15th March

EVENTS:

• 1820 – Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state.
• 1877 – First ever official cricket test match is played: Australia vs England at the MCG Stadium, in Melbourne, Australia.
• 1927 – The first Women’s Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place on The Isis in Oxford.
• 1961 – South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1985 – The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).
• 2011 – Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.
• 2012 – Five Norwegian soldiers die in an aircraft accident in northern Sweden.
• 2019 – 49 people are killed in the Christchurch mosque shootings.
• 2019 – Fifty-one people are killed in the Christchurch mosque shootings.
• 2019 – Beginning of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.
• 2019 – Approximately 1.4 million young people in 123 countries go on strike to protest climate change.
• 2022 – The 2022 Sri Lankan protests begins amidst Sri Lanka’s economic collapse.

BIRTHS:

• 1830 – Paul Heyse, German author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1914)
• 1854 – Emil von Behring, German physiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1917)
• 1866 – Johan Vaaler, Norwegian inventor, invented the Paper clip (d. 1910)
• 1920 – E. Donnall Thomas, American physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012)
• 1930 – Zhores Alferov, Belarusian-Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1930 – Martin Karplus, Austrian-American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1934 – Kanshi Ram, Indian politician (d. 2006)
• 1955 – Mohsin Khan, Pakistani cricketer
• 1956 – Clay Matthews, Jr., American football player and coach
• 1965 – Sunetra Gupta, Indian epidemiologist, author, and academic
• 1983 – Ben Hilfenhaus, Australian cricketer
• 1993 – Alia Bhatt, Indian actress and singer
• 2004 – Isaiah Bond, American football player

HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:

• Constitution Day (Belarus)
• World Consumer Rights Day
• World Day of Muslim Culture, Peace, Dialogue and Film
• Youth Day (Palau)