March 31: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining, as the final day of March.

Events

• 307 - After divorcing his wife Minerva, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
• 1717 - A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
• 1774 - American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act.
• 1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
• 1866 - The Spanish Navy bombs the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile
• 1885 - The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
• 1889 - The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.
• 1903 - Richard Pearse reportedly flies a heavier-than-air machine in powered flight near Pleasant Point, South Canterbury, New Zealand; some claim 1902
• 1906 - The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States.
• 1909 - Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• 1917 - The United States takes possession of the U.S. Virgin Islands after paying $25 million to Denmark.
• 1918 - Daylight Savings Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
• 1930 - The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next forty years.
• 1931 - An earthquake destroys Managua Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
• 1933 - The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.
• 1949 - Newfoundland and Labrador joins Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
• 1957 - Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
• 1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
• 1964 - The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco, begins.
• 1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon.
• 1967 - Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar for the first time at London's Astoria Theatre. He is sent to the hospital afterwards for burns on his hands.
• 1968 - President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not run for re-election.
• 1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
• 1970- Eight terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.
• 1979 - In Jerusalem, Israel, Gali Atari & Milk and Honey win the twenth-fourth Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing "Hallelujah".
• 1979 - The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta is no longer a military base.
• 1985 - The first ever WrestleMania is held in New York City's Madison Square Garden.
• 1986 - A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 166
• 1986 - Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England
• 1990 - Boxer Julio César Chávez defeats Meldrick Taylor to unify the boxing's world junior welterweight title in a very controversial fight known as "Thunder Meets Lightning".
• 1991 - The Warsaw Pact comes to an end.
• 1992 - The television news program Dateline NBC premieres.
• 1993 - Actor Brandon Lee is accidentally killed during the filming of The Crow.
• 1994 - The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (see Human evolution).
• 1995 - Popular Tex-Mex singer Selena Quintanilla is murdered by her assistant Yolanda Saldívar in a Corpus Christi, Texas motel after a heated discussion where the latter was accused of ripping off the artist's fan club.
• 1996 - Valentino Rossi takes part in his first 125cc Motorcycle Grand Prix race, at Shah Alam, Malaysia.
• 1998 - Netscape gives the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement, thus creating Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit corporation to oversee the development of Mozilla.
• 2001 - President Gordon B. Hinckley, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announces the formation of the Perpetual Education Fund, an endowment to offer loans to students in developing nations.
• 2004 - Google announces Gmail, the first web-based mail service to offer 1 gigabyte of storage.
• 2004 - In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.
• 2004 - Sandton Square in Johannesburg, South Africa, is renamed Nelson Mandela Square.
• 2005- Terri Schiavo dies at the age of 41 after national controversy.

• 250 - Constantius Chlorus, Roman Emperor (d. 306)
• 1499 - Pope Pius IV (d. 1565)
• 1504 - Guru Angad Dev, second Sikh guru (d. 1552)
• 1519 - King Henry II of France (d. 1559)
• 1536 - Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Japanese shogun (d. 1565)
• 1596 - René Descartes, French mathematician (d. 1650)
• 1621 - Andrew Marvell, English poet (d. 1678)
• 1651 - Karl II, Elector Palatine (d. 1685)
• 1675 - Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758)
• 1718 - Marianne Victoria of Borbón, queen regent of Portugal (d. 1781)
• 1723 - King Frederick V of Denmark (d. 1766)
• 1732 - Franz Josef Haydn, Austrian composer (d. 1809)
• 1777 - Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist (d. 1859)
• 1778 - Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist (d. 1858)
• 1806 - Benito Juarez, Mexican statesman (d. 1872)
• 1809 - Edward FitzGerald, English poet (d. 1883)
• 1809 - Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (d. 1852)
• 1811 - Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German chemist and inventor (d. 1899)
• 1871 - Arthur Griffith, President of Ireland (d. 1922)
• 1878 - Jack Johnson, American boxer (d. 1946)
• 1885 - Pascin, Bulgarian painter (d. 1930)
• 1890 - William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
• 1891 - Victor Varconi, Hungarian film actor (d. 1976)
• 1906 - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979)
• 1911 - Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (d. 1986)
• 1914 - Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)
• 1915 - Albert Hourani, English historian (d. 1993)
• 1922 - Richard Kiley, American actor and singer (d. 1999)
• 1924 - Leo Buscaglia, American author (d. 1998)
• 1926 - John Fowles, English author (d. 2005)
• 1927 - César Chávez, American labor activist (d. 1993)
• 1927 - William Daniels, American actor
• 1928 - Lefty Frizzell, American singer and songwriter (d. 1975)
• 1928 - Gordie Howe, Canadian hockey player
• 1929 - Lucille Bliss, American voice actress
• 1929 - Liz Claiborne, Belgian fashion designer
• 1934 - Richard Chamberlain, American actor
• 1934 - Shirley Jones, American singer and actress
• 1934 - Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1935 - Herb Alpert, American trumpeter and band leader
• 1935 - Judith Rossner, American author
• 1938 - Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of Delhi
• 1939 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia, first President of Georgia (d. 1993)
• 1939 - Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
• 1940 - Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senator from Vermont
• 1943 - Christopher Walken, American actor
• 1945 - Valerie Curtin, American actress, writer, and producer
• 1945 - Gabe Kaplan, American actor and comedian
• 1946 - Gonzalo Márquez, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player (d. 1984)
• 1947 - Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, President of Colombia
• 1948 - Al Gore, Vice President of the United States
• 1948 - Rhea Perlman, American actress
• 1950 - Ed Marinaro, American football player and actor
• 1950 - Andras Adorjan, Hungarian chess player
• 1955 - Angus Young, Scottish-born musician (AC/DC)
• 1957 - Marc McClure, American actor
• 1966 - Roger Black, British athlete
• 1971 - Pavel Bure, Russian hockey player
• 1971 - Ewan McGregor, Scottish actor
• 1973 - Bold Forbes, Puerto Rican racehorse (d. 2000)
• 1974 - Benjamin Eicher, Swiss film director
• 1976 - Josh Saviano, American actor
• 1978 - Stephen Clemence, English footballer
• 1980 - Chien-Ming Wang, Taiwanese Major League Baseball player
• 1982 - Tal Ben Haim, Israeli footballer

• 1204 - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England (b. 1121)
• 1340 - Ivan I of Russia, Prince of Moscow (b. 1288)
• 1567 - Philipp I of Hesse (b. 1504)
• 1621 - Philip III of Spain (b. 1578)
• 1631 - John Donne, English writer and prelate (b. 1572)
• 1671 - Anne Hyde, queen of James II of England (b. 1637)
• 1703 - Johann Christoph Bach, German composer (b. 1642)
• 1723 - Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, British Governor of New York and New Jersey (b. 1661)
• 1727 - Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician and physicist (b. 1643)
• 1741 - Pieter Burmann the Elder, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1668)
• 1783 - Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman (b. 1718)
• 1837 - John Constable, English painter (b. 1776)
• 1855 - Charlotte Brontë, English author (b. 1816)
• 1880 - Henryk Wieniawski, Polish composer (b. 1835)
• 1885 - Franz Wilhelm Abt, German composer (b. 1819)
• 1913 - John Pierpont Morgan, American financier and banker (b. 1837)
• 1917 - Emil Adolf von Behring, German physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1854)
• 1915 - Wyndham Halswelle, British runner (b. 1882)
• 1931 - Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888)
• 1945 - Hans Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
• 1945 - Anne Frank, German-born diarist (b. 1929)
• 1952 - Wallace H. White, Jr., U.S. Senator from Maine (b. 1877)
• 1954 - Edwin Armstrong, American electrical engineer and inventor (b. 1890)
• 1956 - Ralph DePalma, Italian-born race car driver (b. 1884)
• 1978 - Charles Best, Canadian medical scientist (b. 1899)
• 1980 - Vladimír Holan, Czech poet (b. 1905)
• 1980 - Jesse Owens, American athlete (b. 1913)
• 1981 - Enid Bagnold, British author and playwright (b. 1889)
• 1984 - Ronald Clark O'Bryan, American murderer (executed) (b. 1944)
• 1985 - The Singing Nun, Belgian nun and singer (b. 1933)
• 1988 - William McMahon, twentieth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
• 1993 - Brandon Lee, American actor (b. 1965)
• 1995 - Selena, American singer (b. 1971)
• 1998 - Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920)
• 1999 - Yuri Knorosov, Russian linguist and epigrapher (b. 1922)
• 2001 - Clifford Shull, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915)
• 2002 - Barry Took, British comedian and writer (b. 1928)
• 2003 - H.S.M. Coxeter, English-born geometer and author (b. 1907)
• 2005 - Stanley J. Korsmeyer, American oncologist (b. 1951)
• 2005 - Frank Perdue, American poultry farmer (b. 1920)
• 2005 - Terri Schiavo, American right-to-die cause célèbre (b. 1963)

• Easter Sunday observed in 1991, 2002, 2013, and 2024
• New Jersey - Thomas Mundy Peterson Day
• César Chávez Day - official holiday in five states and many cities across the US
• Freedom Day in Malta

March 30 - April 1 - February 28 (February 29) - April 30 -- listing of all days