March 17

180 – Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius dies, age 58 at Vindobona, province of Pannonia Superior, modern day Vienna Austria.

1776 – During the Revolutionary War, the British Army evacuate Boston, ending the Siege of Boston, after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.

1942 – The NAZI death camp near Belzec Poland opens for business. By the time camp is closed in mid 1943 an estimated 500,000 Jews are murdered there.

1945 – 10 days after being taken by troops of the U.S. 9th Armored Division, the Ludendorff Bridge crossing the Rhine river at Remagen, Germany, collapses, killing 28 U.S. Army engineers.

1958 – The U.S. launches Vanguard-1, the first solar powered satellite, which is also the first satellite to achieve a long term orbit, still in orbit to this day.

1960 – President Eisenhower signs a National Security Council directive for an anti-Cuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

1966 – Off the coast of Palomares, Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds the missing  hydrogen bomb dropped by a B-52 bomber after its midair collision on January 17.

1968 – As a result of open air nerve gas testing at the Dugway Proving Ground in southwest Utah, over 6,000 sheep are killed in Skull Valley, Utah, around 27 miles east of the testing site.

1969 – Golda Meir becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel.

1985 –  Richard Ramirez, aka the serial killer “Night Stalker”, commits the first 2 murders in his Los Angeles murder spree.

1988 – Colombian airlines Avianca Flight 410A, a Boeing 727, crashes into a mountainside shortly after takeoff from Camilo Daza International Airport in Cúcuta, killing all 143 passengers and crew aboard.

2000 – In Kanungu, Uganda, after the prophesied date of January 1 passes and second revised date of the Apocalypse arrives without it occurring as well, most of the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God kill themselves and over 500 members of the group by locking themselves in the church building and setting it afire.