Opinion - The Korea Times

FRIDAY, March 20, 2026

1602-United Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) is formed and granted a monopoly on all Dutch sea-borne trade with Asia 1800-Alessandro Volta reports his discovery of the electric battery in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London 1815-Napoleon Bonaparte enters Paris after his escape from Elba and begins his 100-day rule 1854-Republican Party is formally organized in Ripon, Wisconsin 1900-U.S. Secretary of State John Hay announces that all nations to whom he sent notes calling for an 'open door' policy in China have essentially accepted his stance 2016 Barack Obama becomes the first U.S, President to visit Cuba since 1928, arriving for a three-day tour with First Lady Michelle 2024-New rule limiting tailpipe pollution aimed at greatly expanding electric vehicles in the U.S. is announced by President Joe Biden 2024-Vaughan Gething is confirmed as Wales' new First Minister and the first Black leader of a national government in Europe

Mar 19, 2026

THURSDAY, March 19, 2026

1279-Mongolian victory at the naval Battle of Yamen ends the Song Dynasty in China 1644-Two hundred members of the Peking imperial family and court commit suicide out of loyalty to the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen 1863-Confederate cruiser SS Georgiana is destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions and medicines valued at over $1,000,000. The wreck is discovered exactly 102 years later by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence. 1920-U.S. Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, refusing to ratify the League of Nations' covenant and maintaining a policy of isolation 1932-Sydney Harbour Bridge opens in Sydney, Australia 2003-Airstrikes by an American and British-led coalition signal the beginning of the invasion of Iraq without United Nations support and in defiance of world opinion

Mar 18, 2026

WEDNESDAY, March 18, 2026

1123-First Council of the Lateran (9th ecumenical council) opens in Rome, agreements of the Concordat of Worms are ratified 1314-Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France 1325-According to legend, Tenochtitlan is founded on this date on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico 1890-German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck resigns after 19 years after a disagreement with German Emperor Wilhelm II 1922-British magistrates in India sentence Mahatma Gandhi to six years imprisonment for disobedience 1940-Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler meet at Brenner Pass, where the Italian dictator agrees to join Germany's impending war effort in the west 1965-Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov leaves his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes and becomes the first person to conduct a spacewalk 1990-In the largest art heist in U.S. history, 13 works of art worth over $500 million are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

Mar 17, 2026

TUESDAY, March 17, 2025

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) 1861-Italy is unified into a single kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II following the campaigns led by Giuseppe Garibaldi 1905-Albert Einstein finishes his scientific paper detailing his quantum theory of light, a foundation of modern physics 1939-Battle of Nanchang between the Kuomintang and the Japanese breaks out during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) 1942-Bełżec Concentration Camp opens with the transport of 30,000 Polish Jews from Lublin

Mar 16, 2026

MONDAY, March 16, 2026

597 BC-Babylonians capture Jerusalem, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king 1521-Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines, landing on Homonhon Island after crossing the Pacific Ocean 1660-English Long Parliament disbands 1792-King Gustav III of Sweden is shot by Count Jacob Johan Anckarström at a masked ball at the opera and dies on March 29 1867-Joseph Lister first outlines the discovery of antiseptic surgery in an article in "The Lancet" 1935-Adolf Hitler orders German rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles 1968-General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, an Oldsmobile Toronado

Mar 15, 2026

FRIDAY, March 13, 2026

624-Battle of Badr: Muhammad's Muslim forces win a significant victory over the Meccan army 1781-William Herschel sees what he thinks is a "comet" but actually discovers the planet Uranus 1877-American Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs after inventing them at age 15 1884-Siege of Khartoum, Sudan, begins by Mahdist forces and lasts 10 months 1903-Fall of the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria, British claim supremacy over 500,000 square miles 1930-Clyde Tombaugh announces the discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory 2003-The Journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy 2019-U.S. grounds all Boeing 737 Max aircraft after bans by other countries following the plane type's second crash in Ethiopia

Mar 12, 2026

THURSDAY, March 12, 2026

538-Witiges, King of the Ostrogoths, ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of the victorious Byzantine general Belisarius 1455-First record of Johannes Gutenberg's Bible, a letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the Bible printed a year earlier 1918-Fearing foreign invasion, Vladimir Lenin shifts revolutionary Russia's capital from Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to Moscow 1930-Mahatma Gandhi begins his famous 200-mile (320 km) protest march against the widely hated British salt tax 1951-Communist troops driven out of Seoul 1994-The Church of England ordains its first 32 female priests at the Bristol Cathedral in Bristol, England

Mar 11, 2026

WEDNESDAY, March 11, 2026

843-Icon veneration officially re-instated in Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople 1502-Founder of the Safavid dynasty, Ismail I, is crowned Shah of Persia (rules till 1524) 1966-Military coup led by Indonesian General Suharto breaks out 1977-Hanafi Muslims hold 130 hostages in Washington, D.C. 1985-Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader 2011-9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people and causing the second worst nuclear accident in history at Fukushima nuclear plant 2018-China's National People's Congress approves removal of term limits for a leader, allowing Xi Jinping to be president for life 2020-COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths

Mar 10, 2026

TUESDAY, March 10, 2026

241-BC Battle of the Aegates Islands: Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet, ending the First Punic War 1783-USS Alliance, under Captain Barry, fights and wins the final naval battle of the American Revolutionary War off Cape Canaveral 1861-West African political leader El Hadj Umar Tall seizes the city of Ségou, destroying the Bambara Empire of Mali 1920-Home Rule Act is passed by the British Parliament, dividing Ireland into two parts; it is rejected by the southern counties, where the Anglo-Irish War continues for a year 1945-Deadliest air raid of World War II sets Tokyo on fire after nighttime B-29 bombings; more than 100,000 people die, mostly civilians 1952-Military coup led by General Fulgencio Batista in Cuba 2000-NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaks at 5132.52, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom

Mar 9, 2026

MONDAY, March 9, 2026

141-B.C. Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne of the Han Dynasty in China and rules for 54 years 1517- A copy of Martin Luther's 95 theses, the publication of which began the Protestant Reformation in Europe 1522-Martin Luther begins preaching his "Invocavit Sermons" in the German city of Wittenberg, reminding citizens to trust God's word rather than violence, helping bring to a close the revolutionary stage of the Reformation 1776-Adam Smith publishes the influential economics book "The Wealth of Nations" 1918-Russian Bolshevik Party is renamed the All-Russian Communist Party 1933-U.S. Congress is called into a special session by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning its "100 days" during 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

Mar 8, 2026

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