📜 This Day in History

March 9

• 1009The first recorded use of the name of Lithuania appeared in Latin in the Annals of Quedlinburg, written in Saxony-Anhalt, present-day Germany.
• 1847Mexican–American War: The Siege of Veracruz began, the first large-scale amphibious assault conducted by United States military forces.
• 1910A seventeen-month-long strike, which at its peak involved 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers across 65 mines, began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S.
• 1933U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt submitted the Emergency Banking Act to the United States Congress, the first of his New Deal policies.
• 1956In Tbilisi, Georgia, soldiers suppressed mass demonstrations against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization.
• 1977Twelve gunmen seized three buildings in Washington, D.C., and took 149 hostages in a 39-hour standoff that ended in two deaths.

Born on this day

• 1454Amerigo Vespucci, Italian cartographer and explorer, namesake of the Americas (died 1512)
• 1814Taras Shevchenko, Ukrainian poet and playwright (died 1861)
• 1934Yuri Gagarin, Russian colonel, pilot, and cosmonaut, first human in space (died 1968)
• 1943Bobby Fischer, American chess player and author (died 2008)