Explore 1 March

One of Henri Becquerel’s photographic plates, darkened by radiation from uranium salts, with his handwritten notes.

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Henri Becquerel · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Becquerel stumbles on radioactivity

Henri Becquerel thought that uranium salts might give off X-rays after being exposed to sunlight. When cloudy Paris weather stopped his experiment in late February 1896, he put the salts and some wrapped photographic plates away in a drawer. On 1 March he developed the plates anyway and found them strongly fogged: the uranium was giving off rays with no help from the Sun.

It was the discovery of radioactivity. Becquerel shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie, who went on to find new radioactive elements.

The Castle Bravo fireball over Bikini Atoll, 1 March 1954.

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United States Department of Energy · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

The Castle Bravo test poisons the Pacific

On 1 March 1954 the United States exploded a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Scientists expected about 5 megatons; the blast was about 15, a thousand times the power of the Hiroshima bomb and the largest American test ever.

Radioactive fallout spread over thousands of square miles, contaminating Marshall Islanders, American servicemen and the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon. The disaster fed worldwide alarm about testing that led to the treaty banning tests in the atmosphere in 1963.

A Soviet stamp of 1966 celebrating the pennant and medal carried to Venus, dated 1.III.1966.

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Russian government · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Venera 3 reaches Venus

The Soviet probe Venera 3, launched in November 1965, struck the surface of Venus on 1 March 1966. It was the first spacecraft to reach another planet.

Its radio had failed two weeks earlier, so it sent back no information about Venus. But it carried medallions bearing the Soviet coat of arms, and the Soviet Union celebrated the landing as a first.

The centenary ceremony for the March First Movement in Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul, 1 March 2019.

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Korea.net · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

Independence Movement Day in South Korea

Samiljeol, ‘three-one day’, is a public holiday in South Korea marking the March First Movement of 1919. The Declaration of Independence is read aloud each year at Tapgol (Pagoda) Park in Seoul, where it was first proclaimed.

The St David’s Day parade in Cardiff, 2014, with the black-and-gold flag of St David.

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Gareth James · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

St David’s Day in Wales

Wales celebrates its patron saint, Dewi Sant, a 6th-century bishop who founded a monastery at St Davids, on 1 March. People wear leeks or daffodils, children often dress in traditional costume and towns hold parades.

Martenitsi, the red-and-white tokens exchanged in Bulgaria on 1 March.

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Petko Yotov (user:5ko) · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Baba Marta and the martenitsa

On 1 March people in Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and North Macedonia give one another red-and-white threads to wear for health and good luck in the coming spring, taking them off when they see a stork, a swallow or a tree in blossom. UNESCO added the custom to its list of intangible heritage in 2017.