March 18:
1925 : The Tri-State Tornado
The worst tornado in U.S. history passes through eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana, killing 695 people, injuring some 13,000 people, and causing $17 million in property damage. Known as the "Tri-State Tornado," the deadly twister began its northeast track in Ellington, Missouri, but southern Illinois was the hardest hit. More than 500 of the total 695 people who perished were killed in southern Illinois, including 234 in Murphrysboro and 127 in West Frankfort.
March 19:
1831 : America's first recorded bank robbery takes place
The City Bank in downtown New York is robbed, the first recorded bank robbery in American history. The bank, located on New York's newly booming Wall Street, lost $245,000 in the robbery, a tremendous amount of money at the time. Fortunately, the thief was quickly caught and much of the money was recovered. Edward Smith, an English immigrant, was convicted and sentenced to five years of hard labor at Sing Sing Prison.
March 20:
1345 : Black Death is created, allegedly
According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on this day in 1345, from what they call "a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345". The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 14th century, leaving an estimated 25 million dead in its wake. 
Despite what these scholars claimed, it is now known that bubonic plague, the most common ailment known as the Black Death, is caused by the yersinia pestis bacterium. The plague was carried by fleas that usually traveled on rats, but jumped off to other mammals when the rat died. It most likely first appeared in humans in Mongolia around 1320. Usually, people who came down with the plague first complained of headaches, fever and chills. Their tongues often appeared a whitish color before there was severe swelling of the lymph nodes. Finally, black and purple spots appeared on the skin of the afflicted; death could follow within a week. Later, a pneumonic form of the plague developed that was less common but killed 95 percent of the people who contracted it. 
March 21:
1963 : Alcatraz closes its doors
Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners. At it's peak period of use in 1950s, "The Rock, or ""America's Devil Island" housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable.
March 22:
1933 : FDR legalizes sale of beer and wine
On this day in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. This law levies a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages to raise revenue for the federal government and gives individual states the option to further regulate the sale and distribution of beer and wine. 
With the passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act in 1919, temperance advocates in the U.S. finally achieved their long sought-after goal of prohibiting the sale of alcohol or spirits. Together, the new laws prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of liquor and ushered in the era known as Prohibition," defining an alcoholic beverage as anything containing over 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. President Woodrow Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to veto the Volstead Act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers. In the end, Prohibition proved difficult and expensive to enforce and actually increased illegal trafficking without cutting down on consumption. In one of his first addresses to Congress as president, FDR announced his intention to modify the Volstead Act with the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. 
No fan of temperance himself, FDR had developed a taste for alcohol when he attended New York cocktail parties as a budding politician. (While president, FDR refused to fire his favorite personal valet for repeated drunkenness on the job.) FDR considered the new law of the highest importance for its potential to generate much-needed federal funds and included it in a sweeping set of New Deal policies designed to vault the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. 
The Beer and Wine Revenue act was followed, in December 1933, by the passage of the 21st Amendment, which officially ended Prohibition. 
March 23:
1839: OK enters national vernacular.
March 24:
1945 : Billboard's first Top Album chart published
Billboard publishes its first pop-music chart for albums on this day in 1945. The first No. 1 album was Nat King Cole's King Cole Trio. Billboard had been publishing charts for single records since 1940. Cole became one of the most popular singers of his day, with 78 Billboard hit singles between 1944 and 1966.
March 25:
1911 : Fire kills 145 at Triangle Shirtwaist factory
In one of the most infamous incidents in Americas industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down on this day in 1911, killing 145 workers. The tragedy led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of factory workers. 
March 26:
1885 : First movie film made
Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in Rochester, New York, begins manufacturing the first movie film on this day in 1885. The company was the first to produce, manufacture, and market reels of continuous film.
March 27:
1905 : Fingerprint evidence is used to solve a British murder case
The neighbors of Thomas and Ann Farrow, shopkeepers in South London, discover their badly bludgeoned bodies in their home. Thomas was already dead, but Ann was still breathing. She died four days later without ever having regained consciousness. The brutal crime was solved using the newly developed fingerprinting technique. Only three years earlier, the first English court had admitted fingerprint evidence in a petty theft case. The Farrow case was the first time that the cutting-edge technology was used in a high-profile murder case.
March 28:
1915 : First American citizen killed during WWI
On March 28, 1915, the first American citizen is killed in the eight-month-old European conflict that would become known as the First World War. 
Leon Thrasher, a 31-year-old mining engineer and native of Massachusetts, drowned when a German submarine, the U-28, torpedoed the cargo-passenger ship Falaba, on its way from Liverpool to West Africa, off the coast of England. Of the 242 passengers and crew on board the Falaba, 104 drowned. Thrasher, who was employed on the Gold Coast in British West Africa, was returning to his post there from England as a passenger on the ship. 
March 29:
1929 : Herbert Hoover has telephone installed in Oval Office
On this day in 1929, President Herbert Hoover has a phone installed at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House. It took a while to get the line to Hoovers desk working correctly and the president complained to aides when his son was unable to get through on the Oval Office phone from an outside line. Previously, Hoover had used a phone located in the foyer just outside the office. Telephones and a telephone switchboard had been in use at the White House since 1878, when President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first one installed, but no phone had ever been installed at the presidents desk until Hoovers administration. 
March 30:
1867 : U.S. buys Alaska
On this day in 1867, the United States government put the finishing touches on the deal to purchase that "large stump of ice," better known as Alaska. The acquisition, brokered in absolute secrecy by Secretary of State William Seward, saw the U.S. pay Alaska's owner, Russia $7.2 million, or roughly two cents per acre of land. Though Alaska was the first bit of property ever relinquished by Russia, some American officials sneered at the seemingly barren new state. In certain circles, the deal was derisively known as "Seward's Folly." However, Alaska promised a few bright benefits for the U.S. Along with freeing another piece of the continent from the grip of monarchy, America's newest state was flush with furs and fish. Rather than establishing a formal government in the territory, President Andrew Johnson reasoned that Alaska's economic activities placed it under the charge of the Treasury Department, which regulated the fur and fish trades. In effect, Johnsons decision created a government monopoly and planted the seeds for conflict in Alaska's not too distant future.
March 31:
1889: Eiffel Tower opens.



