March 23 in History

Elisha Graves Otis was an American industrialist and founder of the Otis Elevator Company. In 1853, he invented a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails. On March 23, 1857, he installed the first safety elevator for passenger service in the store of E.V. Haughwout & Co. in New York City.

The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, the system is composed of its ten campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic centers abroad. The system is the state's land-grant university.

The Sino-French or Franco-Chinese War, also known as the Tonkin War, was a limited conflict fought from August 1884 to April 1885 between the French Third Republic and the Qing dynasty for influence in Vietnam. There was no declaration of war.

Ahmadiyya, officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at is an Islamic messianic movement originating in British India in the late 19th century. It was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who said he had been divinely appointed as both the promised Messiah and Mahdi expected by Muslims to appear towards the end times and bring about, by peaceful means, the final triumph of Islam; as well as to embody, in this capacity, the expected eschatological figure of other major religious traditions. Adherents of the Ahmadiyya—a term adopted expressly in reference to Muhammad's alternative name Ahmad—are known as Ahmadi Muslims or simply Ahmadis.

Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos was a Cretan Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. As the leader of the Liberal Party, Venizelos served as prime minister of Greece for over 12 years, spanning eight terms from 1910 to 1933.

On March 23, 1913—Easter Sunday—a devastating tornado outbreak affected the northern Great Plains and sections of the Upper Midwest, lasting approximately 31⁄2 hours. It was the most violent tornado outbreak to affect the northern Great Plains on so early a date in the year—a record that still stands as of 2020. That day, four F4 tornadoes affected portions of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, killing at least 168 people. The deadliest tornado of the day was a violent tornado, retroactively rated F4 on the present-day Fujita scale, that grew to 1⁄4 mile (440 yd) in width as it passed through northern Omaha, Nebraska, killing at least 94 people in the city proper and three in rural areas. Damage in Omaha reached at least F4, possibly even F5, intensity, though confirmation of F5 damage could not be determined from available evidence. The tornado is the 13th deadliest ever to affect the United States and the deadliest to hit the U.S. state of Nebraska as of 2024. No other violent tornado would affect Omaha for another 62 years. Outside the Great Plains, the outbreak of March 23 also produced two other F4 tornadoes, one each in Missouri and Indiana, including a devastating path more than 1⁄2 mi (880 yd) through southern Terre Haute, Indiana, killing 21 people and injuring 250. In all, tornadoes struck Nebraska, Iowa, Louisiana, Indiana, and Missouri, though only significant events were recorded and other, weaker tornadoes may have gone undetected.

Milan is the regional capital of Lombardy, in northern Italy, and the seat of the Metropolitan City of Milan. It is the second-most populous city in Italy after Rome, with a population of 1,362,863 in 2026. The city's wider metropolitan area is the largest in Italy, and the fourth-largest in the European Union, with an estimated population of 6.55 million. Milan is considered Italy's economic capital, and its metropolitan area accounts for about 20% of the country's GDP.

The Reichstag of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was Germany's parliament. The Reichstag convened for the first time on 24 June 1920, taking over from the Weimar National Assembly, which had served as an interim parliament following the collapse of the German Empire in November 1918. Its counterpart, representing the states, was the Reichsrat.

The interwar Kingdom of Hungary, referred to retrospectively as the Regency, the Horthy era, the Horthy regime, and Horthyist Hungary, was the Hungarian state under a monarchy from 1920 to 1946 under the rule of Miklós Horthy for most of its existence, who officially represented the Hungarian monarchy after a period of revolutions and the counter-revolution as the Regent of Hungary. In reality there was no king, and attempts by King Charles IV to return to the throne shortly before his death were prevented by Horthy.

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor.

The Nixon interviews were a series of conversations between former American president Richard Nixon and British journalist David Frost, produced by John Birt. They were recorded and broadcast on television and radio in four programs in 1977. The interviews later became the central subject of Peter Morgan's play Frost/Nixon in 2006.

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador; he served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago de María, and finally as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. As archbishop, Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government and left-wing insurgents that led to the Salvadoran Civil War. In 1980, Romero was fatally shot by an assassin while celebrating Mass. Though no one was ever convicted for the crime, investigations by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, a death squad leader and later founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party, had ordered the killing.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the Star Wars program, was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic nuclear missiles. The program was announced in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD), which he described as a "suicide pact". Reagan called for a system that would end MAD and render nuclear weapons obsolete. Elements of the program reemerged in 2019 under the Space Development Agency (SDA).

The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was a rebel group that fought a failed eleven-year war in Sierra Leone, beginning in 1991 and ending in 2002. It later transformed into a political party, which still exists today. The three most senior surviving leaders, Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon, and Augustine Gbao, were convicted in February 2009 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic multirole fourth-generation fighter aircraft developed by General Dynamics and produced by multiple companies, including General Dynamics until 1993 and Lockheed Martin until 2017. Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft with over 4,600 built since 1976. Although the original versions are no longer in production, improved versions of the Lockheed Martin F-16V Viper family are being built and upgraded for export in a new production facility of Lockheed Martin. As of 2026, it is the world's most common fixed-wing aircraft in military service, with 2,102 from the F-16 family operational, comprising 15% of all active combat aircraft.

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of 35,808 square kilometers, with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined territories under ROC control consist of 168 islands in total covering 36,193 square kilometers. The largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei, New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.

Mir was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russian Federation. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, only being succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir's deorbiting in 2001. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is an international airport that serves Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state of Telangana. It is located in Shamshabad, about 24 kilometres (15 mi) south of Hyderabad and it was opened on 23 March 2008 to replace Begumpet Airport, which was till then the sole civilian airport serving Hyderabad. It is owned and operated by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL), a public–private consortium. It was the first airport in India to launch domestic e-boarding facility in December 2015, followed with international e-boarding facility in October 2020, and ranked in AirHelp's list of top 10 airports in the world. The fourth-busiest airport in India by passenger traffic, it handled over 29 million passengers and over 167,660 tonnes of cargo between April 2024 and March 2025.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and informally known as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Together with amendments made to it by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, it represents the U.S. healthcare system's most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Most of the act remains in effect.

The president of Peru, officially the constitutional president of the Republic of Peru, is the head of state and head of government of Peru. The president is the head of the executive branch and is the supreme head of the Armed Forces and National Police of Peru. The office of president corresponds to the highest magistracy in the country, making the president the highest-ranking public official in Peru. Due to broadly interpreted impeachment wording in the 1993 Constitution of Peru, the Congress of Peru can impeach the president without cause, effectively making the executive branch subject to the legislature.

The Battle of Baghuz Fawqani was an offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), assisted by Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) coalition airstrikes, artillery, and special forces personnel, that began on 9 February 2019 as part of the Deir ez-Zor campaign of the Syrian Civil War. The battle—which was composed of a series of ground assaults—took place in and around the Syrian town of Al-Baghuz Fawqani in the Middle Euphrates River Valley near the Iraq–Syria border, and was the territorial last stand of the Islamic State (IS) in eastern Syria.

The Suez Canal was blocked for six days from 23 to 29 March 2021 by the Ever Given, a container ship that had run aground in the canal. The 400-metre-long (1,300 ft), 224,000-ton, 20,000 TEU vessel was buffeted by strong winds on the morning of 23 March, and ended up wedged across the waterway with its bow and stern stuck on opposite canal banks, blocking all traffic until it could be freed. Egyptian authorities said that "technical or human errors" may have also been involved. The obstruction occurred south of the two-channel section of the canal, so other ships could not pass. The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) hired Royal Boskalis through its subsidiary Smit International to manage marine salvage operations. The blockage of one of the world's busiest trade routes slowed trade between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, tying up goods worth an estimated US$9.6 billion per day. By 28 March, at least 369 ships were queuing to pass through the canal.