1918 – The U.S. Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time.

1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumière record their first footage using their newly patented cinematograph.

1968 – Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.

1965 – Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

1992 – A referendum to end apartheid in South Africa is passed 68.7% to 31.2%.

1959 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet for India.

1941 – In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1995 – Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865.

1926 – History of Rocketry: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

2011 – Beginning of the Syrian civil war.

1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

44 BC – Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

1995 – Space Exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle.

1994 – Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released.

1900 – The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.

1962 – Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivers a proposal, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks upon Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.

1781 – William Herschel discovers Uranus.

2011 – A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan's earthquake.

1930 – Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200-mile march, known as the Salt March, to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt.

1918 – Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years.