March 2 birthdays & history

Famous people born on March 2

• 1931Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian lawyer and politician, the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1876Pope Pius XII, Head of the Catholic Church from 1939 to 1958
• 1810Pope Leo XIII, Head of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903
• 1968Daniel Craig, English actor and producer
• 1824Bedřich Smetana, Czech pianist and composer
• 1459Pope Adrian VI, Head of the Catholic Church from 1522 to 1523
• 1904Dr. Seuss, American children's book writer, poet, and illustrator
• 1942Lou Reed, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
• 1962Jon Bon Jovi, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
• 1977Chris Martin, English singer-songwriter (Coldplay)

What happened on March 2

• 1484The College of Arms, one of the few remaining official heraldic authorities in Europe, was incorporated by royal charter in the City of London.
• 1791French inventor Claude Chappe and his brothers first demonstrated the semaphore telegraph, a system to convey information by means of visual signals, using towers with pivoting crossarms.
• 1855Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia.
• 1877The Electoral Commission awarded twenty disputed electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes, thus assuring his victory in the 1876 U.S. presidential election.
• 1901U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and once the world's largest producer of steel, was founded by financier J. P. Morgan.
• 1919Communist, revolutionary-socialist, and syndicalist delegates met in Moscow to establish the Communist International.
• 1937The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the precursor of the United Steel Workers of America, had a major success when it signed a collective-bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel.
• 1965The Sound of Music was released in American theatres; it became the highest-grossing film until 1971.
• 1969The maiden flight of Concorde, the Anglo-French supersonic jet, was conducted in Toulouse, France using a prototype aircraft with the registration F-WTSS.
• 1970The Rhodesian monarchy was abolished by the government of Rhodesia, which declared the internationally unrecognised country to be a republic.
• 1995Researchers at Fermilab in Illinois announced the discovery of the top quark, the most massive of all observed elementary particles.
• 2014The Oscar selfie, considered to be one of the most influential photographs of all time, was taken at the 86th Academy Awards ceremony.

Also observed on March 2

• Air Force Day (Sri Lanka)
• Baloch Culture Day (Balochistan)
• National Read Across America Day (United States)
• Peasants' Day (Myanmar)
• Texas Independence Day
• Adwa Victory Day (Ethiopia)