March 2 is the 61st day of the year (62nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 304 days remain

until the end of the year.

Events
Pre-1600
• 537 – Siege of Rome: The Ostrogoth army under king Vitiges begins the siege of the capital.
Belisarius conducts a delaying action outside the Flaminian Gate; he and a detachment of his
bucellarii are almost cut off.[1]
• 986 – Louis V becomes the last Carolingian king of West Francia after the death of his
father, Lothaire.[2]
• 1331 – Fall of Nicaea to the Ottoman Turks after a siege.[3]
• 1444 – Skanderbeg organizes a group of Albanian nobles to form the League of Lezhë.[4]
• 1458 – George of Poděbrady is chosen as the king of Bohemia.[5]
• 1476 – Burgundian Wars: The Old Swiss Confederacy hands Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy, a major defeat in the Battle of Grandson in Canton of Neuchâtel.[6]
• 1484 – The College of Arms is formally incorporated by Royal Charter signed by King
Richard III of England.[7]
• 1498 – Vasco da Gama's fleet visits the Island of Mozambique.[8]

1601–1900
• 1657 – The Great Fire of Meireki begins in Edo (now Tokyo), Japan, causing more than
100,000 deaths before it exhausts itself three days later.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Patriot militia units attempt to prevent capture of
supply ships in and around the Savannah River by a small fleet of the Royal Navy in the
Battle of the Rice Boats.[9]
• 1791 – Claude Chappe demonstrates the first semaphore line near Paris.
• 1797 – The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound banknotes.
• 1807 – The U.S. Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, disallowing the
importation of new slaves into the country.
• 1811 – Argentine War of Independence: A royalist fleet defeats a small flotilla of
revolutionary ships in the Battle of San Nicolás on the River Plate.
• 1815 – Signing of the Kandyan Convention treaty by British invaders and the leaders of the
Kingdom of Kandy.
• 1836 – Texas Revolution: The Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from
Mexico is adopted.
• 1855 – Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia.
• 1859 – The two-day Great Slave Auction, the largest such auction in United States history,
begins.
• 1865 – East Cape War: The Völkner Incident in New Zealand.
• 1867 – The U.S. Congress passes the first Reconstruction Act.
• 1877 – Just two days before inauguration, the U.S. Congress declares Rutherford B. Hayes
the winner of the 1876 U.S. presidential election even though Samuel J. Tilden had won the
popular vote.
 • 1882 – Queen Victoria narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by Roderick Maclean in
Windsor.

1901–present
• 1901 – United States Steel Corporation is founded as a result of a merger between Carnegie
Steel Company and Federal Steel Company which became the first corporation in the world
with a market capital over $1 billion.
• 1901 – The U.S. Congress passes the Platt Amendment limiting the autonomy of Cuba, as a
condition of the withdrawal of American troops.
• 1903 – In New York City the Martha Washington Hotel opens, becoming the first hotel
exclusively for women.
• 1917 – The enactment of the Jones–Shafroth Act grants Puerto Ricans United States
citizenship.
• 1919 – The first Communist International meets in Moscow.[10]
• 1932 – Finnish president P. E. Svinhufvud gives a radio speech, which four days later finally
ends the Mäntsälä Rebellion and the far-right Lapua Movement that started it.[11][12]
• 1937 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee signs a collective bargaining agreement
with U.S. Steel, leading to unionization of the United States steel industry.[13]
• 1939 – Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected Pope and takes the name Pius XII.[14]
• 1941 – World War II: First German military units enter Bulgaria after it joins the Axis Pact.
• 1943 – World War II: During the Battle of the Bismarck Sea Allied aircraft defeated a
Japanese attempt to ship troops to New Guinea.
• 1949 – Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth,
Texas, after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and
one minute.[15]
• 1955 – Norodom Sihanouk, king of Cambodia, abdicates the throne in favor of his father,
Norodom Suramarit.[16]
• 1962 – In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win seizes power in a coup d'état.[17]
• 1962 – Wilt Chamberlain sets the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball
Association by scoring 100 points.[18]
• 1965 – The US and Republic of Vietnam Air Force begin Operation Rolling Thunder, a
sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam.[19]
• 1968 – Baggeridge Colliery closes marking the end of over 300 years of coal mining in the
Black Country.[20]
• 1969 – In Toulouse, France, the first test flight of the Anglo-French Concorde is conducted.
[21]
• 1970 – Rhodesia declares itself a republic, breaking its last links with the British crown.[22]
• 1972 – The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission
to explore the outer planets.[23]
• 1977 – Libya becomes the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya as the General
People's Congress adopted the "Declaration on the Establishment of the Authority of the
People".[24]
• 1978 – Czech Vladimír Remek becomes the first non-Russian or non-American to go into
space, when he is launched aboard Soyuz 28.[25]
 • 1978 – The late iconic actor Charlie Chaplin's coffin is stolen from his grave in Switzerland.
[26]
• 1983 – Compact discs and players are released for the first time in the United States and
other markets.[27] They had previously been available only in Japan.[28]
• 1989 – Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.[29]
• 1990 – Nelson Mandela is elected deputy president of the African National Congress.[30]
• 1991 – Establishment of Kuwait Democratic Forum, center-left political organization in
Kuwait.[31]
• 1991 – Battle at Rumaila oil field brings an end to the 1991 Gulf War.
• 1992 – Start of the war in Transnistria.
• 1992 – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, San Marino, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, all of which (except San Marino) were former Soviet
republics, join the United Nations.
• 1995 – Researchers at Fermilab announce the discovery of the top quark.
• 1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a
liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
• 2002 – U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19
after killing 500 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, with 11 Western troop fatalities).
• 2004 – War in Iraq: Al-Qaeda carries out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and
wounding over 500.
• 2012 – A tornado outbreak occurs over a large section of the Southern United States and into
the Ohio Valley region, resulting in 40 tornado-related fatalities.
• 2017 – The elements Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson are officially added to the
periodic table at a conference in Moscow, Russia.
• 2022 – Russian forces capture the city of Kherson during the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
which subsequently began the start of the Russian occupation and military-civilian
administration in Kherson.[32] Kherson is the only regional capital in Ukraine that Russia
captured.

Births
Pre-1600
• 480 – Benedict of Nursia, Italian Christian saint (d. 543 or 547)
• 1316 – Robert II of Scotland (d. 1390)
• 1409 – Jean II, Duke of Alençon (d. 1476)
• 1432 – Countess Palatine Margaret of Mosbach, countess consort of Hanau (d. 1457)
• 1453 – Johannes Engel, German doctor, astronomer and astrolo