March 31

1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1651 – Great earthquake at Cuzco, Peru
1850 – US population hits 23,191,876
1861 – Confederacy takes over mint at New Orleans
1870 – First black man to vote in US was Thomas P Mundy of Perth Amboy, NJ
1880 – First town completely illuminated by electric lighting was Wabash, Indiana
1889 – 300m Eiffel Tower officially opens. It commemorates French Revolution
1917 – US purchases Danish West Indies for $25M and renames them Virgin Islands
1932 – Ford publicly unveils its V-8 engine
1953 – US Department of Health, Education & Welfare established. Probably about to be dismantled.
1954 – USSR offers to join NATO
1958 – USSR suspends nuclear weapons tests and urges US and Britain to do same. Ancient history
1959 – Dalai Lama fled China was granted political asylum in India
1965 – US ordered the first combat troops to Vietnam

Caught in the quagmire of Vietnam, LBJ on TV announcing he will not “seek nor accept the nomination for the presidency of the United States…”
Click here to hear the amazing talk by President Johnson, a man who led the country after Kennedy’s assassination and had the conviction that a country divided can not stand and therefore he steps aside.

1968 – LBJ announces he will not seek re-election
1971 – William Calley sentenced to life for Mi Lai Massacre
1991 – Soviet Rep of Georgia endorsed independence; Warsaw Pact dissolves
Birthdays
1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, composer
1732 – Franz Joseph Haydn, Vienna
1943 – Christopher Walken, born Astoria, Queens, actor (Deer Hunter, Brainstorm)
1948 – Albert Gore Jr, Wash DC, (Sen-D-Tenn, 1985-92)/45th US VP
307 – Roman Emperor Constantine marries Fausta, daughter of the Emperor Maximian, later murdering her in 326
Deaths
1727 – Isaac Newton, English physicist/astronomer, dies in London at 84
1913 – John Pierpont Morgan, US banker/CEO (US Steel Corp), dies at 75
1976 – Paul Strand, American photographer (b. 1890)
1998 – Bella Abzug, American politician (b. 1920)

Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches