On March 12, 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland became the first former members of the Warsaw Pact join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Read the NATO accession treaties for the Czech Republic, the Republic of Hungary, and the Republic of Poland.
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On March 12, 1993, Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female US Attorney General. Learn more about Janet Reno from the US Department of Justice Attorney General’s website as it stood on November 9, 2000.
Indian independence advocate Mahatma Gandhi and 78 others began a 3.5-week-long march to the Arabian Sea on March 12, 1930 to defy monopolistic colonial laws prohibiting the collection of salt by Indians. The demonstration exemplified Gandhi’s strategy of Satyagraha. The march ended with thousands joining in in other cities, Gandhi being briefly jailed and then [...]
On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. He soon announced that he would hold arms-reduction negotiations in Geneva with the United States. Gorbachev also used his tenure to liberalize the economy and social structure of the USSR, eventually leading to [...]
On March 11, 1861, seven former US states adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, which closely followed the language, if not necessarily the purport, of the original US Constitution. Section 9 (4) of the Confederate Constitution read “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right [...]
The war crimes court known as the International Criminal Court (ICC) swore in its first batch of judges on March 11, 2003. The meeting took place eight months after the ratification of the court’s Rome Statute. Then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of the occasion: It has taken mankind many years to reach this moment. By [...]
On March 10, 1969, James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.. Ray died in 1998, still seeking a retrial of his case. On December 9th, 1999, a Memphis jury handed down a verdict agreeing with the King family that the 1968 [...]
On March 10, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested and charged with sedition for leading a campaign of mass civil disobedience against the British in India. He was then convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. After his release, Gandhi continued to build Indian unity and use civil disobedience and non-cooperation to oppose British rule [...]
On March 9, 1973, residents of Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. 98 percent voted in favor of the referendum, but only 57% of the population participated. Catholic voters overwhelmingly boycotted the vote and The Troubles continued in Northern Ireland until the Good Friday Agreement, which provides for Northern Ireland’s union [...]
On March 9, 1841, the US Supreme Court ruled in The Amistad case that a group of slaves who took over their ship were free. Learn more about The Amistad case.
