March 23 in History

Muhammad was an Arab religious, military, and political leader, and the founder of Islam. According to Islam, he was the final prophet of God who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets in Islam. He is believed by Muslims to be the Seal of the Prophets, and along with the Quran, his teachings and normative examples form the basis for Islamic religious belief.

The Trần dynasty was a Vietnamese dynasty that ruled Đại Việt from 1225 to 1400. The dynasty was founded when emperor Trần Thái Tông ascended to the throne after his uncle Trần Thủ Độ orchestrated the overthrow of the Lý dynasty. The Trần dynasty defeated three Mongol invasions, most notably during the decisive Battle of Bạch Đằng River in 1288. During its final decades, several succession crises and invasions from Champa severely weakened the dynasty. In 1398, emperor Trần Thuận Tông was forced to cede the throne to his three-year-old son Thiếu Đế, who in turn was forced to abdicate in 1400 in favor of the minister Hồ Quý Ly.

The Abbey Church of Waltham Holy Cross and St Lawrence, also known as Waltham Abbey or Waltham Abbey Church, is the parish church of the town of Waltham Abbey, Essex, England. It has been a place of worship since the 7th century. The present building dates mainly from the early 12th century and is an example of Norman architecture. To the east of the existing church are traces of an enormous eastward enlargement of the building, begun following the re-foundation of the abbey in 1177. In the Late Middle Ages, Waltham was one of the largest church buildings in England and a major site of pilgrimage; in 1540 it was the last religious community to be closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is still the parish church for the town, and is a grade I listed building. The monastic buildings and those parts of the church east of the crossing were demolished at the Dissolution, and the Norman crossing tower and transepts collapsed in 1553. The present-day church consists of the nave of the Norman abbey church, the 14th-century lady chapel and west wall, and a 16th-century west tower, added after the dissolution. King Harold Godwinson, who died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, is said to be buried in the present churchyard.

The Peace of Longjumeau (also known as the Treaty of Longjumeau or the Edict of Longjumeau) was signed on 23 March 1568 by Charles IX of France and Catherine de' Medici. The edict brought to an end the brief second war of the French Wars of Religion with terms that largely confirmed those of the prior edict of Amboise. Unlike the previous edict, it would not be sent to the Parlements to examine prior to its publication, due to what the crown had felt was obstructionism the last time. The edict would not last, however, as it was overturned later in the year by the Edict of Saint-Maur which outlawed Protestantism at the beginning of the third war of religion.

The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence or simply the American Revolution, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and, commanded by George Washington, defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation. In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of the Stamp and Townshend Acts. The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, George III declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4. In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston. British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton. In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility. France signed a commercial agreement with the revolutionaries, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against British-allied factions of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also Iroquois). Native American raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans. Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American army in Yorktown, Virginia, in September and October 1781. The French navy cut off Cornwallis's escape and he was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end. The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain, and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.

Tsar, also spelled czar, tzar or csar ( ), is a Slavic title derived from the Latin word caesar. It was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the term—a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official—but was usually considered by Western Europeans to be equivalent to "king".

The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River's drainage basin west of the river. In return for $15 million, or approximately $18 per square mile ($7/km2), the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi of land now in the Central United States. However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers.

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence fought by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire from 1821 to 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted by the British Empire, the Kingdom of France, and the Russian Empire, while the Ottomans were aided by their vassals, especially by the Eyalet of Egypt. The war led to the formation of modern Greece, which in subsequent years would be expanded to its current size. The revolution is commemorated by Greeks in Greece and the Greek diaspora on 25 March, as Independence Day. All Greek territory, except the Ionian Islands, came under Ottoman rule in the 15th century, in the decades surrounding the Fall of Constantinople. During the following centuries, there were sporadic but unsuccessful Greek uprisings against Ottoman rule. In 1814, a secret organization called the Filiki Eteria (Society of Friends) was founded by Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanuil Xanthos, and Athanasios Tsakalov with the aim of liberating Greece. It planned to launch revolts in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities, and Constantinople. The insurrection was planned for 25 March 1821, the Orthodox Christian Feast of the Annunciation. However, the plans were discovered by the Ottoman authorities, forcing it to start earlier. The first revolt began on 21 February 1821 in the Danubian Principalities, but it was soon put down by the Ottomans. These events urged Greeks in the Peloponnese into action and on 17 March 1821, the Maniots were first to declare war. In September 1821, the Greeks, under the leadership of Theodoros Kolokotronis, captured Tripolitsa. Revolts in Crete, Macedonia, and Central Greece broke out, but were suppressed. Greek fleets achieved success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea. Tensions developed among Greek factions, leading to two consecutive civil wars. The Ottoman Sultan called in Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who agreed to send his son, Ibrahim Pasha, to Greece with an army to suppress the revolt in return for territorial gains. Ibrahim landed in the Peloponnese in February 1825 and brought most of the peninsula under Egyptian control by the end of that year. Though an Ottoman–Egyptian invasion of Mani failed, Athens fell, and revolutionary morale decreased. The three great powers—Russia, Britain, and France—decided to intervene, sending their naval squadrons to Greece in 1827. They destroyed the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino, and turned the tide in favor of the revolutionaries. In 1828, the Egyptian army withdrew under pressure from a French expeditionary force. The Ottoman garrisons in the Peloponnese surrendered and the Greek revolutionaries retook central Greece. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia allowing for the Russian army to move into the Balkans. This forced the Ottomans to accept Greek autonomy in the Treaty of Adrianople and semi-autonomy for Serbia and the Romanian principalities. After nine years of war, Greece was recognized as an independent state under the London Protocol of February 1830. Further negotiations in 1832 led to the London Conference and the Treaty of Constantinople, which defined the final borders of the new state and established Prince Otto of Bavaria as the first king of Greece. The slogan of the revolution, Eleftheria i thanatos 'Freedom or death', became Greece's national motto.

The 1839 Ava earthquake, also known as the Amarapura earthquake or Inwa earthquake, was a disastrous seismic event that struck present-day central Myanmar on March 23. This earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude as high as 8.3, was one of the largest in the country, since 1762. It was assigned a maximum of XI (Extreme) on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale, and was felt in Rangoon and Bhamo. Damage was enormous in Ava, resulting in the death of hundreds.

The John Wickliffe was the first ship to arrive carrying Scottish settlers, including Otago settlement founder Captain William Cargill, in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. The ship was named after the religious reformer, John Wycliffe.

Elisha Graves Otis (August 3, 1811 – April 8, 1861) 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 American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

The University of California (UC) is California's system of public research universities. Headquartered in Oakland, the system is composed of ten campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. The system is the state's land-grant university. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public postsecondary education plan, which also includes the California Community Colleges and California State University systems. The ten campuses have a combined enrollment of 299,407 students, with 26,100 faculty members and 192,400 staff members, and more than 2.5 million alumni. Nine campuses enroll undergraduate and graduate students, while UC San Francisco enrolls only graduate and professional students in the medical and health sciences. The University of California College of the Law, San Francisco is legally affiliated with the University of California and shares its name, but operates autonomously. The University of California manages or co-manages three national laboratories for the United States Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The university is governed by a Board of Regents, whose autonomy from the rest of the state government is protected by the Constitution of California. The University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, in Oakland after acquiring the assets of the College of California. It moved to Berkeley in 1873. The university also affiliated with independent medical and law schools in San Francisco. Over the following decades, it established branch locations and satellite programs elsewhere in the state, while Berkeley remained its only campus. Beginning in March 1951, the University of California began reorganizing its administration to separate the Berkeley campus from the university-wide administration. UC president Robert Gordon Sproul remained the system's chief executive, while Clark Kerr became Berkeley's first chancellor and Raymond B. Allen became the first chancellor of an independently administered University of California, Los Angeles. However, the reorganization faced resistance from Sproul and his allies and was not completed during his presidency. After Kerr succeeded Sproul as UC president, the university was reorganized as a multicampus system between 1957 and 1960. Chancellors were appointed at additional campuses, and the campuses received greater administrative autonomy. Eight of the campuses are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won 75 Nobel Prizes as of 2025.

The War of the Pacific (Spanish: Guerra del Pacífico), also known by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert, the war ended with victory for Chile, which gained a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia. The war demonstrated Chile's military-technological superiority over its opponents at the time. The direct cause of the war was a nitrate taxation dispute between Bolivia and Chile, with Peru being drawn in due to its secret alliance with Bolivia. Some historians have pointed to deeper origins of the war, such as the interest of Chile and Peru in the nitrate business, a long-standing rivalry between Chile and Peru for regional hegemony, as well as the political and economical disparities between the stability of Chile and the volatility of Peru and Bolivia. In February 1878, Bolivia increased taxes on the Chilean mining company Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta (CSFA), in violation of the Boundary Treaty of 1874 which established the border between both countries and prohibited tax increases for mining. Chile protested the violation of the treaty and requested international arbitration, but the Bolivian government, presided by Hilarión Daza, considered this an internal issue subject to the jurisdiction of the Bolivian courts. Chile insisted that the breach of the treaty would mean that the territorial borders denoted in it were no longer settled. Despite this, Hilarión Daza rescinded the license of the Chilean company, seized its assets and put it up for auction. On the day of the auction, 14 February 1879, Chile's armed forces occupied without resistance the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta, which was mostly inhabited by Chilean miners. War was declared between Bolivia and Chile on 1 March 1879, and between Chile and Peru on 5 April 1879. Battles were fought on the Pacific Ocean, in the Atacama Desert, the Peruvian deserts, and the mountainous interior of Peru. For the first five months, the war played out in a naval campaign, as Chile struggled to establish a marine resupply corridor for its forces in the world's driest desert. Afterwards, Chile's land campaign overcame the Bolivian and Peruvian armies. Bolivia withdrew after the Battle of Tacna, on 26 May 1880, leaving allied Peru fighting alone for most of the war. Chilean forces occupied Peru's capital Lima in January 1881. Remnants and irregulars of the Peruvian army waged a guerrilla war but could not prevent war-weary Peruvian factions from reaching a peace deal with Chile involving territorial cessions. Chile and Peru signed the Treaty of Ancón on 20 October 1883. Bolivia signed a truce with Chile in 1884. Chile acquired the Peruvian territory of Tarapacá, the disputed Bolivian department of Litoral (turning Bolivia into a landlocked country), and temporary control over the Peruvian provinces of Tacna and Arica. In 1904, Chile and Bolivia signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which established definite boundaries. The 1929 Tacna–Arica compromise gave Arica to Chile and Tacna to Peru.

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. The Qing armies performed better than in their other nineteenth-century wars. Although French forces emerged victorious from most engagements, the Qing scored noteworthy successes on land, notably forcing the French to hastily withdraw from occupied Lạng Sơn in the late stages of the war, thus gaining control of the town and its surroundings. However, a lack of foreign support, French naval supremacy, and northern threats posed by Russia and Japan forced the Qing to enter negotiations. The Qing ceded to France its sphere of influence over Northern and Central Vietnam, which respectively became the protectorates of Tonkin and Annam. Both sides ratified the Treaty of Tientsin and no diplomatic gain was reaped by either nation. On another note, the war strengthened the dominance of Empress Dowager Cixi over the Qing government but France securing its strategic objective did not prevent the collapse of French Prime Minister Jules Ferry's government for whom the Tonkin Affair was ignominious.

The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, it is the oldest football league in the world, and was the top-level football league in England from its foundation until 1992, when the top 22 clubs split from it to form the Premier League. The Football League was rebranded as the "English Football League" (EFL) starting with the 2016–17 season. The EFL is divided into the Championship, League One and League Two, with 24 clubs in each division, 72 in total, with promotion and relegation between them; the top Championship division clubs change places with the lowest-placed clubs in the Premier League, and the bottom clubs of League Two with the top clubs of the National League. Currently four of the EFL clubs are from Wales – Cardiff City, Swansea City, Wrexham and Newport County – the other 68 are located in England. The Football League had a sponsor from the 1983–84 season, and thus was known by various names. The English Football also organises two knock-out cup competitions, the EFL Cup and the EFL Trophy. The operations centre of the Football League is in Preston, while its commercial office is in London.

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.

Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy (Spanish: [eˈmiljo aɣiˈnaldo j ˈfami]: March 22, 1869 – February 6, 1964) was a Filipino revolutionary, politician, and military leader who served as president of the Philippines from 1899 to 1901, and the president of the first constitutional republic in Asia. He led Philippine forces first against Spain in the Philippine Revolution (1896–1898), then in the Spanish–American War (1898), and later against the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1901). He is regarded in the Philippines as the country's first president during the period of the First Philippine Republic, although his presidency was not widely recognized outside of the revolutionary Philippines. Aguinaldo is known as a national hero in the Philippines, and designed the flag of the Philippines. However, he was also involved in the deaths of the revolutionary leader Andrés Bonifacio and general Antonio Luna. In World War II, he collaborated as a puppet leader with the Empire of Japan during its occupation of the Philippines.

Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (Greek: Ελευθέριος Κυριάκου Βενιζέλος, romanized: Eleuthérios Kyriákou Venizélos, pronounced [elefˈθeri.os cirˈʝaku veniˈzelos]; 23 August [O.S. 11 August] 1864 – 18 March 1936) was a Greek statesman and 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. A prominent figure of the 1897 Cretan Revolt, Venizelos first made his mark on the international stage with his leading role in securing the autonomy of the Cretan State, and later in the island's union with Greece. He led the Theriso revolt in 1905 and the declaration of union with Greece following the Young Turk Revolution. In 1909, he was invited to Athens to resolve the political deadlock and became Prime Minister. He initiated constitutional and economic reforms that set the basis for the modernization of Greek society, culminating in the transformative 1911 Constitution, and of the Greek Army and the Greek Navy in preparation for future conflicts. Before the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Venizelos' catalytic role helped Greece to gain entrance to the Balkan League, an alliance of the Balkan states against the Ottoman Empire. Through his diplomatic acumen with the Great Powers and with the other Balkan countries, Greece doubled its area and population with the liberation of Macedonia, Epirus, and most of the Aegean islands. In World War I (1914–1918), he brought Greece on the side of the Allies, further expanding the Greek borders. However, his pro-Allied foreign policy brought him into conflict with the nonaligned faction of Constantine I of Greece, causing the National Schism of the 1910s. The Schism became an unofficial civil war of the pro-Venizelos northern provisional government and the pro-royal government of Athens, with the struggle for power between them polarizing the population between the royalists and Venizelists for decades. Following the Allied victory, Venizelos secured new territorial concessions in Western Anatolia and Thrace in an attempt to accomplish the Megali Idea, which would have united all Greek-speaking people along the Aegean Sea under the banner of Greece. He was, however, defeated in the 1920 General Election, which contributed to the eventual Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22). Venizelos, in self-imposed exile, represented Greece in the negotiations that led to the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne and the agreement of a mutual population exchange between Greece and Turkey. As a leading figure of the Second Republic, Venizelos returned to active politics with a landslide victory in the 1928 elections. His final tenure focused on improving relations with Turkey, resettlement policies for refugees from Asia Minor, anti-communism and responding to the Great Depression. After electoral defeats in 1932 and 1933, In January of that year, Venizelos became prime minister for the last time, before a failed coup attempt tried to keep him in power. In March 1935, after a second coup attempt, he was sentenced to death in absentia, after having fled to Paris, where he died. Under his leadership, Greece underwent profound modernization through liberal-democratic policies. His diplomatic and military efforts expanded Greece's territory, marking a shift in the country's orientation from East to West. Venizelos achieved international fame in his lifetime, and is often called "The Maker of Modern Greece" for his transformative role. His legacy as the "Ethnarch" continues to endure.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Previously serving for six months as vice president under William McKinley, Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901. He was 42 years old upon his first inauguration, making him the youngest person to hold the office. A sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt overcame health problems through a regime of vigorous exercise, which he called "the strenuous life". He was homeschooled and began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard University. His book The Naval War of 1812 established his reputation as a historian and popular writer. Roosevelt became leader of the reform faction of Republicans in the New York State Legislature. After the simultaneous deaths of his first wife Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt and mother Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, he recuperated by buying and operating a cattle ranch in the Dakotas. Roosevelt served as the assistant secretary of the Navy under McKinley, and in 1898 helped plan the successful naval war against Spain. He resigned to help form and lead the Rough Riders, a unit that fought the Spanish Army in Cuba to great publicity. Returning a war hero, Roosevelt was elected New York's governor in 1898. Because the New York state party leadership disliked his ambitious state agenda, they convinced McKinley to choose him as his running mate in the 1900 presidential election. The McKinley–Roosevelt ticket won a landslide victory. As a leader of the progressive movement, Roosevelt championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies after taking over as president, which called for fairness for all citizens, breaking corporate trusts, regulating railroads, and pure food and drugs. His pursuit of antitrust litigation in particular earned him the nickname "the Trust Buster". Roosevelt prioritized conservation and established national parks, forests, and monuments to preserve U.S. natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, beginning construction of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt expanded the U.S. Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project naval power. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize. He was elected to a full term in 1904 and convinced William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War, to succeed him in 1908. Roosevelt grew frustrated with Taft's brand of conservatism yet failed to win the 1912 Republican presidential nomination. He founded the Bull Moose Party and ran in 1912; the split allowed the Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. Roosevelt led a four-month expedition to the Amazon basin, where he nearly died of tropical disease. During World War I, he criticized Wilson for keeping the U.S. out; his offer to lead volunteers to France was rejected. Roosevelt's health deteriorated and he died in 1919. Polls of historians and political scientists rank him as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

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.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, including those in war crimes and genocides. The war also helped spread the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including the first large-scale use of machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.

Milan is the capital and largest city of the region of Lombardy, in northern Italy, and the seat of the Metropolitan City of Milan. It is the second-largest city in Italy after the country’s capital, 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.

Bhagat Singh (27 September 1907 – 23 March 1931) was an Indian anti-colonial revolutionary who participated in the mistaken murder of a junior British police officer in December 1928 in what was intended to be retaliation for the death of an Indian nationalist. He later took part in a largely symbolic bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi and a hunger strike in jail, which—on the back of sympathetic coverage in Indian-owned newspapers—turned him into a household name in the Punjab region, and, after his execution at age 23, a martyr and folk hero in Northern India. Borrowing ideas from Bolshevism and anarchism, the charismatic Bhagat Singh electrified a growing militancy in India in the 1930s and prompted urgent introspection within the Indian National Congress's nonviolent, and eventually successful, campaign for India's independence. In December 1928, Bhagat Singh and an associate, Shivaram Rajguru, both members of a small revolutionary group, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (also Army, or HSRA), shot dead a 21-year-old British police officer, John P. Saunders, in Lahore, Punjab, in what is today Pakistan, mistaking Saunders, who was still on probation, for the British senior police superintendent, James Scott, whom they had intended to assassinate. They held Scott responsible for the death of a popular Indian nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai for having ordered a lathi (baton) charge in which Rai was injured and two weeks thereafter died of a heart attack. As Saunders exited a police station on a motorcycle, he was felled by a single bullet fired from across the street by Rajguru, a marksman. As he lay injured, he was shot at close range several times by Singh, the postmortem report showing eight bullet wounds. Another associate of Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, shot dead an Indian police head constable, Channan Singh, who attempted to give chase as Singh and Rajguru fled. After having escaped, Bhagat Singh and his associates used pseudonyms to publicly announce avenging Lajpat Rai's death, putting up prepared posters that they had altered to show John Saunders as their intended target instead of James Scott. Singh was thereafter on the run for many months, and no convictions resulted at the time. Surfacing again in April 1929, he and another associate, Batukeshwar Dutt, set off two low-intensity homemade bombs among some unoccupied benches of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. They showered leaflets from the gallery on the legislators below, shouted slogans, and allowed the authorities to arrest them. The arrest, and the resulting publicity, brought to light Singh's complicity in the John Saunders case. Awaiting trial, Singh gained public sympathy after he joined fellow defendant Jatin Das in a hunger strike, demanding better prison conditions for Indian prisoners, the strike ending in Das's death from starvation in September 1929. Bhagat Singh was convicted of the murder of John Saunders and Channan Singh, and hanged in March 1931, aged 23. He became a popular folk hero after his death. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote about him: "Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol; the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of the Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name." In still later years, Singh, an atheist and socialist in adulthood, won admirers in India from among a political spectrum that included both communists and right-wing Hindu nationalists. Although many of Singh's associates, as well as many Indian anti-colonial revolutionaries, were also involved in daring acts and were either executed or died violent deaths, few came to be lionised in popular art and literature as did Singh, who is sometimes referred to as the Shaheed-e-Azam ("Great martyr" in Urdu and Punjabi).

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. Under the Weimar Constitution of 1919, the Reichstag was elected every four years by universal, equal, secret and direct suffrage, using a system of party-list proportional representation. All citizens who had reached the age of 20 were allowed to vote, including women but excluding soldiers on active duty. The Reichstag voted on the laws of the Reich and was responsible for the budget, questions of war and peace, and confirmation of state treaties. Oversight of the Reich government (the ministers responsible for executing the laws) also resided with the Reichstag. It could force individual ministers or the entire government to resign by means of a vote of no confidence, and under Article 48 of the constitution it could rescind emergency decrees issued by the President. The President could dissolve the Reichstag under Article 25 of the constitution, but only once for the same reason. The Reichstag as a free and democratic institution ceased to exist following the passage of the Enabling Act of 1933 which granted Adolf Hitler's government the power to draft and enforce laws as he pleased.

The Constitution of the Philippines, also known as the 1987 Constitution, is the supreme law of the Philippines. Its final draft was completed by the Constitutional Commission on October 12, 1986, and ratified by a nationwide plebiscite on February 2, 1987. The Constitution remains unamended to this day.

The interwar Kingdom of Hungary, referred to retrospectively as the Regency and the Horthy era, existed as a country from 1920 to 1946 under the rule of Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, who officially represented the Hungarian monarchy. 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.

The Lahore Resolution, later called the Pakistan Resolution, was a formal political declaration, adopted by the All-India Muslim League on 23 March 1940, that served as the foundational basis for the Pakistan Movement. It was adopted during the League's three-day general session in Lahore, Punjab, from 22 to 24 March 1940, calling for "independent states" in the Muslim-majority regions of British India. The resolution was written and prepared by a nine-member subcommittee of the Muslim League; presented by A. K. Fazlul Huq, the Prime Minister of Bengal; and approved by the General Session of the Muslim League. The resolution mainly called for independent sovereign states: That geographically contiguous units are demarcated regions which should be constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute 'independent states' in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign.Although the name "Pakistan" had been proposed by Choudhary Rahmat Ali in his 1933 Pakistan Declaration, it was not until after the resolution that it began to be widely used. Muhammad Ali Jinnah's address to the Lahore conference was, according to Stanley Wolpert, the moment when Jinnah, once a proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, irrevocably committed to force the creation of an independent Pakistan.

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 in the world 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.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL is a United Nations peacekeeping mission established on 19 March 1978 by United Nations Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426, and resolution 1701 in 2006 to restore peace and security along the Israel-Lebanon border.

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.

Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in northern Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the south and the Gulf of Honduras to the northeast.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 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.

Tijuana is the most populous city of the Mexican state of Baja California, located on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico. It is the municipal seat of the Tijuana Municipality, the hub of the Tijuana metropolitan area and the most populous city in northern Mexico. Tijuana is just south of California and is adjacent to the Mexico–United States border which is part of the San Diego–Tijuana metro area.

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 since. Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft with over 4,600 built since 1976.

Aeroflot Flight 593 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia, to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. On 23 March 1994, the aircraft operating the route, an Airbus A310 flown by Aeroflot, crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in Kemerovo Oblast, killing all 63 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, formerly 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.

Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country located in the central region of South America. It borders Bolivia to the northwest and north, Brazil to the northeast and east, and Argentina to the southeast, south, and west. Paraguay has access to the Atlantic Ocean via the Paraná–Paraguay Waterway, a system of navigable channels shared by five countries. The country is governed as a unitary presidential republic composed of a capital district and seventeen departments. Its capital and largest city is Asunción. It dates its independence from Spain to 1811.

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.

The Battle of Nasiriyah was fought between the US 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Iraqi forces from 23 March to 2 April 2003 during the US-led invasion of Iraq. On the night of 24–25 March, the bulk of the Marines of Regimental Combat Team 1 passed through the city over the bridges and attacked north towards Baghdad. Other elements remained in the city to fight its defenders, who put up stiff resistance and inflicted several dozen casualties on coalition forces, more than in most other battles during the invasion. Resistance ceased on 1 April.

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.

FedEx Express Flight 80 was a scheduled cargo flight from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, China, to Narita International Airport, Japan, operated by FedEx Express. At 06:48 JST (UTC+09:00) on 23 March 2009, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 registered N526FE operating the flight crashed while attempting a landing on Runway 34L in gusty and highly variable weather conditions, including winds in excess of 40 knots (74 km/h). The aircraft became destabilized after the fatigued co-pilot's delayed start of the landing flare, subsequently exacerbated by his excessively large, nose-down inputs causing abrupt changes in the plane's pitch, increasing the speed and severity of repeated touchdowns during the bounced landing. This resulted in a structural failure of the landing gear and airframe, with the left wing detaching and power of the jet on the right wing thus causing the plane to roll. The plane came to a stop off of the runway, with the plane inverted and on fire. The captain and first officer, who were the only occupants, survived the initial crash. The airport's rescue crew got the pilots out of the aircraft and tried getting them to a hospital, but the crew succumbed to their injuries before they could receive medical attention.

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 World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has six regional offices and 150 field offices worldwide. Only sovereign states are eligible to join, and it is the largest intergovernmental health organization at the international level.

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.

Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country situated primarily in Central Asia, with a portion of its territory extending into Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbekistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, and it has a coastline along the Caspian Sea. The capital is Astana, and the country's largest city and principal cultural and economic center is Almaty, which served as the capital until 1997.

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 prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet, and selects its ministers. Modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, so they are invariably members of Parliament.

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.

The Israel Defense Forces, alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym Tzahal (צה״ל), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and the Israeli Navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security apparatus. The IDF is headed by the chief of the general staff, who is subordinate to the defense minister.

On 23 March 2026, a Colombian Aerospace Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules crashed into dense jungle while taking off from Caucayá Airport in Puerto Leguízamo en route to Tres de Mayo Airport in Puerto Asís, both located in Colombia's Putumayo department near the border with Peru and Ecuador. There were 126 people on board, of whom 69 were killed, and 57 survived with injuries. It is the second deadliest crash in the history of the Colombian Aerospace Force and is the deadliest aviation crash of 2026.