What Happened on March 31st in History
30 historical events on this date
The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages...
Events preceding World War II in Europe: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pledges British military support to the Second Polish Republic in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany.
The events preceding World War II in Europe are closely tied to the bellicosity of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union, as well as the Great...
World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it...
The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
The Dominion of Newfoundland, or simply Newfoundland, was a British Dominion in eastern North America, today the modern Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It included the island of...
Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
Remington Rand, Inc. was an early American business machine manufacturer, originally a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers....
Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
Territorial Assembly elections were held in French Upper Volta on 31 March 1957. The result was a victory for the Unified Democratic Party, which won 33 of the 68 seats in the Assembly.
In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
The 1958 Canadian federal election was held to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 24th Parliament of Canada on March 31, 1958, just nine months after the 23rd election. It...
The 14th Dalai Lama crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
The 14th Dalai Lama is the incumbent Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. He served as the resident spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet before 1959, and...
Brazilian General Olímpio Mourão Filho orders his troops to move towards Rio de Janeiro, beginning the coup d'état and 21 years of military dictatorship.
Olímpio Mourão Filho was a Brazilian military officer known as the author of the Cohen Plan, a forged document used to justify the Estado Novo coup in 1937, and, as head of the 4th Military...
The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's...
The Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins the 1966 United Kingdom general election.
The Labour Party, commonly Labour, is a political party in the United Kingdom. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum, and has been described as an alliance of democratic...
American President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to the nation of "Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam" in a television address. At the conclusion of his speech, he announces: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the...
Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The 1958 mission followed the first two...
The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
The original Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock.
Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 crashes into the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range near the Mexican town of Maravatío, killing 167.
Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 was a scheduled international flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles with stopovers in Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán. On March 31, 1986, the aircraft serving the...
Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
The poll tax riots were a series of riots in British towns and cities during protests against the Community Charge, introduced by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The...
Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
An independence referendum was held in the Republic of Georgia on 31 March 1991. It was approved by 99.5% of voters.
The Warsaw Pact formally disbands.
The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other...
The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
USS Missouri (BB-63) is an Iowa-class battleship built for the United States Navy (USN) in the 1940s and is now a museum ship. Completed in 1944, she is the last battleship commissioned by the...
The Treaty of Federation is signed in Moscow.
The Treaty of Federation was a treaty signed on 31 March 1992 in Moscow between the Russian government and 86 of 89 federal subjects of Russia.
The Macao Basic Law is adopted by the Eighth National People's Congress of China to take effect December 20, 1999. Resumption by China of the Exercise of Sovereignty over Macao
The Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is the organic law that establishes the Macau Special Administrative Region, replacing the Organic Statute...
Selena is murdered by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was an American singer-songwriter, fashion designer and business owner. Known as the "Queen of Tejano Music", she is known for her contributions to popular music and...
TAROM Flight 371, an Airbus A310-300, crashes near Balotesti, Romania, killing all 60 people on board.
TAROM Flight 371 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Otopeni International Airport in Romania's capital Bucharest to Brussels Airport in Belgium. On 31 March 1995, the Airbus A310...
Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license.
Netscape Communications Corporation was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once...
Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War...
The dwarf planet Makemake is discovered by a team led by astronomer Michael E. Brown at the Palomar Observatory.
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight...
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko return to Earth after a yearlong mission at the International Space Station.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and...
Start of the 2018 Armenian revolution.
The 2018 Armenian Revolution, most commonly known in Armenia as #MerzhirSerzhin, was a series of anti-government protests in Armenia from April to May 2018 staged by various political and civil...
A historic tornado outbreak occurs in the American Midwest and South.
A widespread, deadly, and historic tornado outbreak affected large portions of the Midwestern, Southern and Eastern United States on March 31 and April 1, 2023, the result of an extratropical...