Category: Today

On March 6, 1967, Soviet Premiere Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defected to the United States. (She later took the name Lana Peters, upon marriage to William Wesley Peters. The marriage was short-lived.)

| The March 6 date also marks term limits advocate and initiative organizer Paul Jacob’s birthday. He was born on the anniversary of the births of Michaelangelo, Cryano de Bergerac, and Alan Greenspan. He is also, obviously, the reason this site, ThisIsCommonSense.com, exists. (It continues, however, only through the continued support of readers like you.)

| On this day in 1820, the Missouri Compromise was signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brought Maine into the Union as a free state, and made the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. This censorship notwithstanding, the Earth continued to revolve around the Sun. The book had been first published in 1543 in Nuremberg.

| In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place on March 5.

| March 5 is magician Penn Jillette’s birthday. He turns 61 today, beginning his 62nd year of life.

On March 4, 1789, the first bicameral Congress of the United States met in New York, New York, in accordance with the new Constitution.

Two years later on the same date, Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state of the union.

In a twist in World War II allegiances, Finland declared war on Nazi Germany on March 4, 1945, beginning the Lapland War.

On March 3, 1991, an amateur videographer captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, thus ushering in the age of citizen surveillance of the state.

On March 2, 1793, Sam Houston was born.

On March 2, 1926, American economist and political theorist Murray N. Rothbard was born.

As President of the Republic of Texas, Houston cut the size of the Republic’s budget by a whopping amount, including selling the navy for scrap. Rothbard theorized about even more daring — and more permanent — cuts to (and limits upon) government.

On March 2, 1781, the Second Continental Congress convened as the new Congress of the Confederation, under the Articles of Confederation, ratified the day before. The congress elected no new president upon adoption of the Articles. This Confederation Congress oversaw the conclusion of the American Revolution.

March 1st Firsts (and a 17th and a 37th):

| The first United States census was authorized, in 1790.

| Ohio was admitted as the 17th U.S. state, in 1803.

| President John Tyler [pictured above] signed a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas, in 1845.

| The state of Michigan formally abolished capital punishment, 1847.

| Nebraska became the 37th of the United States, in 1867.

| Yellowstone National Park was established as the world’s first national park, 1872.

On March 1, 1781, the Continental Congress of the United States adopted the Articles of Confederation. With this, the governing body became known, officially, as United States of America in Congress Assembled, less officially as the Congress of the Confederation. The first session of this newly styled Confederation Congress took over without a break from the Second Continental Congress, adjourning on November 3. Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean served as presidents during this first session.

February 29, also known as the leap day of the Gregorian calendar, is a date that occurs in most years that are divisible by four, such as 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024. Years divisible by 100, but not by 400, do not contain a leap day — 1700, 1800, and 1900 did not contain a leap day.

Years containing a leap day are called leap years.

On Leap Day, 1796, the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain went into force, facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.

A “leapling” is a person born on a leap day. Famous leaplings include Italian composer Gioachino Rossini (1792), American poet Howard Nemerov (1920), American fantasy author Tim Powers (1952), and Ukrainian-American lawyer and educator Eugene Volokh (1968).

On February 28, 1646, Roger Scott, of Lynn, Massachusetts, was tried for sleeping in church. Awakened in church by a tithingman’s long, knobbed staff hitting him on the head, he struck back at the man, and garnered a whipping as punishment, as well as the dark designation as “a common sleeper at the publick exercise.”

On February 27, 1830, American economist and free trade advocate Arthur Latham Perry was born.

The Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution, which sets a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States, was ratified by the requisite 36 of the then-48 states on February 27, 1951.

Congress had passed the amendment on March 21, 1947.

February 26 marks the Dominican Republic’s Independence Day.