March 9

Events

• 1796 - Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.
• 1834 - French Foreign Legion is founded.
• 1862 - American Civil War: The USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first fight between two ironclad warships.
• 1916 - Pancho Villa leads 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.
• 1935 - Adolf Hitler announces the creation of a new air force.
• 1945 - World War II: Bombing of Tokyo - American B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, Japan with incendiary bombs. The resulting fire storm kills over 100,000 people.
• 1967 - Josef Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.
• 1977 - Hanafi Siege: Three buildings in Washington DC, including B'nai B'rith headquarters, are taken over by radical Muslims

Births

• 1454 - Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer and cartographer
• 1881 - Ernest Bevin, British politician (d. 1951)
• 1890 - Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian politician (d. 1986)
• 1918 - George Lincoln Rockwell, founder and leader of the American Nazi Party (d. 1967)
• 1923 - Eustace Mullins, American nationalist and author (d. 2010)
• 1934 - Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut (d. 1968)
• 1943 - Bobby Fischer, American chess champion, antisemitic Jew (d. 2008)
• 1954 - Bobby Sands, IRA member (d. 1981)

Deaths

• 1202 - King Sverre of Norway
• 1888 - William I, German Emperor (b. 1797)
• 1964 - Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, German general (b. 1870)
• 1992 - Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1913)
• 1994 - Lawrence E. Spivak, American journalist (b. 1900)