Nowruz, the Persian New Year rooted in Zoroastrian tradition, has been observed on or near the spring equinox for at least 2,500 years, with Achaemenid kings receiving tribute and delegations from across their empire at Persepolis during the festival. Still celebrated today by more than 300 million people across Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, it is one of the oldest continuously observed holidays in human history.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) received its charter on March 20, 1602, granting it a monopoly over Dutch trade in Asia along with quasi-governmental powers to wage war, negotiate treaties, and coin money. It grew into the most powerful commercial enterprise in history, at its peak employing tens of thousands and effectively ruling territories across the Indonesian archipelago.
Escaped from his island exile on Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte marched north through France gathering troops and popular support, entering Paris on the night of March 20, 1815, just as King Louis XVIII fled. His return launched the Hundred Days, a dramatic final chapter of his career that would end three months later on the battlefield of Waterloo.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form on March 20, 1852, after running as a serial the previous year. It sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 within a year in the United States alone, galvanizing Northern opposition to slavery and enraging the South, and is often credited with helping set the stage for the Civil War.
Vesuvius produced its most powerful eruption of the 20th century, sending lava flows through the towns of San Sebastiano al Vesuvio and Massa di Somma and ash clouds that grounded and damaged dozens of US Army Air Forces bombers stationed nearby. Coming amid the Italian campaign of World War II, the eruption killed at least 26 people and displaced thousands already suffering the hardships of war.
Members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo punctured plastic bags of liquid sarin with sharpened umbrella tips on five separate subway cars converging near Kasumigaseki station, the seat of Japan's government. Thirteen people died and more than 6,000 sought medical treatment, many suffering blurred vision, vomiting and convulsions. The attack shattered Japan's sense of public safety and exposed a cult that had stockpiled chemical weapons and recruited scientists from top universities.
After months of diplomatic wrangling at the United Nations, a US-led coalition began bombing Baghdad and pushed ground troops across the Kuwaiti border, launching the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein within three weeks. The war, justified by claims of weapons of mass destruction never found, led to a prolonged insurgency, sectarian violence, and roughly two decades of American military presence in Iraq.
The European Space Agency formally abandoned attempts to contact Beagle 2, the British-built Mars lander that had gone silent immediately after its scheduled landing on December 25, 2003. Named after Darwin's HMS Beagle, the small lander was designed to search for signs of past or present life on Mars, and its disappearance was one of the enduring mysteries of Mars exploration until images finally located it a decade later.