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Reserve Bank of Australia

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is Australia's central bank and banknote issuing authority. It has had this role since 14 January 1960, when the Reserve Bank Act 1959 removed the central banking functions from the Commonwealth Bank.

The bank's main policy role is to control inflation levels within a target range of 2–3%, by controlling the unemployment rate according to the 'non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment' (NAIRU) by controlling the official cash rate. The NAIRU was implemented in most western nations after 1975, and has been maintained at a target of 5–6% unemployment. The average unemployment rate in Australia between the end of the Second World War and the implementation of the NAIRU was consistently between 1 and 2%. Since the implementation of the NAIRU, the average unemployment rate in Australia has been close to 6%.

The RBA also provides services to the Government of Australia and services to other central banks and official institutions. The RBA currently comprises the Payments System Board, which sets the payment system policy of the bank, and the Reserve Bank Board, which sets all other monetary and banking policies of the bank.

Both boards consist of members of the bank, the Treasury, other Australian government agencies, and leaders of other institutions that are part of the Australian economy. The structure of the Reserve Bank Board has remained consistent ever since 1951, with the exception of the change in the number of members of the board. The governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia is appointed by the Treasurer and chairs both the Payment Systems and Reserve Bank Boards and when there are disagreements between both boards, the governor resolves them.

Roles and responsibilities
The Reserve Bank is currently governed by the Reserve Bank Act 1959. The Reserve Bank Board's duty set out in the Act, within its outlined boundaries, is to ensure that the bank's monetary and banking policy is used to help the Australian population. This should be accomplished through both consultation with the government and the Reserve Bank Board's opinion that its powers are used to help with: 1. the stability of the currency of Australia;

2. the maintenance of full employment in Australia, and

3. the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia.

In practice the Reserve Bank concentrates on the first objective, that is to control inflation through monetary policy. The current objective is a policy of inflation targeting aimed at maintaining the annual inflation rate at between "2–3 per cent, on average, over the cycle". This target was first set in 1993 by the then Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser and was then formalised in 1996 by the then Treasurer Peter Costello and incoming Reserve Bank Governor Ian Mcfarlane.

The Reserve Bank gives banking and registry services to agencies of the government, to other central banks, and other official institutions. The assets of the bank include the gold and foreign exchange reserves of Australia, which is estimated to have a net worth of A$101 billion.

Nearly 94% of the RBA's employees work at its headquarters and at the Business Resumption Site, both in Sydney. The remainder of the total of 926 staff work in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, London and New York City. A wholly owned subsidiary of the bank is Note Printing Australia, which employs 257 other workers, and which manufactures the Australian dollar and other securities, for markets both in and outside of Australia.

The Payments System Board fills the role of deciding on the bank's payments system policy and the Reserve Bank Board is responsible for all other monetary and banking policies of the bank. Conflicts between the two boards do not occur often, and when they do, they are resolved by the governor.

Governors and their roles
The Reserve Bank governor is the most senior position in the RBA. The governor is appointed for a term of up to seven years by the Treasurer and is eligible to be reappointed at the end of their term. The governor is the chairman of both the Payment Systems Board and the Reserve Bank Board and resolves any disputes that occur between the two boards. The governor of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia was both an ex officio member of the Notes Board from 1920 to 1924 and of the eight directors of the Commonwealth Bank from 1924 to 1945. The Commonwealth Bank and Bank Acts in 1945 stated the governor's responsibilities of managing the CBA. In 1951, legislation established a 10-member board of which the CBA governor was a member. The CBA has maintained a similar structure since 1951.

The RBA governor is required by the Reserve Bank Act 1959 to keep in contact with the Treasury Secretary on matters concerning both the Treasury and Reserve Bank and vice versa. It also mandates that the RBA board inform the government of the bank's monetary and banking policy, which is often accomplished through the governor's meetings with the Treasurer. Since 1996, the governor and other senior members of the RBA have appeared twice annually before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics to explain the conduct of the bank.

List of Governors of the CBA and RBA

The longest-serving governor, if his service to both the Commonwealth Bank and the Reserve Bank of Australia are included, is H.C. Coombs, who served nineteen years and six months combined. He is regarded by some as one of the most committed anti-inflationists in government throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The longest-serving Commonwealth Bank governor is Sir Ernest Riddle, who served eleven years and four months, while the longest-serving Reserve Bank governor is Ian Macfarlane, who served ten years. The shortest-serving governor by many years is James Kell, who served 2 years for the Commonwealth Bank.

In July 2023, the RBA announced the appointment of Michele Bullock as its new Governor, taking up the role in September 2023. This made Bullock the RBA's first female Governor.

Reserve Bank Board

The Reserve Bank Board consists of nine members, including three ex officio members: the Governor of the Reserve Bank, who is Chair of the Board; the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, who is the Deputy Chair of the Board; and the Secretary to the Treasury.

The board also has six external members who are appointed by the Treasurer for five years. According to section 17(1) of the Reserve Bank Act, members of the board are not allowed to be a director, officer, or employee of an institution that is authorised to take in deposits. Excluding changes in the number of members, the structure of the board has remained unchanged since 1951.

The current members of the board are:

The board normally meets eleven times each year, on the first Tuesday of each month except January. Board meetings are usually held at the Reserve Bank's Head Office in Sydney. Meetings are held in two other Australian cities each year. Five members of the board must meet in order to constitute a quorum, and the meeting must be chaired by the governor, or the deputy governor in his absence.

The board usually forms a consensus without a need for structured voting on the issues at hand. Meetings of the board are held in the boardroom of the Reserve Bank's Head Office in Sydney or a similar facility in one of the bank's State Offices when meetings are held interstate (a secure location is used in Australian cities where the bank does not have its own premises). The meetings begin at 9:00 am and continue for three-and-a-half hours, with minutes published two weeks after the meeting is held.

Payments System Board and Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
The Reserve Bank Act 1959 authorises the Payments System Board to decide the Reserve Bank's payments system policy. This is done so it can control risk, promote efficiency and to aid in competitiveness and balance in the financial system. The bank's power through the Payment Systems Act 1998 allows it to regulate any payment system and can create binding rules for security and performance in the system. If members of a payment system are at odds over issues of market risk, admission, safety and rivalry, the RBA can additionally administer arbitration with the consent of those involved. The RBA is also permitted to gather information from a payment system or participants thereof. The bank can also regulate the competition of transactions since August 2001.

The Payment Systems and Netting Act 1998 gives the board power in areas of the law that were previously uncertain. It removed the zero-hour rule that allowed a bankruptcy to date a bankruptcy the previous midnight and the Act made it so payments the same day could not be undone. Before the removal of the zero-hour rule, the real-time gross settlement system had been violated because payments in the system should inherently not be reversed. Some payments systems had previously agreed to pay and receive obligations to the whole system, rather than merely maintaining their own. But in the event of a bankruptcy, the bankrupt institution did not pay what it owed back to the solvent parties, while they had to pay their dues to the failed bank. This was later changed, when cheques were deemed void if the bankrupt institution does not have the funds to back them up, after the Cheques Act 1986 was amended in 1998. The Trade Practices Act 1974 generally does not allow competitors to make cooperative agreements, but the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) is permitted to make exceptions for competitors making agreements among themselves. The ACCC and the Payments Systems Board are encouraged to work together regarding access and rivalry through the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998.

Members of the Payments System Board are defined by Section 25A of the Reserve Bank Act 1959, with three of the members being ex officio or representatives of another organisation. The governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia is the Chairman of the Payments System Board, there is one representative of the RBA, and there is one representative of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). In addition, there are up to five other members of the board who are appointed by the Treasurer for a term of up to five years. The board meet once per quarter, usually in Sydney with five members forming a quorum, which must be chaired by the Governor or, in his or her absence, the Deputy Chair. The Chairman meets with the Chairman of the ACCC at least once annually on issues of interest to both parties in the payments system, in addition to members of both organisations consulting over issues that are mutually important.

The current members of the Payments System Board are:

History
From the middle of the 19th century into the 1890s, the prospects for the forming of a central bank grew. In 1911, the Commonwealth Bank was established, but did not have the authority to print notes, which function was still that of the Treasury. A movement toward re-establishing the gold standard occurred after World War I (1914–1918) with John Garvan leading various boards in contracting the money supply on the route to doing so, and the gold standard was instituted for both the British pound sterling and the Australian pound in 1925.

During the Great Depression, the Australian pound became devalued, no longer worth the same as the pound sterling, and formally departed from the gold standard with the Commonwealth Bank Act of 1932. Legislation in 1945 led to regulation of private banks which Herbert Coombs was opposed to, and when he became governor in 1949, he gave them more overall control over their institutions. When the monetary authorities implemented the advice of Coombs to have a flexible interest rate, it allowed the bank to rely more on open market operations. In 1980 the issue of short-term government bonds—Treasury notes of 13 and 26 weeks' duration—changed from a tap system, in which the price was set, to a tender system in which the volume of stock was set and the price determined by the market. Soon afterwards the tender system was extended to the issue of longer-term government bonds.

The float of the Australian dollar happened in 1983, around the same period of time that the financial system in Australia was deregulated. Administration of the banks was transferred in 1998 from the bank to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Payments System Board was created, while the bank was given power within the board in the same year. The current governor of the Reserve Bank is Michele Bullock, who succeeded Philip Lowe as governor on 18 September 2023.

In May 2022, the bank increased the nation's interest rates for the first time in more than a decade. This move was designed to combat high rates of inflation. The move generated considerable discussion, as it was taken during a federal election campaign that was heavily focused on increased costs of living.

Mid-19th century–1924

Proposals for a national bank in Australia were first raised in the mid-19th century, and got a significant boost in the 1890s as a result of the Australian banking crisis of 1893 during which many commercial banks and building societies collapsed, leading to a general economic depression. The Australian Labor Party, formed during this period, proposed a bank which would be a protected and cheap way of providing financial services. The party's platform for the 1908 election was for a "Commonwealth Bank", which would have both commercial and central bank functions.

Regardless, Fisher's Labor government established the Commonwealth Bank by the Commonwealth Bank Act 1911, which came into effect on 22 December 1911. The new bank was a government-owned commercial bank, without any central bank functions. He stated that "Time and experience will show how its functions for usefulness may be extended [towards central banking]." The only function at the time that made the bank characteristic of a central one was that it was the banker to the Australian government, in addition to it being the same for the states. At the time, the Treasury of Australia maintained the role of issuing bank notes through the Australian Notes Act 1910. The bank was also the first bank in Australia to receive a federal government guarantee.

The Commonwealth Bank gradually acquired central bank functions. In response to the disruption of trade during World War I it was given responsibility to manage the Australian government debt. Nevertheless, at the end of the war, the bank's primary role was as a savings and trading bank. In the war, to fund the great increase in government spending, the currency of Australia went off the gold standard, as did those of the United Kingdom and other parts of the British Empire.

The Australian pound remained tied to the pound sterling. Inflation in Australia thus increased, less than in Britain, but more than in the United States. The case for a central bank was increased by the need for the government to cut spending after the war to reduce its debt. Commonwealth Bank Governor Denison Miller had been arguing for the issue of Australian currency to be switched from the treasury to the bank, as it had more staff and more monetary knowledge.

The Australian Notes Board (ANB) was created in 1920 and partially acceded to Miller's request, in having four directors, with the governor of the bank being an ex officio member. The ANB began to follow a policy of board member John Garvan, in contracting the money supply, with the goal of reducing prices so that free convertibility of the Australian pound to gold could be re-established at pre-war rates, that is return to the former gold standard.

This was accomplished by refusing the exchange of notes for gold and it was hoped that this would lower domestic prices and raise the exchange rate for the Australian pound. When gold arrived from New York the government sold securities to diminish the effect of monetary expansion, therefore executing the first open market operations in the history of Australia and thus the first attempt of central banking.

1924–present
[[File:Australia bonds.webp|thumb|Australia bonds

]] The Australian Notes Board (ANB) was created in 1920, within the Department of Treasury, which issued notes until 1924, when this function was transferred to the Commonwealth Bank. The ANB was abolished by the Commonwealth Bank Act 1924.

The Treasurer and Country Party Leader Earle Page wanted to end the monetary contraction which particularly hurt his farming constituents, who were as a result receiving reduced export prices. The new board of directors replacing it, which was composed of various areas of the industry, soon appointed Garvan chairman, and thus he continued his policies. In 1925, both the pound sterling and Australian pound returned to the pre-war gold standard. The primary role of the Commonwealth Bank continued to be a savings and trading bank, even though the government attempted to make the bank into a central bank through its actions in 1924.

Legislation was introduced to the Parliament at the height of the Great Depression, in May 1930, by Treasurer E.G. Theodore, to transfer central banking powers from the Commonwealth Bank to a new central bank, but this failed. The Australian pound was devalued in 1931 and it ceased to be tied to the pound sterling. The Reserve Bank departed from the gold standard with the Commonwealth Bank Act 1932, which made the notes no longer exchangeable into gold and allowed the bank not to keep any gold reserves. The monetary policy of the bank from 1931 until the early 1970s had been to maintain a stable exchange rate with the pound sterling.

Through the new Commonwealth Bank Act and the Banking Act 1945, the board was replaced by a six-member council, consisting of bank and treasury officials. It additionally formalised the bank's administrative powers of monetary and banking policy and exchange control and also stated the governor was responsible for managing the bank. Highly debated legislation in 1945 caused high amounts of regulation on private banks, which later-Governor H.C. Coombs was opposed to, along with his opposition to bank nationalisation in 1947. When he became governor in 1949, he allowed private banks to have more control over their liquidity and attempted to introduce market-based monetary policy. He also warned of the possibility of stagflation in 1959.

Legislation in 1951, substituted the council by a 10-member board which included the governor, deputy governor and the secretary to the treasury. The board took over the management of the bank from the governor. The Reserve Bank Act 1959 (23 April 1959) took out the part of the Commonwealth Bank that executed central bank functions and placed it into the Reserve Bank, while the commercial and savings bank functions stayed with the Commonwealth Bank. This finally created a separate central bank for Australia in 1959, which took effect 14 January 1960, many years after several other nations already had one and similar to the early proposal by Treasurer Theodore.

In the mid-1960s, monetary authorities accepted Coombs' conclusions and allowed a flexible interest rate, making it easier for the bank to rely on open market operations. The Exchange Control was abolished after the float of the Australian dollar occurred in 1983. In the five years after the Campbell Committee probe, 1979–1984, the financial system in Australia became deregulated. Another probe was the Wallis Committee in 1996, which took effect in 1998. The effects were the transfer of overseeing the banks from the RBA to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the creation of the Payments System Board (PSB), which would attempt to maintain the safety and performance of the payments system. The bank was given powers within the PSB through additional legislation in 1998.

In August 1996, then bank Governor-designate Ian Macfarlane and the Treasurer issued a Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy which restated the roles of the Reserve Bank and the Government of Australia. It affirmed government endorsement of the Reserve Bank's inflation objective, which was introduced in 1993. A change of government in December 2007 led to another Statement, which was issued by both former Treasurer Wayne Swan and Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens. This amends previous statements by giving the bank independence and encourages transparency and communication.

Securency scandal
Since 2007, the RBA's reputation has been affected by the 'Securency' or Note Printing Australia scandal. These RBA subsidiaries were involved in bribing overseas officials so that Australia might win lucrative polymer note-printing contracts. Australian press coverage, which continued into late 2011, reflects concerns with the apparent laxity and tardiness of corrective actions undertaken by relevant RBA board members and officials. The matters were not reported to the Federal Police in 2007, although they have been since, while in 2011 it was revealed that the RBA had to correct inaccurate evidence previously given to parliamentary committees.

In July 2014, WikiLeaks released a copy of a court order prohibiting publication throughout Australia of information that "reveals, implies, suggests or alleges" corruption involving specifically named past and present high-ranking Malaysian, Indonesian and Vietnamese officials in relation to the Note Printing Australia bribery allegations.

Heritage listings
A number of buildings associated with the Reserve Bank are heritage-listed, including:

 * 20-22 London Circuit, Canberra: Reserve Bank of Australia Building, Canberra
 * 65 Martin Place, Sydney: Reserve Bank of Australia Building, Sydney

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 * 1655 – The court of Northampton County, Virginia, issued a ruling that made John Casor the first person of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be declared a slave for life as a result of a civil suit.
 * 1658 – After a devastating defeat in the Second Northern War, King Frederick III of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the remainder.
 * 1702 – Anne (pictured) became the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, succeeding her brother-in-law William III.
 * 1736 – Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty, was crowned Shah of Iran.
 * 1919 – During the Egyptian Revolution, British authorities arrested rebel leader Saad Zaghloul and exiled him to Malta.
 * 1924 – Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, killed all 171 miners working there.
 * 1978 – BBC Radio 4 began broadcasting Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other formats.
 * 1983 – Cold War: In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".
 * 2017 – The Azure Window, a limestone natural arch in Gozo, Malta, collapsed during a stor
 * Born/died this day: | Pope Celestine II |d|1144| Simon Cameron |b|1799| Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge |d|1819| Frank Avery Hutchins |b|1851| Bramwell Booth |b|1856| Ida Hunt Udall |b|1858| Gladys Bustamante |b|1912| Panditrao Agashe |b|1936|  Juvénal Habyarimana |b|1937| José Raúl Capablanca |d|1942| Petra Kvitová |b|1990|

March 8: International Women's Day; Aurat March in Pakistan

 * 1576 – A Spanish colonial officer wrote a letter to King Philip II containing the first mention of the Maya ruins of Copán in present-day Honduras.
 * 1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence.
 * 1963 – The Ba'ath Party came to power in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council for the Revolutionary Command.
 * 1966 – Nelson's Pillar, a large granite pillar topped by a statue of Lord Nelson in Dublin, Ireland, was severely damaged by a bomb.
 * 1979 – Images taken by Voyager 1 proved the existence of volcanoes on Io (pictured), a moon of Jupiter.

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 * 1009 – The first recorded use of the name of Lithuania appeared in Latin in the Annals of Quedlinburg, written in Saxony-Anhalt, present-day Germany.
 * 1842 – Awaking from a nap under a tree at Rancho San Francisco, Francisco López made the first popularly documented discovery of gold in California.
 * 1842 – Nabucco, an opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi that established his reputation, premiered at La Scala in Milan.
 * 1847 – Mexican–American War: The Siege of Veracruz began, the first large-scale amphibious assault conducted by United States military forces.
 * 1862 – American Civil War: In the world's first battle between two ironclad warships, USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw near the mouth of Hampton Roads in Virginia.
 * 1910 – A seventeen-month-long strike, which at its peak involved 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers across 65 mines, began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S.
 * 1932 – Éamon de Valera (pictured), a dominant political figure in 20th-century Ireland, became President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State.
 * 1933 – U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt submitted the Emergency Banking Act to the United States Congress, the first of his New Deal policies.
 * 1944 – World War II: As part of the Battle of Narva, the Soviet Air Forces heavily bombed Tallinn, Estonia, killing up to 800 people, mostly civilians.
 * 1946 – Thirty-three people were killed in a human crush at Burnden Park, a football stadium in Bolton, England.
 * 1959 – The popular fashion doll Barbie debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York City.
 * 1967 – Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, defected to the United States.
 * 1977 – Twelve gunmen seized three buildings in Washington, D.C., and took 149 hostages in a 39-hour standoff that ended in two deaths.
 * Born/died this day: | Mary Anning  |d|1847| Eddie Foy Sr. |b|1856| Mary Harris Armor |b|1863| Herbert Maryon |b|1874| Jane Joseph |d|1929| Qayyum Chowdhury |b|1932| Yuri Gagarin |b|1934|  Takaaki Kajita |b|1959| The Notorious B.I.G. |d|1997| George Singh |d|1999


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 * 241 BC – The Roman Republic defeated Carthaginian forces at the Battle of the Aegates, off the western coast of Sicily, in the final battle of the First Punic War.
 * 1915 – The Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the first deliberately planned British offensive of the First World War, began.
 * 1916 – The final letter in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence was written, agreeing that Britain would recognise Arab independence in return for the Sharif of Mecca launching a revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
 * 1945 – World War II: The United States Army Air Forces conducted a firebombing raid on Tokyo that killed at least 90,000 people.
 * 1949 – Mildred Gillars, nicknamed Axis Sally, was convicted of treason for working with the Nazis as a broadcaster.
 * 1965 – Thomas Playford, Premier of South Australia, left office after 27 years, the longest term of any democratically elected leader in the history of Australia.
 * 1966 – Military prime minister of South Vietnam Nguyễn Cao Kỳ sacked rival General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, precipitating large-scale civil and military dissension in parts of the nation.
 * 1967 – British progressive-rock band Pink Floyd released their first single, "Arnold Layne".
 * 1975 – Ho Chi Minh Campaign: North Vietnam began its final push for victory over South Vietnam with an attack on Ban Me Thuot.
 * 1990 – Eighteen months after seizing power, Prosper Avril was ousted as the military head of state of Haiti.
 * 2006 – NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (artist's impression pictured) reached and entered orbit around Mars.
 * 2019 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (aircraft pictured) crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa, with the deaths of all 157 people on board.
 * Born/died: | Agnes Blannbekin |d|1315| John Benbow |b|1653| Jacob van Ruisdael |d|1682| William Etty |b|1787| Amy Spain |d|1865|  Charles Frederick Worth |d|1895|  Violet Brown |b|1900| Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy |d|2010 | Anita Brookner |d|2016


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 * 1669 – Mount Etna in Sicily began erupting, eventually producing the largest lava flow in the volcano's history, and damaging Catania and other towns.
 * 1708 – Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, in the most recent veto by a British monarch of a bill that had been passed by Parliament.
 * 1843 – During a period of activity known as the Great Eruption, Eta Carinae (pictured) briefly became the second-brightest star in the night sky.
 * 1845 – Māori forces, led by chiefs Te Ruki Kawiti and Hōne Heke, attacked the British settlement of Kororāreka, New Zealand, beginning the Flagstaff War.
 * 1851 – Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto premiered at La Fenice in Venice.
 * 1978 – After hijacking a bus north of Tel Aviv, Israel, members of the Palestine Liberation Organization faction Fatah engaged in a shootout with police, resulting in the deaths of 38 civilians and most of the perpetrators.
 * 1984 – The anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki was released.
 * 1888 – The Great Blizzard of 1888 struck the northeastern United States, producing snowdrifts in excess of 50 ft and confining some people to their houses for up to a week.
 * 2010 – During the inauguration of Chilean president Sebastián Piñera, earthquakes registering 6.9 and 7.0 struck the O'Higgins Region near the city of Pichilemu, causing widespread damage.
 * 2011 – A massive earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan and triggered a nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
 * 2012 – U.S. Army soldier Robert Bales murdered sixteen civilians and wounded six others in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.

 * Born/died: |  Clemente Tabone |d|1665| Benjamin Tupper |b|1738| Anna Bochkoltz |b|1815| Jane Meade Welch |b|1854| Nicolaas Bloembergen |b|1920| Margaret Oakley Dayhoff |b|1925| Madam Auring |b|1940 | Helen Rollason |b|1956 | Didier Drogba |b|1978|  Cassandra Fairbanks |b|1985| Katsuhiko Nakajima |b|1988


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 * 1622 – Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Jesuits, were canonized by Pope Gregory XV.
 * 1913 – At a ceremony at Kurrajong Hill, Lady Denman, wife of Governor-General Lord Denman, announced that the future capital of Australia would be called Canberra.
 * 1930 – Mahatma Gandhi began the Salt March (pictured), a 24-day nonviolent walk to defy the British salt tax in colonial India.
 * 1933 – U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his fireside chats, addressing the nation directly via radio.
 * 1934 – Supported by the Estonian army, Konstantin Päts staged a coup d'état, beginning the Era of Silence.
 * 1940 – The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed, ending the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.
 * 2014 – A gas leak caused an explosion in East Harlem, New York City, destroying two apartment buildings and causing eight deaths.
 * Born/died this day: | Symeon the New Theologian |d|1022|Stefan Dragutin |d|1316|William Lyon Mackenzie |b|1795| Lilian Faithfull |b|1865| Lise Tréhot |d|1922|Jack Kerouac |b|1922| Wally Schirra |b|1923|  Jessica Hardy |b|1987| Lazare Ponticelli |d|2008


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Cochin Jews

Cochin Jews (also known as Malabar Jews or Kochinim from יְהוּדֵֽי־קוֹצִֽ׳ין) are the oldest group of Jews in India, with roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon. The Cochin Jews settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India, now part of the present-day state of Kerala. As early as the 12th century, mention is made of the Jews in southern India by Benjamin of Tudela.

Following their expulsion from Iberia in 1492 by the Alhambra Decree, a few families of Sephardi Jews eventually made their way to Cochin in the 16th century. They became known as Paradesi Jews (or Foreign Jews). The European Jews maintained some trade connections to Europe, and their language skills were useful. Although the Sephardim spoke Ladino (Spanish or Judeo-Spanish), in India they learned Judeo-Malayalam from the Malabar Jews. The two communities retained their ethnic and cultural distinctions. In the late 19th century, a few Arabic-speaking Jews, known as Baghdadis, also immigrated to southern India from the Near East.

After India gained its independence in 1947 and Israel was established as a nation, most of the Cochin Jews made Aliyah and emigrated from Kerala to Israel in the mid-1950s. In contrast, most of the Paradesi Jews (Sephardi in origin) preferred to migrate to Australia and other Commonwealth countries, similar to the choices made by Anglo-Indians.

Most of their synagogues still exist in Kerala, with a few being sold or adapted for other uses. Among the 8 synagogues that survived till the mid-20th century, only the Paradesi synagogue still has a regular congregation. Today it also attracts tourists as a historic site. The Kadavumbhagam Ernakulam Synagogue was restored in 2018, it houses a sefer torah with occasional services, managed by one of few remaining Cochin Jews of the ancient Malabar Jewish tradition. A few synagogues are in ruins and one was even demolished and a two-storeyed house was built in its place. The synagogue at Chendamangalam (Chennamangalam) was reconstructed in 2006 as Kerala Jews Life Style Museum. The synagogue at Paravur (Parur) has been reconstructed as Kerala Jews History Museum.

First Jews in South India
P. M. Jussay wrote that it was believed that the earliest Jews in India were sailors from King Solomon's time. It has been claimed that following the destruction of the First Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BCE), some Jewish exiles came to India. Only after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE are records found that attest to numerous Jewish settlers arriving at Cranganore, an ancient port near Cochin. Cranganore, now transliterated as Kodungallur, but also known under other names, is a city of legendary importance to this community. Fernandes writes, it is "a substitute Jerusalem in India". Katz and Goldberg note the "symbolic intertwining" of the two cities.

Ophira Gamliel notes however that the first physical evidence of the presence of Jews in South India dates only to the granting of the Kollam copper plates. The copper plates are a trade deed dated to the year 849 C.E bestowed upon the Nestorian merchant magnate Maruvan Sapir Iso and the Saint Thomas Christian community by Ayyan Atikal, the ruler of the Kingdom of Venad. The copper plates include signatures in Kufic, Pahlavi, and Hebrew and serve as evidence of West Asian mercantilism in Kerala.

In 1768, a certain Tobias Boas of Amsterdam had posed eleven questions to Rabbi Yehezkel Rachbi of Cochin. The first of these questions addressed to the said Rabbi concerned the origins of the Jews of Cochin and the duration of their settlement in India. In Rabbi Yehezkel's response (Merzbacher's Library in Munich, MS. 4238), he wrote: "after the destruction of the Second Temple (may it soon be rebuilt and reestablished in our days!), in the year 3828 of anno mundi, i. e., 68 CE, about ten thousand men and women had come to the land of Malabar and were pleased to settle in four places; those places being Cranganore, Dschalor, Madai [and] Plota. Most were in Cranganore, which is also called Mago dera Patinas; it is also called Sengale."

Saint Thomas, an Aramaic-speaking Jew from the Galilee region of Israel and one of the disciples of Jesus, is believed to have come to Southern India in the 1st century, in search of the Jewish community there. It is possible that the Jews who became Christians at that time were absorbed by what became the Nasrani Community in Kerala.

A number of scholars have noted that the Cochin Jews maintain striking cultural similarities to the Knanaya, Jewish-Christian migrants from Persia who settled in Kodungallur, Kerala in the 4th or 8th century. These symmetries are noted in both the wedding traditions and especially the folk songs of the two communities, some songs maintaining the exact same lyrics with few corruptions and variations.

Central to the history of the Cochin Jews was their close relationship with Indian rulers. This was codified on a set of copper plates granting the community special privileges. The date of these plates, known as "Sâsanam", is contentious. The plates are physically inscribed with the date 379 CE, but in 1925, tradition was setting it as 1069 CE. Indian rulers granted the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban the rank of prince over the Jews of Cochin, giving him the rulership and tax revenue of a pocket principality in Anjuvannam near Cranganore, and rights to seventy-two "free houses".

The Hindu king gave permission in perpetuity (or, in the more poetic expression of those days, "as long as the world, sun and moon endure" ) for Jews to live freely, build synagogues, and own property "without conditions attached". A family connection to Rabban, "the king of Shingly" (another name for Cranganore), was long considered a sign of both purity and prestige within the community. Rabban's descendants led this distinct community until a chieftainship dispute broke out between two brothers, one of them named Joseph Azar, in the 16th century.

The Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, speaking of Kollam (Quilon) on the Malabar Coast, writes in his Itinerary:"'[t]hroughout the island, including all the towns thereof, live several thousand Israelites. The inhabitants are all black, and the Jews also. The latter are good and benevolent. They know the law of Moses and the prophets, and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha.'"These people later became known as the Malabari Jews. They built synagogues in Kerala beginning in the 12th and 13th centuries. The oldest known gravestone of a Cochin Jew is written in Hebrew and dates to 1269 CE. It is near the Chendamangalam Synagogue, built in 1614, which is now operated as a museum.

In 1341, a disastrous flood silted up the port of Cranganore, and trade shifted to a smaller port at Cochin (Kochi). Many of the Jews moved quickly, and within four years, they had built their first synagogue at the new community.

The Portuguese Empire established a trading beachhead in 1500, and until 1663 remained the dominant power. They continued to discriminate against the Jews, although doing business with them. A synagogue was built at Parur in 1615, at a site that according to tradition had a synagogue built in 1165. Almost every member of this community emigrated to Israel in 1954.

In 1524, the Muslims, backed by the ruler of Calicut (today called Kozhikode and not to be confused with Calcutta), attacked the wealthy Jews of Cranganore because of their primacy in the lucrative pepper trade. The Jews fled south to the Kingdom of Cochin, seeking the protection of the Cochin Royal Family (Perumpadapu Swaroopam). The Hindu Raja of Cochin gave them asylum. Moreover, he exempted Jews from taxation but bestowed on them all privileges enjoyed by the tax-payers.

The Malabar Jews built additional synagogues at Mala and Ernakulam. In the latter location, Kadavumbagham Synagogue was built about 1200 and restored in the 1790s. Its members believed they were the congregation to receive the historic copper plates. In the 1930s and 1940s, the congregation was as large as 2,000 members, but all emigrated to Israel.

Thekkambagham Synagogue was built in Ernakulum in 1580, and rebuilt in 1939. It is the synagogue in Ernakulam sometimes used for services if former members of the community visit from Israel. In 1998, five families who were members of this congregation still lived in Kerala or in Madras.

A Jewish traveler's visit to Cochin
The following is a description of the Jews of Cochin by 16th-century Jewish traveler Zechariah Dhahiri (recollections of his travels circa 1558). "I travelled from the land of Yemen unto the land of India and Cush, in order to search out a better livelihood. I had chosen the frontier route, where I made a passage across the Great Sea by ship for twenty days... I arrived at the city of Calicut, which upon entering I was sorely grieved at what I had seen, for the city’s inhabitants are all uncircumcised and given over to idolatry. There isn’t to be found in her a single Jew with whom I could have, otherwise, taken respite in my journeys and wanderings. I then turned away from her and went into the city of Cochin, wherein I found what my soul desired, insofar that a community of Spaniards is to be found there who are derived of Jewish lineage, along with other congregations of proselytes. They had been converted many years ago, of the natives of Cochin and Germany. They are adept in their knowledge of Jewish laws and customs, acknowledging the injunctions of the Divine Law (Torah), and making use of its means of punishment. I dwelt there three months, among the holy congregations."

1660 to independence
The Paradesi Jews, also called "White Jews", settled in the Cochin region in the 16th century and later, following the expulsion from Iberia due to forced conversion and religious persecution in Spain and then Portugal. Some fled north to Holland but the majority fled east to the Ottoman Empire. Both "Black Jews" and the "White Jews" (the Spanish Jews) of Malabar claimed that they are the true inheritors of the old Jewish culture. '''

Some went beyond that territory, including a few families who followed the Arab spice routes to southern India. Speaking Ladino language and having Sephardic customs, they found the Malabari Jewish community as established in Cochin to be quite different. According to the historian Mandelbaum, there were resulting tensions between the two ethnic communities. The European Jews had some trade links to Europe and useful languages to conduct international trade

When the Portuguese occupied the Kingdom of Cochin, they allegedly discriminated against its Jews. Nevertheless, to some extent they shared language and culture, so ever more Jews came to live under Portuguese rule (actually under the Spanish crown, again, between 1580 and 1640). The Protestant Dutch killed the raja of Cochin, allied of the Portuguese, plus sixteen hundred Indians in 1662, during their siege of Cochin. The Jews, having supported the Dutch military attempt, suffered the murderous retaliation of both the Portuguese and Malabar populations. A year later, the second Dutch siege was successful and, after slaughtering the Portuguese, they demolished most Catholic churches or turned them into Protestant churches (not sparing the one where Vasco da Gama had been buried). They were more tolerant of Jews, having granted asylum claims in the Netherlands. (See the Goa Inquisition for the situation of Jews in nearby Goa.)

The Paradesi Jews built their own house of worship, the Paradesi Synagogue. The latter group was very small by comparison to the Malabaris. Both groups practiced endogamous marriage, maintaining their distinctions. Both communities claimed special privileges and the greater status over each other. In the early 20th century, Abraham Barak Salem (1882–1967), a young lawyer who became known as a "Jewish Gandhi", worked to end the discrimination against meshuchrarim Jews. Inspired by Indian nationalism and Zionism, he also tried to reconcile the divisions among the Cochin Jews. He became both an Indian nationalist and Zionist. His family were descended from meshuchrarim. The Hebrew word denoted a manumitted slave, and was at times used in a derogatory way. Salem fought against the discrimination by boycotting the Paradesi Synagogue for a time. He also used satyagraha to combat the social discrimination. According to Mandelbaum, by the mid-1930s many of the old taboos had fallen with a changing society.

Relations between the Cochin Jews and Other Jews
Although India is noted for having four distinct Jewish communities, viz Cochin, Bene Israel (of Bombay and its environs), Calcutta, and New Delhi, communications between the Jews of Cochin and the Bene Israel community were greatest in the mid-19th century. According to native Bene Israel historian Haeem Samuel Kehimkar (1830-1909), several prominent members from the "White Jews" of Cochin had moved to Bombay in 1825 from Cochin, of whom are specifically named Michael and Abraham Sargon, David Baruch Rahabi, Hacham Samuel, and Judah David Ashkenazi. These exerted themselves not only in changing the minds of the Bene-Israel and of their children generally, but also particularly in turning the minds of these few of the Bene-Israel, who through heathen influence had gone astray from the path of the religion of their forefathers, to the study of their own religion, and to the contemplation of God. David Rahabi effected a religious revival at Revandanda, followed by his successor, Hacham Samuel.

Although David Rahabi was convinced that the Bene Israel were the descendants of the Jews, he still wanted to examine them further. He therefore gave their women clean and unclean fish to be cooked together, but they singled out the clean from the unclean ones, saying that they never used fish that had neither fins nor scales. Being thus satisfied, he began to teach them the tenets of the Jewish religion. He taught Hebrew reading, without translation, to three Bene Israel young men from the families of Jhiratker, Shapurker and Rajpurker. David Rahabi is said to have been killed as a martyr in India, two or three years after coming upon the Bene Israel, by a local chief.

Another influential man from Cochin, who is alleged to have been of Yemenite Jewish origin, was Hacham Shellomo Salem Shurrabi who served as a Hazan (Reader) in the then newly formed synagogue of the Bene-Israel in Bombay for the trifling sum of 100 rupees per annum, although he worked also as a book-binder. While engaged in his avocation, he was at all times ready to explain any scriptural difficulty that might happen to be brought to him by any Bene Israel. He was a Reader, Preacher, Expounder of the Law, Mohel and Shochet. He served the community for about 18 years, and died on 17 April 1856.

Since 1947
India became independent from British rule in 1947 and Israel established itself as a nation in 1948. With the heightened emphasis on the Partition of India into a secular republic of India and a semi-theocratic Pakistan, most of the Cochin Jews emigrated from India. Generally they went to Israel (made aliyah). Many of the migrants joined the moshavim (agricultural settlements) of Nevatim, Shahar, Yuval, and Mesilat Zion. Others settled in the neighbourhood of Katamon in Jerusalem, and in Beersheba, Ramla, Dimona, and Yeruham, where many Bene Israel had settled. The migrated Cochin Jews still continue to speak Malayalam. Since the late 20th century, former Cochin Jews have also immigrated to the United States. It is recorded that currently only 26 Jews live in Kerala, who is located in different parts of Kerala such as Cochin, Kottayam and Thiruvalla.

In Cochin, the Paradesi Synagogue is still active as a place of worship, but the Jewish community is very small. The building also attracts visitors as a historic tourist site.

Genetic analysis
Genetic testing into the origins of the Cochin Jewish and other Indian Jewish communities noted that until the present day the Indian Jews maintained in the range of 3%-20% Middle Eastern ancestry, confirming the traditional narrative of migration from the Middle East to India. The tests noted however that the communities had considerable Indian admixture, exhibiting the fact that the Indian Jewish people "inherited their ancestry from Middle Eastern and Indian populations".

Traditions and way of life
The 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela wrote about the Malabari coast of Kerala: "They know the law of Moses and the prophets, and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha." European Jews sent texts to the community of Cochin Jews to teach them about normative Judaism.

Maimonides (1135–1204), the preeminent Jewish philosopher of his day, wrote, "'Only lately, some well-to-do men came forward and purchased three copies of my code [the Mishneh Torah], which they distributed through messengers... Thus, the horizon of these Jews was widened, and the religious life in all communities as far as India revived.'"

In a 1535 letter sent from Safed to Italy, David del Rossi wrote that a Jewish merchant from Tripoli had told him the India town of Shingly (Cranganore) had a large Jewish population who dabbled in yearly pepper trade with the Portuguese. As far as their religious life, he wrote that they "only recognize the Code of Maimonides, and possessed no other authority or traditional law". According to the contemporary historian Nathan Katz, Rabbi Nissim of Gerona (the Ran) visited the Cochini Jews. They preserve in their song books the poem he wrote about them. In the Kadavumbhagam synagogue, a Hebrew school was available for both "children's education and adult study of Torah and Mishnah".

The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906) said, "'Though they neither eat nor drink together, nor intermarry, the Black and the White Jews of Cochin have almost the same social and religious customs. They hold the same doctrines, use the same ritual (Sephardic), observe the same feasts and fasts, dress alike, and have adopted the same language Malayalam. ... The two classes are equally strict in religious observances',"According to Martine Chemana, the Jews of Cochin "coalesced around the religious fundamentals: devotion and strict obedience to Biblical Judaism, and to the Jewish customs and traditions ... Hebrew, taught through the Torah texts by rabbis and teachers who came especially from Yemen."

Piyyutim
The Jews of Cochin had a long tradition of singing devotional hymns (piyyutim) and songs on festive occasions such as Purim. Women used to sing Jews songs in Judeo-Malayalam. They did not adhere to the Talmudic prohibition against public singing by women (kol isha).

Judeo-Malayalam
Judeo-Malayalam (യെഹൂദ്യമലയാളം; מלאיאלאם יהודית) is the traditional language of the Kochinim, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India. In their antiquity, Malabar Jews may have used Judeo-Persian as evident from the Kollam Copper plates.

Judeo-Malayalam is the only known Dravidian Jewish language. Since it does not differ substantially in grammar or syntax from other colloquial Malayalam dialects, it is not considered by many linguists to be a language in its own right, but a dialect, or simply a language variation. Judeo-Malayalam shares with other Jewish languages like Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish, common traits and features. For example, verbatim translations from Hebrew to Malayalam, archaic features of Old Malayalam, Hebrew components agglutinated to Dravidian verb and noun formations and special idiomatic usages based on its Hebrew loanwords. Due to the lack of long-term scholarship on this language variation, there is no separate designation for the language (if it can be so considered), for it to have its own language code (see also SIL and ISO 639).

Unlike many Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam is not written using the Hebrew alphabet. It does, however, like most Jewish languages, contain many Hebrew loanwords, which are regularly transliterated, as much as possible, using the Malayalam script. Like many other Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam also contains a number of lexical, phonological and syntactic archaisms, in this case, from the days before Malayalam became fully distinguished from Tamil.

Cochin Jewish synagogues
A synagogue is called a beit knesset (Mal: ബേത് ക്‌നേസേത് | Heb: בית כנסת) in Judeo-Malayalam or "Jootha Palli" (Mal: ജൂതപള്ളി) with joothan meaning Jew in Malayalam and -palli a suffix added to prayer houses of the Abrahamic faiths. Throughout their history numerous synagogues have been constructed and lost to time. in their first settlement at Shingly (Cranganore), there were 18 synagogues as per their oral traditions. Today no archaeological evidence has been yet uncovered to validate these traditions. However the custom of naming their synagogues as "Thekkumbhagam" (lit: south side) and "Kadavumbhagam" (lit: River side) is cited as a cultural memory of two such synagogues that once stood in Muziris. Several oral songs sung by Cochini women also contain references to these synagogues. Apart from these, numerous Syrian Christian churches of the St. Thomas Christian community in Kerala claim to have been built on old synagogues, though archaeological evidence is scarce.

Synagogues believed to have existed or speculated on basis of oral traditions include:

 * Madayi Synagogue, Madayi
 * Cranganore Synagogue, Shingly
 * Thekkumbhagam synagogue, Shingly
 * Kadavumbhagam Synagogue, Shingly

Synagogues in recorded history whose location and/or remains have been lost in time:

 * Palayoor Synagogue, Palur (known only from a rimon (ornament) bearing its name)
 * Kokkamangalam Synagogue, Kokkamangalam
 * Kochangadi Synagogue,(1344 A.D - 1789 A.D) Kochangadi (oldest synagogue in recorded history)
 * Saudi Synagogue, (1514 A.D-1556 A.D), Saude, a locality south of Fort Kochi.
 * Tir-Tur Synagogue, (1745 A.D-1768 A.D) Thiruthur, Kochi
 * Muttam Synagogue (1800A.D), Muttam, Alappuzha
 * Fort Kochi Synagogue, (1848 A.D), Fort Kochi (congregation of meschuhrarim)
 * Seremban Synagogue, Seremban, Malaysia

Extant synagogues in Kerala:

 * Kadavumbhagam Mattancherry Synagogue, (1130 A.D or 1539 A.D), Mattanchery
 * Thekkumbhagam Mattancherry Synagogue, (1647 A.D), Mattanchery (demolished in 1960's)
 * Chendamangalam Synagogue, (1420 or 1614 A.D), Chendamangalam
 * Mala Synagogue, (1400 A.D or 1597 A.D), Mala
 * Paravur Synagogue, (1164 A.D or 1616 A.D), Parur
 * Kadavumbhagam Ernakulam Synagogue, (1200 A.D), Ernakulam
 * Thekkumbhagam Ernakulam Synagogue, (1200 A.D or 1580 A.D), Ernakulam
 * Paradesi Synagogue, (1568 A.D), Mattancherry (oldest active synagogue)

Cochini synagogues in Israel:

 * Moshav Nevatim Synagogue, Nevatim (interiors taken from Thekkumbhagam Ernakulam Synagogue)
 * Mesilat Zion Synagogue, Mesilat Zion
 * Nehemiah Motta Synagogue, Giv'at Ko'ah

Notable Cochin Jews

 * Joseph Rabban, the first leader of the Jewish community of Kodungallur, was given copper plates of special grants from the Chera ruler Bhaskara Ravivarman II from Kerala
 * Aaron Azar, among the last Jewish princes of Kodungallur
 * Joseph Azar, the last Jewish prince of Kodungallur
 * Sarah bat Israel, whose tombstone (d. 1249 A.D) is the oldest found in India
 * Eliyah ben Moses Adeni, a 17th century Hebrew poet from Cochin.
 * Ezekiel Rahabi (1694–1771), chief Jewish merchant of the Dutch East India Company in Cochin
 * Nehemiah ben Abraham (d. 1615 A.D), (Nehemiah Mutha), patron saint of Malabar Jews
 * Abraham Barak Salem (1882–1967), Cochin Jewish Indian nationalist leader
 * Benjamin Meyuhasheem, the last Cochin Jew in Seremban, Malaysia
 * Ruby Daniel (1912-2002), Indian-Israeli author and subject of Ruby of Cochin
 * Meydad Eliyahu, Israeli artist
 * Dr. Eliyahu Bezalel, renowned horticulturist
 * Elias "Babu" Josephai, caretaker of Kadavumbagam Synagogue
 * Sarah Jacob Cohen (1922-2019), the oldest member of the Paradesi community

title: Cochin Jews


text:
Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 13

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 * 1697 – Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya kingdom, fell to Spanish conquistadors, the final step in the Spanish conquest of Guatemala.
 * 1781 – William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus from the garden of his house in Bath, England, initially considering it to be a comet.
 * 1811 – Napoleonic Wars: A British frigate squadron defeated a much larger squadron of French and Italian frigates and smaller vessels in the Battle of Lissa in the Adriatic Sea.
 * 1845 – German composer Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto was premiered in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as the soloist.
 * 1920 – The Kapp Putsch (participants pictured), an attempted coup aiming to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919, briefly ousted the government of the Weimar Republic.
 * 1943 – The Holocaust: Nazi troops began the final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto in German-occupied Poland, sending about 2,000 Jews to the Płaszów labor camp (deportation pictured), with the remaining 5,000 either killed or sent to Auschwitz.
 * 1985 – One of England's worst incidents of football hooliganism occurred when supporters of Luton Town and Millwall rioted before a match at Kenilworth Road stadium.
 * 1986 – Claiming the right of innocent passage, the American warships Yorktown and Caron entered Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea.
 * 1988 – The 53.85 km (33.46 mi) Seikan Tunnel opened between the cities of Hakodate and Aomori, Japan.
 * 2004 – The Filipino singer Rachelle Ann Go won the reality talent show Search for a Star, performing a cover of Mariah Carey's "Through the Rain" in the grand final.
 * 2013 – Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Pope Francis, making him the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.
 * Born/died this day: | Daniel Lambert |b|1770| Mustafa Reşid Pasha |b|1800|John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent |d|1823| Hans Gude |b|1825| Percival Lowell |b|1855| Benjamin Harrison |d|1901|Sālote Tupou III |b|1900|  Jane Grigson |b|1928| Helen Renton |b|1931| Anne Acheson |d|1962| Iris Calderhead |d|1966 Encarnacion Alzona |d|2001


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Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules (Ercole Farnese) is an ancient statue of Hercules, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by Glykon, who is otherwise unknown; he was an Athenian but he may have worked in Rome. Like many other Ancient Roman sculptures it is a copy or version of a much older Greek original that was well known, in this case a bronze by Lysippos (or one of his circle) that would have been made in the fourth century BC. This original survived for over 1500 years until it was melted down by Crusaders in 1205 during the Sack of Constantinople. The enlarged copy was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (dedicated in 216 AD), where the statue was recovered in 1546, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The heroically-scaled Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination. The Farnese Hercules is a massive marble statue, following a lost original that was cast in bronze through a method called lost wax casting. It depicts a muscular, yet weary, Hercules leaning on his club, which has the skin of the Nemean lion draped over it. In myths about Heracles, killing the lion was his first task. He has just performed one of the last of The Twelve Labours, which is suggested by the apples of the Hesperides he holds behind his back.

The type was well known in antiquity, and among many other versions a Hellenistic or Roman bronze reduction, found at Foligno is in the Musée du Louvre. A small Roman marble copy can be seen over the Museum of the Ancient Agora, Athens (see illustration).

Description
Hercules is depicted in a moment of rest, but full of strength. Leaning on his gnarled club, which is draped in the skin of the Nemean lion, he holds the golden apples stolen from the Hesperides, hiding them behind his back, in his right hand.

History
The rediscovered statue quickly made its way into the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III. Alessandro Farnese was well placed to form one of the greatest collections of classical sculpture that had been assembled since antiquity. It stood for generations in its own room at Palazzo Farnese, Rome, where the statue was surrounded by frescoed depictions of the hero's mythical feats that were created by Annibale Carracci and his studio, executed in the 1590s. The Farnese statue was moved to Naples in 1787 with most of the Farnese Collection and is now displayed in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale there.

The sculpture has been reassembled and restored by degrees. According to a letter of Guglielmo della Porta, the head had been recovered separately, from a well in Trastevere, and was bought for Farnese through the agency of della Porta, whose legs made to complete the figure were so well-regarded that when the original legs were recovered from ongoing excavations in the Baths of Caracalla, della Porta's were retained, on Michelangelo's advice, in part to demonstrate that modern sculptors could bear direct comparison with the ancients. The original legs, from the Borghese collection, were not reunited with the sculpture until 1787. Goethe, in his Italian Journey, recounts his differing impressions upon seeing the Hercules with each set of legs, however, marvelling at the clear superiority of the original ones.

Hercules is caught in a rare moment of repose. Leaning on his knobby club which is draped with the pelt of the Nemean lion, he holds the apples of the Hesperides, but conceals them behind his back cradled in his right hand. Many engravings and woodcuts spread the fame of the Farnese's Hercules. By 1562 the find was already included in the set of engravings for Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae ("Mirror of Rome's Magnificence") and connoisseurs, artists, and tourists gaped at the original, which stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese, protected under the arcade. In 1590–91, during his trip to Rome, Hendrik Goltzius sketched the statue in the palazzo courtyard. Later (in 1591) Goltzius recorded the less-common rear view, in a bravura engraving (illustration, right), which emphasizes the already exaggerated muscular form with swelling and tapering lines that flow over the contours. The young Rubens made quick sketches of the planes and massing of the statue of Hercules. Before photography, prints were the only way to put the image into many hands.

The sculpture was admired from the start, reservations about its exaggerated musculature only surfacing in the later eighteenth century. Napoleon remarked to Antonio Canova that its omission from the museum he accumulated in Paris was the most important gap in the collection. More than once, the sculpture was crated and made ready for shipment to Paris before the Napoleonic regime fled Naples.

List of other ancient copies
The prominently sited statue was well liked by the Ancient Romans, and copies have been found in Roman palaces and gymnasiums: another, coarser copy stood in the courtyard of Palazzo Farnese; one with the feigned (but probably ancient) inscription "Lykippos" has stood in the court of Palazzo Pitti, Florence, since the sixteenth century. Ancient copies of the statue include:
 * Hercules, 2nd century AD, Roman copy, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
 * The "Weary Herakles" is a heavily broken Roman marble statue that was excavated in 1980 in Perge, Turkey. The looted upper torso was sold to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1981. The upper torso was returned to Turkey in 2011 and is now displayed with the rest of the piece at the Antalya Museum.
 * Colossal statue of Hercules, uncovered at the baths in Hippo Regius (Annaba), Algeria.
 * Resting Herakles, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.
 * Heracles of Antikythera; badly damaged late Hellenistic Parian marble headless statue, recovered from the Antikythera Shipwreck in 1901 Athens, National Archaeological Museum.
 * Headless statue at Izmit Archaeology and Ethnography Museum.
 * Broken headless torso found in the bathhouse Roman & Byzantine village in the Jezreel valley.
 * Broken headless torso from the Amphiareion of Oropos, Athens, National Archaeological Museum.
 * Broken headless torso of 2nd or 3rd century AD, in Museum of Saint-Raymond in Toulouse.
 * Statuette of 2nd century AD, in Detroit Institute of Arts.
 * Bronze statuette with silver-inlaid eyes of 40–70 AD, Getty Villa.

Later copies
After rediscovery of the Farnese Hercules, copies appeared in sixteenth and eighteenth-century gardens throughout Europe. During construction of the Alameda de Hercules (1574) in Seville, the oldest public garden preserved in Europe, at its entrance were installed two columns from a Roman temple, elements of a building still preserved in the Mármoles, an unquestionable sign of admiration for the Roman archaeological sites. On them were placed two sculptures by Diego de Pesquera, in 1574, recognizing Hercules as founder of the city, and Julius Caesar, restorer of Híspalis. The first was a copy of the Farnese Hercules, nearly the monumental size of the original. At Wilhelmshöhe, near Kassel, a colossal version 8.5 m high produced by Johann Jacob Anthoni, 1713–1717, has become a symbol for the city.

André Le Nôtre placed a full-size gilded version against the skyline at the far end of the main vista at Vaux-le-Vicomte. At the Palace of Versailles is a copy by Jean Cornu (1684–86). In Scotland a rare copy in lead, from the first half of the eighteenth century, is sited incongruously in the central Highlands, overlooking the recently restored Hercules Garden in the grounds of Blair Castle. An early-eighteenth century lead copy can also be found in England at The Quarry (park) in Shrewsbury. Wealthy collectors were able to afford any one of numerous bronze replicas, created in various sizes for table-top display.

The statue is shown in the 1954 film Journey to Italy along with the Farnese Bull.

A replica, titled Herakles in Ithaca, was erected in 1989 on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The statue was a gift from its sculptor, Jason Seley, a professor of fine arts. Seley created the sculpture in 1981 out of chrome automobile bumpers.

The statue has inspired artists such as Jeff Koons and Matthew Darbyshire to create their own versions in plaster and polystyrene, respectively. Their use of white materials to re-create the sculpture has been interpreted by classicist Aimee Hinds as a perpetuation of colourism in classical art.

A copy of the sculpture is among the ten statues adorning the front yard of the Schlossgarten in Karlsruhe, Germany.

title: Farnese Hercules


text:
Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 14

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 * 1489 – Catherine Cornaro (pictured), Queen of Cyprus, was forced to abdicate and sell the administration of the island to the Republic of Venice.
 * 1593 – Japanese invasions of Korea: A force of 3,000 Korean soldiers successfully defended Haengju Fortress against 30,000 Japanese invaders.
 * 1757 – Royal Navy Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad for failing to "do his utmost" during the Battle of Minorca at the start of the Seven Years' War.
 * 1885 – The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan's most frequently performed Savoy opera, debuted at the Savoy Theatre in London.
 * 1945 – The Royal Air Force first used the Grand Slam, a 22,000 lb earthquake bomb, on a strategic railway viaduct in Bielefeld, Germany.
 * 1972 – Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, known for his translation of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago after it had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union, died in an explosion.
 * 1973 – Vietnam War: After having been captured by North Vietnamese forces five and a half years earlier, U.S. Navy pilot John McCain was released with 108 other prisoners of war.
 * 1984 – Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by Ulster Freedom Fighters in central Belfast, Northern Ireland.

 * Born/died this day: | Matilda of Ringelheim |d|968| John Sigismund Zápolya |d|1571| George Wade |d|1748|Charles Ammi Cutter |b|1837| Ferdinand Hodler |b|1853| Thomas R. Marshall |b|1854| Karl Marx |d|1883|Phil Vincent |b|1908| S. Truett Cathy |b|1921| Diane Arbus |b|1923| Frank Borman |b|1928| Lies Noor |d|1961| Fannie Lou Hamer |d|1977| Jessica Gallagher |b|1986| Tony Benn |d|2014| Marielle Franco|d|2018|


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 15

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 * 856 – Byzantine emperor Michael III (pictured) overthrew the regency of his mother Theodora to assume power for himself.
 * 1147 – Reconquista: Portuguese troops under King Afonso I captured the city of Santarém from the Almoravids.
 * 1311 – In the Battle of Halmyros, the Catalan Company defeated the forces of Walter V, Count of Brienne, taking control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in present-day Greece.
 * 1783 – George Washington delivered a speech to Continental Army officers in Newburgh, New York, asking them to support the supremacy of the Congress of the Confederation, defusing a potential coup.
 * 1875 – John McCloskey, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, was created the first cardinal from the United States.
 * 1910 – Prospectors drilled into a pressurized deposit within the Midway-Sunset Oil Field in California, resulting in the largest accidental oil spill in history, which eventually released 9 million barrels (9 e6oilbbl) of crude oil over 18 months.
 * 1921 – Talaat Pasha, the main perpetrator of the Armenian genocide, was assassinated by Soghomon Tehlirian.
 * 1927 – In rowing, Oxford defeated Cambridge in the inaugural edition of the Women's Boat Race.
 * 1943 – World War II: German forces recaptured Kharkov after four days of house-to-house fighting against Soviet troops, ending the month-long Third Battle of Kharkov.
 * 1956 – The musical My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, debuted at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City.
 * 1960 – Students from Atlanta University Center, inspired by similar actions in Greensboro, North Carolina, began occupying lunch counters in Atlanta, Georgia.
 * 1974 – Transvestism and Transsexuality in Modern Society, the UK's first trans-rights conference, opened with an evening reception in Leeds.
 * 1990 – Iraqi authorities hanged Iranian freelance reporter Farzad Bazoft on charges of spying for Israel.
 * Born/died: | Ernulf |d|1124| Eusebio Kino |d|1711| Daniele Comboni |b|1831|  Johan Vaaler |b|1866| Arthur Compton |d|1962| Robin Hunicke |b|1973| Lauren Ebsary |b|1983| Paul Pogba |b|1993


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 17

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 * 455 – After arranging for the assassination of Valentinian III, Petronius Maximus secured the throne of the Western Roman Empire, only to be killed 11 weeks later during the sack of Rome.
 * 1337 – Edward the Black Prince (pictured) was created Duke of Cornwall, the first English dukedom.
 * 1452 – Reconquista: Combined Castilian and Murcian forces defeated the Emirate of Granada at the Battle of Los Alporchones around the city of Lorca.
 * 1677 – Franco-Dutch War: France captured the town of Valenciennes in the Spanish Netherlands.
 * 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The 11‑month Siege of Boston ended with the evacuation of the city's British garrison.
 * 1891 – The transatlantic steamship Utopia accidentally collided with the battleship HMS Anson (1886) in the Bay of Gibraltar, sinking in less than twenty minutes and killing 562.
 * 1917 – World War I: Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster led a force to rescue 92 prisoners of war from Bir Hakeim, killing the Senussi guards and their families.
 * 1942 – The Holocaust: The first mass killings of Jews began at Belzec extermination camp in occupied Poland, the first of the Operation Reinhard camps to begin operation.
 * 1950 – Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the synthesis of californium, a radioactive transuranium element.
 * 1955 – Ice hockey fans in Montreal rioted to protest the suspension of Montreal Canadiens star Maurice Richard for hitting an official.
 * 1963 – An eruption of Mount Agung on Bali, Indonesia, killed at least 1,100 people.

 * 1968 – Six thousand sheep were killed on ranches near Dugway Proving Ground in Utah as a result of the U.S. Army spraying a nerve agent.
 * 1973 – Slava Veder took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy, which came to symbolize the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
 * 1988 – Eritrean War of Independence: Eritrean People's Liberation Front troops encircled Ethiopian forces in the Battle of Afabet, gaining a decisive victory three days later.
 * 1991 – In a referendum, nearly 70 percent of voters in nine Soviet republics agreed that the Soviet Union should be preserved.
 * 2000 – Hundreds of followers of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a Ugandan sect, died in a mass murder committed by its leaders.
 * 2011 – First Libyan Civil War: The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, authorizing military intervention in Libya to protect civilians.
 * Born/died this day: | Gertrude of Nivelles |d|659| François Girardon |b|1628|William F. Raynolds |b|1820| Emily Sartain |b|1841| Rosina Heikel |b|1842|Edith New |b|1877| Walter Rudolf Hess |b|1881| Eduard Fraenkel |b|1888|  Toni Preckwinkle |b|1947| William Gibson |b|1948|  Chuck Muncie |b|1953 | Stormy Daniels |b|1979|Margaret Whitlam |d|2012

March 17: Saint Patrick's Day (Christianity); Anniversary of the Unification of Italy (1861)

 * 1864 – Second Schleswig War: In an attempt to end a Danish blockade, Eduard von Jachmann led a Prussian squadron in an attack against a Danish fleet led by Edvard van Dockum.
 * 1902 – The Dorchester Heights Monument (pictured), memorializing the siege of Boston during the American Revolutionary War, was dedicated.
 * 1957 – A plane crash on the slopes of Mount Manunggal killed Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others.
 * 1979 – The Penmanshiel Tunnel in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland collapsed during refurbishing construction, killing two workers, and leading to the abandonment of the tunnel.
 * 2004 – Unrest in Kosovo broke out, resulting in the deaths of 28, the wounding of more than 600 others, and the destruction of several Serb Orthodox churches and shrines.


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 18

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 * 1241 – First Mongol invasion of Poland: Mongol forces defeated the Polish armies of Sandomierz and Kraków at the Battle of Chmielnik.
 * 1892 – Canadian governor general Lord Stanley of Preston pledged to donate an award to Canada's top-ranked amateur ice hockey club, now known as the Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America.
 * 1901 – The construction of the House with Chimaeras (pictured) commenced in Kyiv.
 * 1915 – First World War: In one of the largest naval battles of the Gallipoli campaign, Ottoman forces sank three Allied battleships and severely damaged three others.
 * 1921 – Russian Civil War: Bolshevik forces suppressed a rebellion of sailors and civilians in Kronstadt.
 * 1965 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov ventured outside the Soviet spacecraft Voskhod 2, becoming the first person to walk in space.
 * 1969 – Vietnam War: The United States began secretly bombing the Sihanouk Trail in Cambodia, used by communist forces to infiltrate South Vietnam.
 * 1970 – U.S. postal workers began an eight-day strike after Congress raised their wages by only 4 percent despite increasing its own pay by 41 percent.
 * 1985 – The first episode of the soap opera Neighbours was broadcast on the Seven Network, later becoming the longest-running drama in Australian television history.
 * 1990 – Unidentified thieves stole thirteen works of art collectively valued at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (pictured) in Boston, Massachusetts.
 * 1996 – The deadliest fire in Philippine history broke out at a nightclub in Quezon City, causing 162 deaths.
 * 2005 – As per a court order, the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, an American woman who suffered brain damage, was removed at the request of her husband, fueling a worldwide debate on euthanasia.
 * Born/died this day: | Matthew III Csák |d|1321| Charlotte Elliott |b|1789| John Plankinton |b|1820| Randal Cremer |b|1828|  Edgar Cayce |b|1877|  Marcellin Berthelot |d|1907| Unita Blackwell |b|1933 |F. W. de Klerk |b|1936 |Edith Mayo |b|1940  Hiroh Kikai |b|1945| Vanessa Williams |b|1963| Minnie Pwerle |d|2006

March 18: Feast day of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (Christianity)

 * 363 – A fire began in Rome that resulted in the destruction of the Temple of Apollo Palatinus.
 * 1277 – Charles I of Anjou acquired a claim on the Kingdom of Jerusalem in exchange for a significant sum of money.
 * 1906 – Romanian inventor Traian Vuia became the first person to fly a heavier-than-air monoplane (pictured) with an unassisted takeoff.
 * 1959 – Tibetan uprising: After the 14th Dalai Lama sought refuge at Sera Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, Chinese forces bombarded the monastery, inflicting severe destruction and killing hundreds of Buddhist monks.
 * 1977 – The punk group the Clash released their first single, "White Riot", described as their "most controversial song" due to its lyrics about class economics and race.
 * 2019 – Syrian civil war: The U.S. Air Force carried out an airstrike in al-Baghuz Fawqani, killing 64 civilians.


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 19

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 * 1277 – The Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Venice signed a treaty that renegotiated and extended by two years a previous treaty between them.
 * 1563 – The Edict of Amboise was signed, ending the first war in the French Wars of Religion and inaugurating a period of official peace that lasted until 1567.
 * 1808 – King Charles IV of Spain was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Ferdinand VII as a result of the Tumult of Aranjuez.
 * 1865 – American Civil War: The last battle of the Carolinas Campaign, the Battle of Bentonville, began, which contributed to the ultimate Union victory in the war.
 * 1911 – Established by Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker, and others, International Women's Day was first observed.
 * 1928 – The highly influential American radio comedy show Amos 'n' Andy made its debut.
 * 1962 – Influential American musician Bob Dylan released his eponymous debut album, mainly comprising traditional folk, blues and gospel songs.
 * 1979 – The American cable television network C-SPAN, covering government proceedings and public-affairs programming, was launched.
 * 1987 – American televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as the host of The PTL Club in the midst of a sex scandal.
 * 2008 – The gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B (artist's impression pictured), the farthest object from Earth that was observable by the naked eye, was observed.
 * 2016 – Flydubai Flight 981 crashed during an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don Airport, Russia, resulting in the deaths of all 62 passengers and crew on board.
 * Born/died: | Jan Zamoyski |b|1542| Elizabeth Seymour, Lady Cromwell |d|1568| Francis B. Spinola |b|1821|Thomas David Morrison |d|1856| Senda Berenson Abbott |b|1868| Anna Held |b|1872| Ernestine Rose |b|1880| Albert Speer |b|1905|  Peter Thorburn |b|1939| Bruce Willis |b|1955| Bun Cook |d|1988|  Kym Bonython |d|2011


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 20

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 * 1760 – A fire of unknown cause broke out in Boston, Massachusetts, destroying 349 buildings.
 * 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the United States, was published.
 * 1923 – The Arts Club of Chicago hosted the opening of Pablo Picasso's first solo United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso.
 * 1939 – Germany issued an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the Klaipėda Region under threat of invasion.
 * 1942 – World War II: After being forced to flee the Philippines for Australia, US Army general Douglas MacArthur (pictured) announced: "I came through and I shall return."
 * 1993 – The Troubles: Two children were killed by the second of two bomb attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Warrington, England.
 * Born/died: | Wareru |b|1253| Maurice Csák |d|1336| Muhammad bin Tughluq |d|1351| Alexios III of Trebizond |d|1390| Isaac Newton |d|1726/27| Adrienne Lecouvreur |d|1730|Benjamin Truman |d|1780| James Tod |b|1782|  Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck |b|1870| Amanda Clement |b|1888| Abraham Beame |b|1906|  Elisabeth Geleerd  |b|1909| Mihajlo Petrović |d|1913|  S. Arasaratnam |b|1930 Dorothy Campbell |d|1945| Amir Hamzah |d|1946|  Zillur Rahman  |d|2013| Eva Burrows |d|2015


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 21

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 * 1556 – Former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, one of the founders of Anglicanism, was burnt at the stake for heresy in Oxford, England.
 * 1788 – A large fire destroyed 856 of the 1,100 structures in New Orleans.
 * 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: During their march on Paris, Coalition forces defeated Napoleon's French army on the final day of the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube.
 * 1861 – Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, gave an extemporaneous speech laying out the Confederacy's rationale for seceding from the United States.
 * 1918 – First World War: The German Army opened the Spring Offensive with Operation Michael, attempting to break through the Allied lines and to seize ports on the English Channel.
 * 1937 – A police squad, acting under orders from Governor of Puerto Rico Blanton Winship, opened fire on demonstrators protesting the arrest of Puerto Rican Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos, killing 21 people and injuring 235 others.
 * 1946 – The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington, making him the first African-American player in the National Football League since 1933.
 * 1952 – The Moondog Coronation Ball (poster pictured), generally considered to be the first major rock and roll concert, took place at the Cleveland Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
 * 1960 – Police in Sharpeville, South Africa, opened fire on a group of unarmed black demonstrators who were protesting pass laws, killing 69 people and wounding 180 others.
 * 1963 – Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California—one of the world's most notorious and best known prisons—was closed.
 * Born/died this day: | Absalon |d|1201| John Law |d|1729| William Y. Slack |d|1862| Evelina Haverfield |d|1920| Nobuo Uematsu |b|1959|Emily Infeld |b|1990| Wolfgang Wagner |d|2010| Marina Salye |d|2012

March 21: Fast of Esther (Judaism, 2024); Oltenia Day in Romania

 * 1874 – Queen's Park defeated Clydesdale 2–0 in the final of the inaugural Scottish Cup (trophy pictured).
 * 1913 – More than 360 were killed and 20,000 homes were destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.
 * 1968 – War of Attrition: The Battle of Karameh took place between the Israel Defense Forces and allied troops of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Jordanian Armed Forces.
 * 1980 – The American soap opera Dallas aired the episode "A House Divided", which led to eight months of international speculation on "Who shot J.R.?"
 * 2019 – A major explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China, killed 78 people and injured 640 others.


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 22

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 * 1312 – Pope Clement V issued a bull dissolving the Order of the Knights Templar.
 * 1765 – The Parliament of Great Britain passed the Stamp Act, requiring that many printed materials in the Thirteen Colonies in British America carry a tax stamp.
 * 1784 – The Emerald Buddha (pictured), considered to be the sacred palladium of Thailand, was installed in its current location at Wat Phra Kaew on the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok.
 * 1871 – William Woods Holden, Governor of North Carolina, became the first U.S. state governor to be removed from office through impeachment.
 * 1942 – Second World War: British and Italian naval forces fought the Second Battle of Sirte in the Gulf of Sidra north of Libya.
 * 1992 – USAir Flight 405 crashed in Flushing Bay shortly after takeoff from New York City's LaGuardia Airport, killing 27 people, and leading to studies into the effects of ice on aircraft.
 * 2004 – Palestinian imam Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a founder and the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by an Israeli missile as he left early morning prayers.
 * 2014 – A massive landslide in Oso, Washington, killed 43 people after engulfing a rural neighborhood, the largest death toll for a standalone landslide in U.S. history.
 * Born/died: | Caroline Norton |b|1808| Willis J. Potts |b|1895| Cheddi Jagan  |b|1918|Reese Witherspoon |b|1976| Juan Uribe |b|1979| Odysseas Angelis |d|1987| Kenzō Tange |d|2005| Bebo Valdés |d|2013|


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 23

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 * 1400 – After 175 years of rule, the Trần dynasty of Vietnam was deposed by Hồ Quý Ly, a court official.
 * 1775 – American Revolution: Patrick Henry made his "Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech to the House of Burgesses of Virginia, urging military action against the British Empire.
 * 1839 – An earthquake struck central Burma, causing significant damage and killing an estimated 300 to 400 people.
 * 1862 – American Civil War: General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate States Army lost the First Battle of Kernstown, but was still able to prevent the Union Army from reinforcing the Peninsula campaign.
 * 1905 – About 1,500 Cretans, led by Eleftherios Venizelos, met at the village of Theriso to call for the island's unification with Greece, beginning the Theriso revolt.
 * 1908 – American diplomat Durham Stevens, an employee of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was fatally shot in San Francisco by two Korean immigrants unhappy with his support of increased Japanese presence in Korea.
 * 1919 – Benito Mussolini and his supporters founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, the predecessor of the National Fascist Party.
 * 1933 – The Nazi Party took the first step in the Gleichschaltung process by having the Enabling Act passed, giving the government the right to make laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
 * 1977 – British journalist David Frost began a series of interviews with former U.S. president Richard Nixon, starting with the Watergate scandal.
 * 1991 – The Sierra Leone Civil War began with the invasion of the Revolutionary United Front, with support from the special forces of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia, in an attempt to overthrow President Joseph Saidu Momoh.
 * 1993 – The demolition of Kowloon Walled City (pictured), a densely crowded slum in Hong Kong, began.
 * 1996 – Lee Teng-hui (pictured) was elected President of the Republic of China in the first direct presidential election in Taiwan.
 * Born/died this day: | Jahanara Begum |b|1614| Mary of Jesus de León y Delgado |b|1643| Nathaniel Reed |b|1862|Calouste Gulbenkian |b|1869| Juan Gris |b|1887| Hovhannes Tumanyan |d|1923| Henri Berény |d|1932| Said Nursî |d|1960| Beatrice Tinsley |d|1981| Mo Farah |b|1983| Ben Hollioake |d|2002


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 24

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 * 1603 – James VI of Scotland (pictured) succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland as James I, uniting the realms under a single monarch.
 * 1860 – Japanese chief minister Ii Naosuke was assassinated by rōnin samurai upset with his role in opening Japan to foreign powers.
 * 1882 – German physician Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis.
 * 1898 – The Winton Motor Carriage Company (ad pictured), one of the first American car companies, sold its first unit.
 * 1921 – The inaugural Women's Olympiad, the first international women's sports event, opened at the International Sporting Club of Monaco in Monte Carlo.
 * 1922 – Irish War of Independence: In Belfast, two men wearing police uniforms broke into a house and murdered a Catholic family in what was believed to be a reprisal for the deaths of two policemen the day before.
 * 1980 – One day after making a plea to Salvadoran soldiers to stop carrying out the government's repression, Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
 * 2008 – Led by Jigme Thinley, the Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party won 45 of 47 seats in the country's first National Assembly election.
 * 2015 – The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 deliberately crashed the aircraft in a mass murder–suicide in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
 * Born/died this day: | Catherine of Vadstena |d|1381| Elizabeth Ridgeway |d|1684|Fanny Crosby |b|1820| William Morris |b|1834| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |d|1882| Thomas E. Dewey |b|1902|Jules Verne |d|1905| David Irving |b|1938| Kitty O'Neil |b|1946| Mary of Teck |d|1953| E. T. Whittaker |d|1956| Jessica Chastain |b|1977| Maria Radner |d|2015

March 24: Purim (Judaism 2024), World Tuberculosis Day

 * 1387 – Hundred Years' War: An English fleet led by Richard Fitzalan attacked 250–360 French, Flemish and Castilian vessels in the Battle of Margate.
 * 1934 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act came into effect, which provided for self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence from the United States after a period of ten years.
 * 1939 – Members of the German National Movement in Liechtenstein attempted to overthrow the government and provoke Liechtenstein's annexation into Nazi Germany.
 * 1964 – Royal assent was given to Prince Edward Island's Provincial Flag Act, which outlined the design of its provincial flag (pictured).
 * 2006 – Hannah Montana, starring Miley Cyrus as an actress whose alter ego is the titular character, premiered.


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 25

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 * 708 – Constantine was selected as one of the last popes of the Byzantine Papacy.
 * 717 – Byzantine emperor Theodosius III abdicated in favour of Leo the Isaurian after he captured Theodosius's son.
 * 1410 – The Yongle Emperor (pictured) of the Ming dynasty launched the first of his military campaigns against the Mongols, resulting in the fall of the Mongol khan Bunyashiri.
 * 1655 – Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest natural satellite of Saturn.
 * 1708 – Jacobite risings: A French fleet anchored near Fife Ness as part of a planned French invasion of Britain.
 * 1725 Bach's chorale cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1, is first performed on the Feast of the Annunciation, coinciding with Palm Sunday.
 * 1807 – The Slave Trade Act, which abolished the Atlantic slave trade in the British Empire, received royal assent.
 * 1903 – The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition anchored in the South Orkney Islands with the intention of establishing the first weather station in Antarctic territory.
 * 1911 – The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (pictured) in New York City killed 146 sweatshop workers, many of whom could not escape because the doors to the stairwells and exits had been locked.
 * 1948 – Meteorologists at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, United States, issued the world's first tornado forecast after noticing conditions similar to another tornado that had struck five days earlier.
 * 1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by his nephew Faisal bin Musaid.

 * Born/died: | Sophie Blanchard |b|1778|Novalis |d|1801| José de Espronceda |b|1808| Selim Sırrı Tarcan |b|1874| Frances Glessner Lee |b|1878|  Alexandra of Yugoslavia |b|1921| Harriet Backer |d|1932| Elton John |b|1947| Lorna Arnold |d|2014

March 25: Bangladesh Genocide Remembrance Day

 * 1458 – Wars of the Roses: A formal reconciliation ceremony between the Lancastrians and Yorkists led to a brief period of peace.
 * 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: In their second battle in seven days, the French Army of the Danube and Habsburg forces battled for control of the Hegau region.
 * 1934 – Enrico Fermi (pictured) published his discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
 * 1949 – The Soviet Union began mass deportations of more than 90,000 "undesirable" people from the Baltic states to Siberia.


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 26

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 * 590 – Byzantine emperor Maurice proclaimed his son Theodosius as his co-emperor.
 * 1484 – William Caxton (pictured) printed the first English translation of Aesop's Fables.
 * 1873 – A Dutch military expedition was launched to bombard Banda Aceh, the capital of the Aceh Sultanate in present-day Indonesia, beginning the Aceh War.
 * 1885 – Perceiving that the Canadian government was failing to protect their rights, the Métis people led by Louis Riel began the North-West Rebellion.
 * 1896 – An explosion at the Brunner Mine in New Zealand killed 65 coal miners in the country's deadliest mining accident.
 * 1913 – First Balkan War: After a five-month siege, Bulgarian and Serbian forces (artillery pictured) captured the Ottoman city of Adrianople.
 * 1917 – First World War: Attempting to advance into Palestine, the British were defeated by Ottoman troops at the First Battle of Gaza.
 * 1953 – Jonas Salk announced the successful test of his polio vaccine on a small group of adults and children.
 * 1975 – The Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of an entire category of weapons, entered into force.
 * 1997 – Police in Rancho Santa Fe, California, discovered the bodies of 39 members of the religious group Heaven's Gate who had died in an apparent cult suicide.
 * 2010 – An explosion, allegedly caused by a North Korean torpedo, sank the South Korean warship ROKS Cheonan near Baengnyeongdo in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors.
 * Born/died this day: | Conrad Gessner |b|1516| Jacob van Eyck |d|1657|  James Hutton |d|1797|  Fred Karno |b|1866| James B. Conant |b|1893| Chonghou |d|1893|  Guido Stampacchia |b|1922| Constantin Fehrenbach |d|1926| Richard Dawkins |b|1941| Eazy-E |d|1995| Diana Wynne Jones |d|2011 |


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Alan Dugan

Alan Dugan (February 12, 1923 – September 3, 2003) was an American poet. His first volume Poems published in 1961 was a chosen by the Yale Series of Younger Poets and went on to win the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His last volume, entitled Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, was published in 2001 by Seven Stories Press in New York City and won Dugan a second National Book Award.

Life
Dugan grew up in Jamaica, Queens, and served in World War II, experiences which entered his poetry, though he was not a confessional poet. He lived in Truro, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, where he was a member of the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center.

Dugan's work was published in successive numbered collections under the simple title Poems.

Alan Dugan was married to the artist Judith Shahn, to whom he dedicated each of his books. He died on September 3, 2003, of pneumonia at age 80.

Awards
Dugan received many awards and fellowships for his poetry.
 * Poems (1961): Yale Series of Younger Poets, National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
 * Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry (2001): National Book Award.
 * Awarded the Prix De Rome by the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1962)
 * The Shelley Memorial Award: Poetry Society of America (1982)
 * The Award in Literature: American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1985)
 * Awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 2002.

Works

 * Poems (1961)
 * Poems 2 (1963)
 * Poems 3 (1967)
 * Poems 4 (1974)
 * Poems Five: New and Collected Poems (1983)
 * Poems Six (1989)
 * Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry (2001)

title: Alan Dugan


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Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 27

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 * 1638 – The first of four destructive earthquakes struck southern Italy, destroying an estimated 10,000 homes.
 * 1836 – At least 425 Texian prisoners of war were executed in the Goliad massacre, under orders from Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna.
 * 1850 – San Diego, the first European settlement in present-day California, was incorporated as a city.
 * 1941 – World War II: A group of Serbian-nationalist officers of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force carried out a coup d'état after Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers.
 * 1945 – World War II: The United States Army Air Forces began Operation Starvation, laying naval mines in many of Japan's vital water routes and ports to disrupt enemy shipping.
 * 1958 – Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, assumed the office of premier.
 * 1975 – Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, an oil pipeline spanning the length of Alaska, began.
 * 1976 – The Washington Metro, the second-busiest rapid transit system in the U.S., opened to commuters.
 * 1980 – Brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt failed in their attempt to corner the world silver market, causing panic in commodity and futures exchanges.
 * 1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland staged a warning strike, the largest in the history of the Eastern Bloc, in which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs for four hours.
 * 2002 – Second Intifada: A suicide bomber killed around 30 Israeli civilians and injured about 140 others in Netanya, triggering Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale counter-terrorist military incursion into the West Bank.
 * 2009 – A failure of the dam holding Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Tangerang, Indonesia, caused floods that killed at least 100 people.
 * 2015 – Himeji Castle (pictured), the largest and most visited Japanese castle, re-opened after five years of restoration work.
 * Born/died this day: |Sigismund Báthory |d|1613| Simon Bradstreet |d|1697| Alexander Vostokov |b|1781| Rosa Campbell Praed |b|1851| Jan van Beers |b|1852|Thomas Graham Brown |b|1882|Kick Kelly |d|1926| Michael Joseph Savage |d|1940| Julia Alvarez |b|1950| Mariah Carey |b|1969| Mother Angelica |d|2016

March 27: Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania (1918)

 * 1884 – Outraged by a jury's decision to convict a man of manslaughter instead of murder, a mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, began three days of rioting.
 * 1899 – Philippine–American War: American forces defeated troops commanded by Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo at the Battle of Marilao River.
 * 1998 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug sildenafil (chemical structure pictured), better known by the trade name Viagra, for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
 * 1999 – During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an Army of Yugoslavia unit shot down a U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth aircraft.
 * 2020 – North Macedonia became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).