1618 Johannes Kepler discovers the third Law of Planetary Motion.
1702 Queen Anne becomes the monarch of England upon the death of William III.
1790 George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address.
1853 The first bronze statue of Andrew Jackson is unveiled in Washington, D.C.
1855 The first train crosses Niagara Falls on a suspension bridge.
1862 On the second day of the Battle of Pea Ridge, Confederate forces, including some Indian troops, under General Earl Van Dorn surprise Union troops, but the Union troops win the battle.
1862 The Confederate ironclad C.S.S. Virginia (formerly U.S.S. Merrimack) is launched.
1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes declares that the United States will have jurisdiction over any canal built across the Isthmus of Panama.
1904 The Bundestag in Germany lifts the ban on the Jesuit order of priests.
1908 The House of Commons, London, turns down the women's suffrage bill.
1909 Pope Pius X lifts the church ban on interfaith marriages in Hungary.
1910 Baroness de Laroche becomes the first woman to obtain a pilot's license in France.
1921 Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato is assassinated while leaving Parliament in Madrid.
1921 French troops occupy Dusseldorf.
1941 Martial law is proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish any anti-Nazi protests.
1942 Japanese troops capture Rangoon, Burma.
1943 Japanese forces attack American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville. The battle will last five days.
1945 Phyllis Mae Daley receives a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She will become the first African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools is unconstitutional.
1954 France and Vietnam open talks in Paris on a treaty to form the state of Indochina.
1961 Max Conrad circles the globe in a record time of eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes in Piper Aztec.
1965 More than 4,000 Marines land at Da Nang in South Vietnam and become the first U.S. combat troops in Vietnam.
1966 Australia announces that it will triple the number of troops in Vietnam.
1970 The Nixon administration discloses the deaths of 27 Americans in Laos.
1973 Two bombs explode near Trafalgar Square in Great Britain injuring 234 people.
1982 The United States accuses the Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas.
1985 Thomas Creighton dies after having three heart transplants in a 46-hour period.
Born on March 8
1783 Hannah Hoes Van Buren, wife of Martin Van Buren
1799 Simon Cameron, political boss.
1804 Alvan Clark, telescope manufacturer
1841 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice
1859 Kenneth Grahame, Scottish author (The Wind in the Willows).
1879 Otto Hahn, co-discoverer of nuclear fission
1902 Louise Beavers, film actress.
1923 Cyd Charisse, dancer, actress.
1923 John McPhee, writer (Oranges, A Sense of Where You Are)