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Explore 22 March

Explore 22 March: the Stamp Act becomes law, the Arab League is founded in Cairo, Spain frees the enslaved people of Puerto Rico and Louis Lumière shows his first film. Meet Anthony van Dyck, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, born on this date, and mark World Water Day.

This day through time →12 verified events across 5 eras

⌛12Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙7Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉3Firsts &
Discoveries ♫1Culture
Stories ☉1Observances
The burning of stamped paper in Boston, as pictured on a postcard of 1903.
The burning of stamped paper in Boston, as pictured on a postcard of 1903.
Image creditUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1765

The Stamp Act becomes law

On 22 March 1765 the Stamp Act received royal assent in London. It was the first direct tax that Parliament laid on Britain’s thirteen American colonies: from November, newspapers, legal documents, pamphlets, playing cards and even dice would have to carry a paid-for stamp.

The prime minister, George Grenville, wanted the colonies to share the cost of defending them after the Seven Years’ War. Instead the tax united them in protest under the cry of ‘no taxation without representation’. Stamp distributors were forced to resign, and Parliament repealed the act in 1766, but the quarrel it began ended in revolution.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: UK Parliament: The Stamp Act, 1765 ↗
The headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, 2008.
The headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, 2008.
Image creditIjanderson977 · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1945

The Arab League is founded

On 22 March 1945 representatives of seven states, Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen, signed the Pact of the League of Arab States in Cairo.

The league set out to strengthen ties between its members, co-ordinate their policies and settle disputes between them peacefully. It keeps its headquarters in Cairo and has grown to 22 members across the Middle East and North Africa.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Yale Law School, Avalon Project: Pact of the League of Arab States, 22 March 1945 ↗
The statue of the abolitionist Román Baldorioty de Castro in San Juan, 2012.
The statue of the abolitionist Román Baldorioty de Castro in San Juan, 2012.
Image creditThief12 (Carlo Giovannetti) · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1873

Slavery is abolished in Puerto Rico

On 22 March 1873 Spain’s National Assembly voted to abolish slavery in its colony of Puerto Rico. About 29,000 people, roughly one in twenty of the island’s population, were freed.

Freedom came with conditions: the former slaves were bound to labour contracts for three more years, and their former owners were compensated. Puerto Rico still marks 22 March as Emancipation Day, a public holiday.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress research guide: Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico ↗
Saint-Maurice Cathedral in Vienne, France, where the church council of 1311-12 met.
Saint-Maurice Cathedral in Vienne, France, where the church council of 1311-12 met.
Image creditArnaud-Victor Monteux · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1312

The pope dissolves the Knights Templar

The Knights Templar had grown rich and powerful since the Crusades. From 1307 King Philip IV of France had its members arrested and tortured into confessions. On 22 March 1312, during a church council at Vienne, Pope Clement V issued the bull Vox in excelso, which dissolved the order.

The pope did not find the order guilty of heresy. He suppressed it on the grounds that its reputation was beyond repair, under heavy pressure from Philip, who had arrived at Vienne two days earlier. Most of the Templars’ property passed to the rival Knights Hospitaller.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent): Council of Vienne ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

Anthony van Dyck
Image creditAnthony van Dyck · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1599

Anthony van Dyck

Flemish painter who became court painter to Charles I of England.

Marcel Marceau
Image creditUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1923

Marcel Marceau

French mime artist, creator of the white-faced clown Bip.

Stephen Sondheim
Image creditUnknown photographer · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1930

Stephen Sondheim

American composer and lyricist of Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods.

Andrew Lloyd Webber
Image creditPhilipRomanoPhoto · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1948

Andrew Lloyd Webber

English composer of Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.

Reese Witherspoon
Image creditGabboT · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1976

Reese Witherspoon

American actress and producer; Oscar winner for Walk the Line.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

The physicist Charles Townes.
The physicist Charles Townes.
Image creditUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1960

The first laser patent

On 22 March 1960 the US Patent Office granted patent 2,929,922 to Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes of Bell Laboratories for ‘masers and maser communications system’, the idea of amplifying light itself.

Theodore Maiman built the first working laser that May. The patent was challenged for decades by Gordon Gould, who had coined the word ‘laser’, and Townes shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: American Physical Society, Physical Review Focus: Invention of the Maser and Laser ↗
The silicon die of an early 66 MHz Intel Pentium processor.
The silicon die of an early 66 MHz Intel Pentium processor.
Image creditPdesousa359 · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1993

Intel ships the Pentium

On 22 March 1993 Intel began shipping the Pentium, the fifth generation of the processors inside most personal computers. The first chips ran at 60 or 66 MHz and packed 3.1 million transistors.

It was Intel’s first processor with a name rather than a number, taken from the Greek for ‘five’. The brand ran for decades, though an early flaw in its division sums led to a costly recall in 1994.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Intel timeline: The Birth of Pentium ↗
Comet Hale-Bopp above a tree near Pazin, Croatia, 29 March 1997.
Comet Hale-Bopp above a tree near Pazin, Croatia, 29 March 1997.
Image creditPhilipp Salzgeber · CC BY-SA 2.0 atResized and cropped for display.
1997

Comet Hale-Bopp comes closest to Earth

On 22 March 1997 Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth, passing about 197 million kilometres away. It reached its closest point to the Sun on 1 April.

Bright enough to see with the naked eye for about 18 months, even from city streets, it became one of the most widely watched comets in history.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Comet Hale-Bopp timeline, 1997 ↗
♫
MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

A frame from the Lumière film of workers leaving their factory in Lyon.
A frame from the Lumière film of workers leaving their factory in Lyon.
Image creditLumière brothers (film frame) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1895

Louis Lumière shows his first film

On 22 March 1895, at the end of a lecture in Paris to a society for the encouragement of French industry, Louis Lumière projected a short film of workers leaving his family’s factory in Lyon onto a screen. About 200 people watched.

It was a private demonstration of the brothers’ new Cinématographe, which could film, print and project. Their first paying public show followed in Paris that December.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Institut Lumière: Le Cinématographe Lumière ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Jean-Baptiste Lully
Image creditPaul Mignard · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1687

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Italian-born composer who created French opera at the court of Louis XIV.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Image creditJoseph Karl Stieler · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1832

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German poet, dramatist and scientist, author of Faust.

Sabiha Gökçen
Image creditUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 2001

Sabiha Gökçen

Turkey’s first woman combat pilot; she died on her 88th birthday.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

Soldiers clearing litter from a river in South Korea for World Water Day, 2009.
Soldiers clearing litter from a river in South Korea for World Water Day, 2009.
Image creditUNC - CFC - USFK from Seoul, Republic of Korea · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

World Water Day

The UN General Assembly declared 22 March World Water Day in 1992, after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and it was first held in 1993. Each year it takes a theme on the world’s fresh water, from sanitation to climate change.

UN-Water co-ordinates the day, and the UN’s World Water Development Report is published to coincide with it.

Source: United Nations: World Water Day ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 22 March chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 12 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading