March 10 in History

Charles I of England dissolved Parliament on March 2, 1629, after a tumultuous session in which members physically held the Speaker in his chair to prevent adjournment while they passed three resolutions condemning the king's religious policies and unauthorized taxation. Charles was so furious that he refused to call another Parliament for eleven years, a period known as the Personal Rule. Without parliamentary approval, he raised revenue through revival of obscure feudal levies, monopoly grants, and most controversially, 'ship money,' a naval tax traditionally levied only on coastal counties that Charles extended to the entire kingdom. John Hampden's famous refusal to pay ship money in 1637 and the subsequent trial became a rallying point for opposition. The Personal Rule ended in 1640 when Charles desperately needed Parliament to fund a war against Scottish Covenanters. The Parliament he summoned immediately demanded redress of eleven years of grievances, setting the stage for the English Civil War.

Rebels in Lhasa launched an armed uprising against Chinese control on March 10, 1959, after rumors spread that the Chinese military planned to abduct the 14th Dalai Lama. Tens of thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Norbulingka Palace to prevent his departure. The People's Liberation Army responded with artillery fire that killed thousands of civilians. The Dalai Lama escaped disguised as a soldier and made a harrowing two-week journey over the Himalayas to India, where he established a government-in-exile in Dharamshala. The Chinese crushed the rebellion within weeks, killing an estimated 87,000 Tibetans according to the International Commission of Jurists. China abolished the traditional Tibetan government, dismantled monasteries, and redistributed land. The uprising split Tibetan consciousness permanently: exiles commemorate March 10 as Uprising Day, while the Chinese government designated March 28 as Serfs Emancipation Day, celebrating the liberation of Tibetans from theocratic feudalism.

James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. with a Remington 760 rifle from a rooming house bathroom across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. King had come to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. Ray fled the United States using a forged Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd and traveled through London and Lisbon before being arrested at London's Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, when a customs officer noticed the name on a Scotland Yard watchlist. Ray was extradited to Tennessee, pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, and received a 99-year sentence. He recanted his guilty plea three days later and spent the rest of his life claiming he was a patsy in a larger conspiracy. The King family publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial, believing government agencies were involved. A 1999 civil trial in Memphis found that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy, though the US Department of Justice rejected the finding after its own investigation.

Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general on March 9, 1864, a rank previously held only by George Washington, and placed in command of all Union armies. Grant immediately implemented a coordinated strategy that no previous Union commander had attempted: simultaneous offensives on all fronts to prevent Confederate forces from shifting troops between theaters. He personally directed the Army of the Potomac against Lee in Virginia while Sherman drove through Georgia and lesser commands pinned down Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley and along the Gulf Coast. The Overland Campaign that followed produced staggering casualties at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, but unlike his predecessors, Grant refused to retreat after setbacks. His relentless pressure trapped Lee in the siege of Petersburg and forced the evacuation of Richmond. Grant's willingness to absorb losses that would have broken earlier commanders reflected his understanding that the North's manpower advantage would prove decisive if sustained pressure was maintained.

Astronomers James Elliot, Edward Dunham, and Douglas Mink discovered the rings of Uranus on March 10, 1977, while observing the planet pass in front of a distant star from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a modified C-141 aircraft flying at 41,000 feet. As Uranus approached the star, they noticed five brief dips in the star's light before it was occulted, and five corresponding dips after, indicating narrow rings encircling the planet. The discovery was entirely unexpected. Until that moment, Saturn was believed to be the only planet with rings. Jupiter's rings were found two years later by Voyager 1, and Neptune's incomplete ring arcs were confirmed in 1989. The Uranian rings turned out to be thin, dark, and composed primarily of centimeter-sized particles, quite different from Saturn's bright, icy rings. The discovery fundamentally changed planetary science by demonstrating that ring systems are a common feature of giant planets, likely formed by the breakup of small moons or captured comets.

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. The garrison was overwhelmed within 24 hours. President Nguyen Van Thieu ordered a withdrawal from the highlands to consolidate defenses along the coast, but the retreat turned into a catastrophic rout. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians fled south along Route 7B in a panicked exodus that became known as the 'Convoy of Tears.' North Vietnamese forces pursued and destroyed the retreating columns. The fall of Ban Me Thuot shattered South Vietnam's defensive strategy and convinced Hanoi that total victory was achievable. Within seven weeks, North Vietnamese forces had swept through the country, capturing Hue, Da Nang, and finally Saigon on April 30. The speed of the collapse stunned both sides and ended twenty years of American involvement in the conflict.

The Nasdaq Composite Index reached its all-time peak of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, capping a speculative frenzy that had driven technology stocks to valuations divorced from any rational assessment of their earning potential. Companies with no revenue and no clear path to profitability were valued at billions of dollars. Pets.com had spent .8 million on a Super Bowl advertisement and would be out of business within nine months. Webvan raised million in its IPO and burned through it in eighteen months. The crash, when it came, was devastating: the Nasdaq lost nearly 78 percent of its value over the next two and a half years, falling to 1,114 by October 2002. Over trillion in paper wealth evaporated. Companies that had been celebrated as the future of commerce simply ceased to exist. The handful that survived, including Amazon and eBay, did so by finding actual business models. The Nasdaq did not return to its 2000 peak until 2015.

The Roman fleet that won the First Punic War wasn't paid for by Rome. Wealthy citizens funded 200 warships out of their own pockets after the treasury went broke from 23 years of fighting Carthage. At the Aegates Islands off Sicily, these privately-funded galleys caught the Carthaginian fleet loaded down with supplies for their starving troops. The Romans sank 50 ships and captured 70 more in a single morning. Carthage sued for peace immediately. They'd lost their entire western Mediterranean empire because Rome's richest families made what amounted to a massive patriotic loan. War had become a venture capital investment.