On March 26, 1991, local self-government in South Korea was restored after three decades of centralized control.
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South Korea
Category: Today
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To the Capitol
On March 25, 1965, civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr., successfully completed their four-day, 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
On March 24, 1765, the Kingdom of Great Britain passed the Quartering Act, which required the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
On the same date in 1855, slavery was abolished in Venezuela.
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“Give Me Liberty”
On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” speech at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia.
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Templar Order Dissolved
On March 22, 1312, in the papal bull Vox in excelso, Pope Clement V dissolved the Order of the Knights Templar, after five years of suppression, torture and executions that began with the events of Friday the 13th, October 1307.
March 22nd marks some sad days for Americans, too:
1622 — Algonquians killed 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony’s population, during the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.
1631 — The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.
1638 — Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.
1765 — The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which levied taxes directly on its American colonies.
On a brigher note, on March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, led by governor John Carver, signed a peace treaty with Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoags; Squanto served as an interpreter between the two sides.
On March 21, 1921, the Bolshevik Party — responding to the disaster that war communism had wrought — implemented the New Economic Policy. And controversy about this seems never to end.
Among the reforms was a re-introduction of money into the economy, going so far as to produce gold-backed “chervonets.”
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was published. By the end of the nineteenth century it had become the country’s second best-selling book, after the Bible.
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House of Lords, House of TV
On March 19, 1649, England’s House of Commons passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England.”
This was during Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, after the execution of Charles I. The House of Lords did not again meet until the Convention Parliament of 1660, under the Restoration of the monarchy.
On March 19, 1979, the United States House of Representatives began broadcasting its day-to-day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.
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In Wartime
On March 17, 1941, the U.S. Selective Service held its first lottery for the draft, in preparation for World War II. (Image, above, from the Morning Oregonian, from that year.)
On March 17, 1780, General George Washington granted the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”
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Belated Confirmation
On March 16, 1995, the state of Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state of the Union to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment had been officially ratified in 1865, one hundred thirty years earlier.
James Madison, fourth President of the United States and “Father of the Constitution,” was born on this date in 1751.