March 10 in History

Members of Parliament physically held the Speaker in his chair to prevent him from adjourning the session on March 2, 1629, while they rushed through three resolutions condemning the king's policies on taxation and religion. Charles I dissolved Parliament eight days later, on March 10, and did not call another for eleven years. The period known as the Personal Rule had begun, and it would end only when Charles ran out of money to fight a war he could not avoid. The confrontation had been building since Charles became king in 1625. He believed in divine right — that his authority came from God, not Parliament — and resented parliamentary attempts to control taxation and religious policy. Parliament, for its part, insisted that the king could not levy taxes without its consent, a principle rooted in Magna Carta. The specific flashpoint was tonnage and poundage, customs duties that Parliament had refused to grant Charles for life as was traditional with new monarchs. The dramatic scene of March 2 saw Sir John Eliot, the opposition leader, read three resolutions while Speaker John Finch was forcibly restrained in his seat. The resolutions declared that anyone who promoted "innovation in religion" (meaning Arminianism or Catholicism), who advised the levying of tonnage and poundage without parliamentary consent, or who voluntarily paid such duties was "a capital enemy to this Kingdom and Commonwealth." Charles, informed of the proceedings, sent for the mace — without which Parliament could not legally sit — but members locked the doors. Charles dissolved Parliament on March 10, 1629, and arrested nine members, including Eliot, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London and died there in 1632. For the next eleven years, Charles governed without Parliament, raising revenue through a series of legally dubious mechanisms including Ship Money, a tax traditionally levied on coastal counties in wartime that Charles extended to inland areas during peacetime. The Personal Rule worked as long as Charles could avoid expensive foreign entanglements. When Scottish Presbyterians revolted against his attempt to impose a new prayer book in 1637, Charles needed an army. Armies required money. Money required Parliament. He summoned the Short Parliament in April 1640 and the Long Parliament in November 1640, beginning the political crisis that led directly to the English Civil War. Charles's eleven years of ruling without Parliament demonstrated that English kings could govern alone — but only until they needed to fight.

Three hundred thousand Tibetans surrounded the Norbulingka Palace in Lhasa on March 10, 1959, forming a human shield to prevent the Chinese military from abducting the Dalai Lama. Rumors had spread that Chinese authorities planned to lure the 23-year-old spiritual leader to a military camp for a theatrical performance, where he would be detained or killed. The crowd's defiance triggered an armed uprising that the People's Liberation Army crushed within days, killing thousands and forcing the Dalai Lama into an exile that continues to this day. China had maintained effective control over Tibet since 1950, when the PLA invaded and the Tibetan government signed the Seventeen Point Agreement under duress in 1951. The agreement nominally preserved Tibetan autonomy and the Dalai Lama's authority, but Chinese military presence grew steadily throughout the decade. In the eastern Tibetan regions of Kham and Amdo, which had been incorporated into Chinese provinces, forced collectivization and attacks on monasteries had already sparked guerrilla resistance beginning in 1956. The Lhasa uprising began when the Dalai Lama was invited to attend a performance at the PLA headquarters. The invitation specified that he should come without his bodyguard and without informing the public — conditions that Tibetans interpreted as a trap. Word spread through the city, and by the morning of March 10, a massive crowd had assembled around the Norbulingka, refusing to let the Dalai Lama leave. For a week, the city existed in a state of armed tension. Tibetan volunteers set up barricades and distributed weapons. On March 17, two mortar shells landed near the Norbulingka. That night, disguised as a soldier, the Dalai Lama slipped through the crowd and began a harrowing two-week journey on horseback across the Himalayas to India. He crossed the Indian border on March 31 and was granted asylum by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The PLA shelled the Norbulingka on March 20, killing hundreds of Tibetans sheltering in the palace grounds. Fighting in Lhasa lasted three days. Chinese official figures listed 87,000 Tibetans killed in the uprising and subsequent military operations; Tibetan exile sources claim significantly higher numbers. March 10 is observed annually by Tibetan exile communities as Tibetan Uprising Day, marking the beginning of a resistance that has continued for over six decades.

James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on March 10, 1969, his 41st birthday, in a Memphis courtroom. The plea avoided a trial, secured a 99-year sentence, and ended the case so quickly that it generated decades of conspiracy theories. Ray began trying to retract his guilty plea three days later and spent the remaining 29 years of his life claiming he was a patsy. King had been shot on April 4, 1968, while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers. A single bullet from a Remington Model 760 rifle struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 PM. He was 39 years old. Witnesses saw a man fleeing from a rooming house at 422.5 South Main Street, directly across from the Lorraine Motel. Police found a bundle near the rooming house containing the rifle, a pair of binoculars, clothing, and personal items. Fingerprints matched those of James Earl Ray, a Missouri-born career criminal who had escaped from the state penitentiary in Jefferson City in April 1967. Ray had been serving a 20-year sentence for armed robbery. The manhunt lasted 65 days. Ray fled Memphis to Atlanta, drove to Canada, obtained a false passport, flew to London, and was captured at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, while attempting to board a flight to Brussels. British customs agents noticed his passport name appeared on a Royal Canadian Mounted Police watch list. Ray's guilty plea, negotiated by his attorney Percy Foreman, avoided the death penalty. The proceedings lasted two hours. Judge W. Preston Battle accepted the plea, sentenced Ray to 99 years, and the case was closed. Ray immediately regretted the deal. He fired Foreman, hired new lawyers, and spent decades seeking a trial. He claimed a mysterious figure named "Raoul" had directed his movements and that he was framed. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated in 1978 and concluded King was likely killed as the result of a conspiracy but could not identify co-conspirators. A 1999 civil trial brought by the King family found that government agencies had participated in the assassination, though the US Department of Justice later concluded the evidence did not support this verdict. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998. King's assassination and its unresolved questions remain among the most contested events in American history.

Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general on March 9, 1864, a rank no American officer had held since George Washington, and placed in command of all Union armies. He established his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia the following day, and within two months, the war that had ground on for three years finally had a commander willing to use the Union's overwhelming advantages in manpower and industry to destroy the Confederacy through relentless, simultaneous pressure on every front. Grant's path to supreme command had been built on results. While commanders in the eastern theater lost or stalemated against Robert E. Lee, Grant had captured Fort Donelson, won at Shiloh despite being surprised, taken Vicksburg after a brilliant campaign that split the Confederacy in half, and broken the Confederate siege of Chattanooga. President Lincoln, who had cycled through commanders with increasing frustration, told an aide: "I can't spare this man. He fights." Congress revived the rank of lieutenant general specifically for Grant. Lincoln signed the commission and presented it at a White House ceremony on March 9, 1864. Grant chose not to command from Washington, where political interference had hampered every previous general-in-chief. Instead, he traveled to Brandy Station, Virginia, and attached himself to General George Meade's Army of the Potomac, effectively directing its operations while leaving Meade in nominal tactical command. Grant's strategy was unprecedented in its coordination. He ordered simultaneous advances across the entire theater of war. The Army of the Potomac would engage Lee in Virginia. William Tecumseh Sherman would drive from Chattanooga toward Atlanta. Benjamin Butler would advance up the James River toward Richmond. Franz Sigel would operate in the Shenandoah Valley. Nathaniel Banks would move against Mobile, Alabama. The Confederacy would be unable to shift reinforcements between theaters if every front was active simultaneously. The cost was staggering. The Overland Campaign, which began in May 1864 at the Battle of the Wilderness, produced roughly 55,000 Union casualties in thirty days as Grant fought through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Northern newspapers called him a "butcher." Grant continued advancing, crossing the James River and besieging Petersburg in June, beginning the nine-month siege that would end the war. Grant's appointment on March 10, 1864, marked the moment the Union found a general who understood that the war would be won not by capturing territory but by destroying armies.

Astronomers James Elliot, Edward Dunham, and Douglas Mink discovered the rings of Uranus on March 10, 1977, and they were not looking for rings at all. The team had set up instruments aboard the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a modified C-141 cargo plane flying at 41,000 feet over the Indian Ocean, to observe Uranus pass in front of a distant star. The star's light was supposed to reveal details about the planet's atmosphere. Instead, it flickered and dimmed five times before and after the occultation, revealing a system of narrow rings that no telescope had detected. The technique was stellar occultation: when a planet passes in front of a star as seen from Earth, the star's light is affected by the planet's atmosphere and any surrounding material. Elliot, an MIT astronomer, had arranged the observation to study Uranus's upper atmosphere by measuring how it absorbed and refracted the star's light during ingress and egress. The unexpected dimming events occurred at precise, symmetric intervals on both sides of the planet, meaning something was blocking the starlight at specific distances from Uranus. Five distinct dips appeared on the photometric recordings. The symmetry was critical: the same features appeared in the same order before and after the occultation, confirming they were rings orbiting the planet rather than random debris. The initial discovery identified five rings, designated Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Subsequent observations from ground-based telescopes and the Kuiper Observatory raised the count to nine by 1978. Voyager 2's flyby in January 1986 confirmed the ring system and discovered two additional rings, bringing the total to eleven. Later Hubble Space Telescope observations found two more outer rings in 2003 and 2005. The rings of Uranus are dramatically different from Saturn's famous bright bands. They are narrow, dark, and composed primarily of particles ranging from centimeters to meters in diameter, with very little of the fine dust that makes Saturn's rings so reflective. The Epsilon ring, the outermost and most prominent, is only 20 to 100 kilometers wide. The discovery of Uranian rings was the first confirmation that ring systems are not unique to Saturn, and it prompted a search that soon revealed rings around Jupiter (1979) and Neptune (1989). Ring systems, it turned out, are common features of giant planets.

North Vietnamese forces launched a surprise attack on Ban Me Thuot, the capital of Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, on March 10, 1975, and captured the city within 32 hours. The speed of the victory stunned both Hanoi and Saigon. Ban Me Thuot was supposed to be a limited offensive to test South Vietnamese defenses; instead, its fall triggered a chain reaction of panic and collapse that ended the war in fifty-five days. The attack was planned by General Van Tien Dung, who had replaced the ailing Vo Nguyen Giap as North Vietnam's chief military strategist. Dung assembled approximately 25,000 troops from three divisions around Ban Me Thuot while staging diversionary attacks on Pleiku and Kontum to draw South Vietnamese attention northward. The deception worked: ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) intelligence failed to detect the main force until the assault was already underway. North Vietnamese infantry and armor struck Ban Me Thuot from multiple directions at 2:00 AM on March 10. The city's ARVN garrison, the 23rd Division, was undermanned and spread thin. Tanks penetrated the city center by mid-morning. By the evening of March 11, organized resistance had collapsed. South Vietnamese reinforcements from the 21st Ranger Group were ambushed en route and destroyed. Roughly 5,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed or captured. The fall of Ban Me Thuot forced South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu into a disastrous decision. On March 14, he ordered a withdrawal from the Central Highlands, intending to consolidate forces for the defense of coastal lowlands. The retreat, conducted along deteriorated Route 7B, became a rout. Tens of thousands of soldiers and refugees clogged the road, harassed by North Vietnamese fire. Most of the withdrawing forces were destroyed or scattered before reaching the coast. The collapse spread northward. Hue fell on March 25. Da Nang, South Vietnam's second-largest city, was abandoned on March 30 amid scenes of chaos as soldiers and civilians fought for space on evacuation ships and aircraft. Hanoi's Politburo, realizing the South was disintegrating faster than anyone had predicted, accelerated its timetable. The Ho Chi Minh Campaign aimed at Saigon was launched in early April. North Vietnamese tanks entered the presidential palace on April 30, 1975. Ban Me Thuot was the first domino. Its fall demonstrated that the South Vietnamese military, demoralized and under-supplied after the American withdrawal, could not hold against a determined conventional offensive.

The Nasdaq Composite Index closed at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, its all-time high, and began a decline that would erase $5 trillion in market value over the next two and a half years. The dot-com bubble had reached its maximum inflation. Companies with no revenue, no business model, and sometimes no product had been valued at billions of dollars on the theory that the internet would change everything and traditional financial metrics no longer applied. The internet did change everything. The financial metrics still applied. The bubble had been building since the mid-1990s, fueled by the commercialization of the World Wide Web, which Netscape's 1995 IPO had made investable. Venture capital poured into internet startups: online retailers, portal sites, social networks, pet food delivery services, web-based grocery stores, and companies whose business plans amounted to "get users, figure out revenue later." The Nasdaq, heavily weighted toward technology stocks, rose from under 1,000 in 1995 to over 5,000 by March 2000 — a five-fold increase in five years. Individual stories captured the mania. Pets.com, an online pet supply retailer, went public in February 2000, raised $82 million, and folded nine months later. Webvan, an online grocery delivery service, burned through $830 million before shutting down in 2001. TheGlobe.com had the largest first-day IPO gain in history in November 1998, rising 606 percent, and was delisted two years later. The correction began gradually. Several large tech companies reported disappointing earnings in March and April 2000. The Federal Reserve had been raising interest rates since June 1999. A Barron's cover story in March calculated that 51 internet companies would run out of cash within twelve months. Confidence evaporated over weeks rather than days. By October 2002, the Nasdaq had fallen to 1,114 — a decline of 78 percent from its peak. Amazon's stock dropped from $107 to $7. Cisco lost 86 percent of its value. Intel fell 80 percent. Hundreds of companies that had gone public during the bubble simply ceased to exist. The dot-com crash wiped out a generation of retail investors, destroyed the retirement savings of technology workers who had been paid in stock options, and demonstrated that speculative manias follow the same pattern whether the underlying asset is tulip bulbs, railway stocks, or website traffic. The Nasdaq did not return to its March 2000 high until April 2015 — fifteen years later.

Rome's treasury was empty, its citizens were exhausted, and the First Punic War had dragged on for 23 years when a group of wealthy Romans did something extraordinary: they funded a fleet out of their own pockets. The 200 warships they paid for destroyed the Carthaginian navy at the Battle of the Aegates Islands on March 10, 241 BC, ending the longest continuous war in ancient history and transforming Rome from an Italian land power into the dominant force in the western Mediterranean. The First Punic War had begun in 264 BC over control of Sicily, the rich granary island between Italy and North Africa. Rome, which had no naval tradition, built its first fleet from scratch by copying a captured Carthaginian warship, famously adding the corvus, a boarding bridge that turned naval engagements into infantry fights where Rome's legionaries had the advantage. Rome won early naval victories but suffered catastrophic losses to storms: at least 500 ships and 100,000 men were lost to weather between 255 and 249 BC. By the late 240s, both sides were financially exhausted. Rome had disbanded most of its fleet. Carthage maintained a garrison in western Sicily under the brilliant general Hamilcar Barca (father of Hannibal), who conducted an effective guerrilla campaign from Mount Eryx. The war had settled into a stalemate that neither side could break. The private fleet, organized by Roman citizens who lent the money to the state on the condition that it would be repaid from the spoils of victory, consisted of approximately 200 quinqueremes modeled on a fast Carthaginian warship captured years earlier. The consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus trained the crews through the winter of 242-241 BC and blockaded the Carthaginian base at Lilybaeum. Carthage assembled a supply fleet of roughly 250 ships loaded with grain and reinforcements for Hamilcar. On March 10, 241 BC, the fleets met near the Aegates Islands off Sicily's western tip. The Roman ships, lighter and better trained, smashed the heavily laden Carthaginian vessels. Fifty Carthaginian ships were sunk, and seventy captured. The remaining ships fled to Carthage. Hamilcar, cut off from supplies, negotiated peace. Carthage evacuated Sicily, paid an indemnity of 3,200 talents over ten years, and ceded its first territorial loss in centuries. Rome gained its first overseas province. The private citizens who funded the fleet were repaid. Their investment had bought Rome an empire.