Born on this Day 15th March
1275 Margaret of England
1916 Harry James
1924 Sabu
1932 Judd Hirsch
1941 Mike Love
1944 Sly Stone
1946 Lynda La Plante
1949 John Duttine
1962 Terence Trent D’Arby
1971 Penny Lancaster
1985 Tom Chilton
1985 Curtis Davies

Died on this Day
44BC Julius Caesar
1975 Aristotle Onassis
2003 Dame Thora Hird

Music

1975 T Rex were disbanded by Marc Bolan.

1975 The Goodies entered the UK charts with their infectious hit ‘Funky Gibbon’.

1980 The Clash’s semi-documentary film ‘Rude Boy’ premiered in London.

1984 The remaining Beatles were made freemen of the city of Liverpool.

Sport

1877 Australia played England at Melbourne in the first test match, with Australia eventually winning by 45 runs

1992 New Zealand beat England by 7 wickets in the Cricket World Cup, bringing to an end England’s unbeaten run of 12 day internationals.

People & Showbiz

1964 In Montreal, Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor

1995 Former Cabinet minister David Mellor was considering a £200,000 offer to become a presenter on Talk Radio UK.

General Events

44 BC Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

1493 Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first New World voyage

1909 American tycoon GS Selfridge opened the first department store in London’s Oxford Street.

1937 America’s first blood bank was set up in Chicago.

1938 Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia

1984 Jean Jones from Merry Hill, Wolverhampton became the first British patient to receive a combined heart and lung transplant.

1985 The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

1988 Nigel Lawson introduced a radical budget, with the basic rate of tax cut to 25 pence in the pound and the top rate slashed from 60 to 40 per cent.

1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.