📜 This Day in History
March 29
845Viking expansion: Viking raiders, possibly led by the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, plundered and occupied Paris, holding the city for a large ransom.- 1807German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered Vesta, the brightest asteroid and second-most massive body in the asteroid belt.
- 1882The Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, was founded by Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
- 1974NASA's Mariner 10 became the first space probe to make a flyby of Mercury.
- 1982Queen Elizabeth II granted royal assent to the Canada Act 1982, which ended any remaining constitutional dependence of Canada on the United Kingdom by a process known as patriation.
- 2017British prime minister Theresa May invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, formally beginning the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
