13 March 2013: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Pope, taking the name 'Pope Francis'. #History

13 March 1996: Sixteen primary school children and a teacher were shot dead by Thomas Hamilton in #Dunblane, #Scotland. #History

13 March 1954: The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ began with an artillery barrage of French positions by Viet Minh forces under Võ Nguyên Giáp. #History #Vietnam

Following the signing of a peace treaty the previous day, a ceasefire ended the Russo-Finnish Winter War at 11 am on 13 March 1940. #History #Finland

13 March 1927: The #lance ceased to be an official weapon of the British Army. #History #UK

13 March 1900: Following the Battle of Paardeberg, British forces occupied #Bloemfontein during the Second Boer War. #History #SouthAfrica #BoerWar

13 March 1884: The Siege of #Khartoum began. The defence of the city was organised by General Charles George Gordon. #History #Sudan

13 March 1873: The Scottish Football Association was founded. It initially consisted of just 8 teams. #History #Scotland #football

13 March 1815: #Napoleon was declared an outlaw by the participants at the Congress of Vienna following his escape from Elba. #History

13 March 1811: The Battle of Lissa. A squadron of British frigates defeated a much larger combined French/Italian fleet in the Adriatic. The battle was part of the Adriatic campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. #History #NapoleonicWars

13 March 1781: William Herschel discovered Uranus. #History #Astronomy Consensus on naming #Uranus was not reached until almost 70 years after its discovery.

13 March 1639: Harvard University was named in honour of the former Charlestown minister, John Harvard. #History John #Harvard had bequeathed his entire library, and half of his estate, to the school that now bears his name.

I can't help thinking that life was simpler (and safer) before we had Internet banking. Perhaps those old Luddites had a point? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one". - Sir Terry Pratchett. Died 12 March 2015. #RIP

12 March 2011: A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant exploded, releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere the day after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. #History #Japan

12 March 1999: The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined #NATO. #History

12 March 1993: North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. #History #NorthKorea

12 March 1993: Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female US Attorney General. #History #USA

12 March 1968: #Mauritius became independent from the United Kingdom. #History

12 March 1947: The Truman Doctrine, intended to help stem the spread of Communism, was announced in a speech to Congress. #History #USA #1stColdWar www.archives.gov/milestone-do...

12 March 1938: German troops occupied Austria, completing the #Anschluss ("joining") of #Austria & Nazi #Germany. #History

12 March 1926: The first of Britain’s iconic red public telephone boxes, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, came into service on Charing Cross Road in #London. #History #K2

12 March 1918: Fearing possible invasion, Vladimir Lenin moved the capital of #Russia from Saint Petersburg back to Moscow. #History

12 March 1894: Coca-Cola was bottled and sold for the first time, by the Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi. #History Before Coca-Cola was sold in bottles, it had been sold (as a patent medicine) by the glass at soda fountains in the US. #History #CocaCola

12 March 1881: Andrew Watson made his #Scotland debut as the world's first black international #football player and captain. #History Watson led Scotland to a 6-1 victory against England. #History

12 March 1868: Basutoland ( #Lesotho ) was annexed by the United Kingdom. #History

12 March 1689: James II landed at Kinsale in Ireland. #History

12 March 538: Vitiges, king of the Ostrogoths, ended his siege of #Rome, and retreated to Ravenna. #History

Raise your Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, and wish Happy Birthday to Douglas Adams, born 11 March 1952. #DontPanic

11 March 2020: The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus epidemic a #pandemic. #History #Covid #WHO

11 March 2011: An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude struck 130km east of Sendai, #Japan. It caused a #tsunami which killed thousands of people and triggered the #Fukushima nuclear accident. #History

11 March 2004: Madrid train bombings. Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in #Madrid killed 192 people. #History #Spain The official investigation found that the Madrid train bombings were directed by an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell.

11 March 2003: The International Criminal Court held its inaugural session in The Hague. #History #ICC

11 March 1993: The US Senate confirmed Janet Reno as the first female Attorney General of the United States. #History #USA

11 March 1990: #Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union. #History

11 March 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. #History #USSR

11 March 1946: Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of #Auschwitz concentration camp, was captured by British troops. #History #Holocaust He would testify at #Nuremberg, and was subsequently handed over to Polish authorities where he was tried and convicted for murder. He was executed in April 1947.

11 March 1941: President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act, allowing American war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan. #History #WW2

11 March 1917: Baghdad fell to the British Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force, commanded by General Sir Stanley Maude. #History #WW1

11 March 1864: The Great #Sheffield Flood. The Dale Dyke Dam collapsed as the reservoir was being filled. 238 people were killed. #History

11 March 1818: #Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley, was published by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones. #History #Literature

11 March 1708: Queen Anne withheld Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill. This was the last time a British monarch vetoed a piece of legislation. #History #UK

11 March 1702: The first issue of The Daily Courant - the first British daily newspaper - was published. #History #UK

10 March 2019: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 - a Boeing 737 MAX - crashed shortly after take off, killing all 157 passengers and crew. As a result of this, and the earlier crash of Lion Air Flight 610, all #Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were grounded worldwide. #History #aviation

10 March 2006: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived at #Mars. #History #Space #Exploration

10 March 1977: Astronomers using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered the rings of #Uranus. #History #Astronomy

10 March 1952: Fulgencio Batista staged a coup in #Cuba and appointed himself as "provisional President". #History

10 March 1949: Mildred Gillars (a.k.a. "Axis Sally") was convicted of treason in the district court in Washington DC. #History #WW2

10 March 1922: Mahatma #Gandhi was arrested in #India. He was tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison. #History