden was selected for the post. 1989: Deborah Grey wins a byelection in the Alberta riding of Beaver River to become the Reform Party's first member of Parliament. From March to September of 2000, Grey was the interim leader of the Canadian Alliance, making her the first female Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. 2008: The price of gold hits $1,000 US per ounce for the first time.
Saturday - 14th March	1868: Emily Murphy is born in Cookstown, Ont. In 1916, Murphy was appointed police magistrate for Edmonton, and later Alberta. She was among the "Famous Five" women who led the battle to have women declared legal "persons" under the British North America Act. Their 1929 victory before the British Privy Council allowed women to be appointed senators. 1879: Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who developed the theory of relativity, is born in Ulm, Germany. 1899: New Brunswick business legend K.C. Irving is born in Buctouche. 1950: Albert Guay is sentenced in Quebec City to be hanged for the murder of his wife, who was among 23 people killed when a bomb exploded aboard a Canadian Pacific Airlines plane in September 1949.
Sunday - 15th March	44 BC: Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar is assassinated in Rome by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius. 1869: The Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, is organized. 1906: The Alberta government opens its first session. It was held at the Thistle skating rink in Edmonton. 1990: The federal government decides that Sikh members of the RCMP could wear turbans and other religious garb while on duty.
Monday - 16th March	1079: Iran adopts solar Hijrah calendar 1792: Denmark becomes the first nation to ban the transatlantic slave trade, for financial reasons. Doesn't go into effect until 1803 causing a frenzy of activity amongst slave traders who even receive financial support. An estimated 120,000 enslaved Africans were transported from Africa to the West Indies aboard vessels flying the Danish flag. 1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields in Boston
Tuesday - 17th March	45 BC: In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda 432: Saint Patrick, aged about 16 is captured by Irish pirates from his home in Great Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland (traditional date) 1776: British forces evacuate Boston to Nova Scotia during Revolutionary War
Wednesday - 18th March	1869: Physician and pathologist Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott is born in St. Andrews East, Que. She was the only woman in her class at Bishop’s Medical College. In 1936, she devised an international classification system for congenital heart disease, which became the definitive reference guide to the subject. 1892: Gov. Gen. Lord Frederick Stanley offers to donate a championship cup, later named after him, as an award for the best hockey team in Canada. 1965: Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performs the first spacewalk. He left his orbiting Voskhod 2 spacecraft for 12 minutes, secured by a five-metre lifeline. 1993: About 200 protesters demanding the B.C. government ban logging in Clayoquot Sound, a Vancouver Island wilderness area, storm the provincial legislature in Victoria — forcing the speech from the throne to be delayed for about 90 minutes.
Thursday - 19th March	1885: The North-West Rebellion, also known as the North-West Resistance, begins when a provisional government led by Louis Riel is proclaimed in Batoche, Sask. 1953: The Academy Awards are televised for the first time. The Greatest Show on Earth is named best picture. Gary Cooper wins the best actor award for High Noon. Shirley Booth wins best actress for her role in Come Back, Little Sheba. 1976: Buckingham Palace announces the separation of Princess Margaret and her husband, the Earl of Snowdon, after 16 years of marriage. Their marriage was dissolved in 1978. 2007: Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor formally apologizes for misleading the House of Commons over the monitoring of prisoners taken by Canadian troops during fighting in Afghanistan.
Friday - 20th March	1815: Napoleon Bonaparte returns to Paris after escaping exile on Elba, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel about slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is first published in book form after being serialized. 1907: Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan is born in Glace Bay, N.S. He won the Governor General's award three times for fiction and twice for non-fiction. He is perhaps best known for his 1945 novel Two Solitudes, which explored English-French tensions in Quebec during the interwar period. 1948: Hockey great Bobby Orr was born in Parry Sound, Ont. He joined the Boston Bruins in 1966 and was named the NHL's rookie of the year. In 1969-70, he became the first defenceman to lead the league in scoring, and his overtime goal against St. Louis gave the Bruins their first Stanley Cup in 29 years.
Saturday - 21th March	1904: Canadian cuisine pioneer Jehane Benoît is born in Montreal. After studying at the Sorbonne and Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, she became a consultant, author, commentator and broadcaster. 1942: J.S. Woodsworth, the founding leader of the federal Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, dies in Vancouver at age 67. The CCF became the NDP in 1961. 1965: A five-day civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., begins. Led by Rev. Martin Luther King, an estimated 3,000 to 8,000 people set out to cover the 80-km walk for equality and desegregation. They were protected on their march by thousands of U.S. soldiers and Alabama National Guardsmen. 1995: Defence Minister David Collenette launches a public inquiry into the Canadian Airborne Regiment's deployment to Belet Huen in Somalia, including the torture and murder of a Somali civilian and allegations of a coverup.
Sunday - 22nd March	1895: Auguste and Louis Lumière give the first public exhibition of a motion picture using celluloid film. The film, shown in Paris, was of workers leaving the Lumière factory. 1931: William Shatner, film and television actor, best known as Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek, is born in Montreal. 1979: The National Hockey League’s board of governors agrees to a merger with its rival, the World Hockey Association. Four WHA teams — the Winnipeg Jets, Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques and New England Whalers — joined the NHL for the 1979-80 season. 1990: Exxon Valdez captain Joseph Hazelwood is found not guilty of being drunk and reckless after nearly 41 million litres of oil spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound in March 1989. He was convicted on the minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.
Monday - 23rd March	1752: Canada's first newspaper "Halifax Gazette" published in Halifax by John Bushell. 1821: Battle and fall of city of Kalamata, Greek War of Independence 1919: Benito Mussolini forms Fascist group Fasci di Combattimento (Italian Fighting Bands) in Milan, Italy - later reorganized into National Fascist Party
Tuesday - 24th March	1401: Timur attacks the city of Damascus, second city of the Mameluke Empire. Though scholar and negotiator Ibn Khaldūn's life was spared, the city was sacked and the Umayyad Mosque destroyed. 1853: Anti-slavery newspaper "The Provincial Freeman" first published in Windsor, Ontario, edited by Samuel Ringgold Ward and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, first black woman publisher in North America 1905: A group of Cretans dedicated to Crete's union with Greece led by Eleutherios Venizelos, meet at the village of Therisso and proclaim a union in defiance of the Great Powers
Wednesday - 25th March	1880: George Brown, editor of Toronto's Globe newspaper and a Father of Confederation, is shot by a disgruntled former employee he never knew. Brown's seemingly minor leg wound became infected and he died May 9 at the age of 61. His killer, George Bennett, was hanged. 1958: The first test flight of the Canadian Avro Arrow fighter jet is carried out. The Arrow program was cancelled by the federal government nearly a year later. 1982: Canada’s first in-vitro fertilization babies and North America's first test-tube twins, Colin and Gregory Rankin, are born in Oakville, Ont. 1988: Canada's Kurt Browning becomes the first figure skater to land a quadruple jump in competition. He landed a quadruple toe loop during his long program at the world championship in Budapest.
Thursday - 26th March	1885: George Eastman manufactures the first commercial motion-picture film in Rochester, N.Y. 1908: Prince Edward Island bans all automobiles. The first car had appeared on the Island three years earlier, causing such a controversy that the law outlawing the operation of any motor vehicle was passed. At the time of the ban, there were only seven cars on P.E.I. The ban was repealed in 1913. 1917: The Seattle Metropolitans become the first U.S. team to win the Stanley Cup, defeating the Montreal Canadiens. 1921: The racing and fishing schooner Bluenose is launched at Lunenburg, N.S. Captained by Angus Walters, she raced five times for the North Atlantic fishermen's championship and was never beaten. The image of the ship has been on the Canadian dime since 1937.
Friday - 28th March	1918: During the First World War, anti-conscription riots break out in Quebec City. 1930: The names of the Turkish cities of Constantinople and Angora are changed to Istanbul and Ankara respectively. 1959: After a rebellion breaks out in Tibet, China orders the dissolution of the Dalai Lama's government. Three days later, the Dalai Lama and his followers fled to northern India. 1987: Maria von Trapp, whose 1938 escape from Nazi-occupied Austria with her husband and children inspired The Sound of Music, dies in Morrisville, Vt., at age 82.
Saturday - 29th March	1867: The British North America Act (now called the Constitution Act, 1867) received Royal Assent, officially setting the stage for Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867. 1974: The Quebec provincial government passed Bill 22, making French the official language of the province. 2004: Canada joined other nations in the first official combat mission of NATO in Afghanistan, known as Operation Athena.
Sunday - 30th March	1849: The "Annexation Manifesto" was circulated in Montreal, calling for Canada to become part of the United States due to economic struggles—though it gained little support and was ultimately rejected. 1939: Canada’s first civil aviation training school, operated by Trans-Canada Air Lines (later Air Canada), opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba. 1981: The Canadian Constitution debate intensified as Pierre Trudeau’s government faced legal challenges over constitutional amendments.
Monday - 31st March	1949: Newfoundland and Labrador officially joined Canada as the 10th province, ending its time as a British Dominion. 1954: The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) took delivery of its first CF-100 Canuck jet fighters, the first Canadian-designed and built jet fighter to enter service. 1999: Nunavut was officially separated from the Northwest Territories, leading to the creation of Canada’s newest territory on April 1, 1999.

References:

On This Day. (2001, February 19). On this day - today in history, film, music and sport. https://www.onthisday.com/

Home | The Canadian Encyclopedia. (n.d.). https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en

CBC Archives - History. (2001, February 18). CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/archives/history

This Month in History: March

Recent Posts

Comments

Back to Top

Subscribe to get updates about new content