From the founding rules of the New York stock market in 1817 to the disappearance of flight MH370 in 2014, 8 March has seen revolutions, wartime surrenders and landmark firsts. This timeline follows the date across two centuries.
Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.
Brokers in New York formed the New York Stock and Exchange Board and adopted a constitution with rules for trading and fines for unruly members. They rented a room at 40 Wall Street and met twice a day. The board grew into the New York Stock Exchange.
Source: New York Stock Exchange: History of NYSE ↗War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.
On 8 March 1910 the Aéro-Club de France awarded a pilot’s licence to Raymonde de Laroche, a Frenchwoman who had learned to fly with the aircraft builder Charles Voisin. She was the first woman in the world to hold one. She went on to win the Coupe Femina for a long-distance flight and in 1919 set a women’s altitude record of more than 4,700 metres. She died that same year in a crash at Le Crotoy.
Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Raymonde de Laroche ↗
Women marching in Petrograd in 1917. This photograph is thought to date from April.Image: Ателье Буллы · Public domainOn 8 March 1917 (23 February in the old Russian calendar) women textile workers in Petrograd marked International Women’s Day by walking out and marching for bread. They joined striking workers, and within days hundreds of thousands were on the streets, calling for an end to the war and to the Tsar. When soldiers of the city garrison mutinied and joined the crowds, the old order collapsed. On 15 March Nicholas II gave up the throne, ending three centuries of Romanov rule. Because of the old calendar, the rising is known as the February Revolution.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Russian Revolution, the February Revolution ↗
Lieutenant-General Hein ter Poorten (left) during the capitulation of the Dutch colonial army at Kalidjati, March 1942.Image: Unknown photographer (KITLV collection, Leiden University Libraries) · CC BY 4.0On 8 March 1942, a week after Japanese troops landed on Java, the Dutch commander Lieutenant-General Hein ter Poorten met General Hitoshi Imamura at Kalidjati airfield near Bandung and accepted Japan’s terms. The surrender ended Dutch rule in the East Indies after more than three centuries; the formal signing is often dated to the next day. On the same day Japanese forces entered Rangoon, the capital of Burma, as British troops retreated north. Within three months of Pearl Harbor, Japan controlled most of South-East Asia.
Source: Netherlands Ministry of Defence (Defensiekrant): The Second World War in the Dutch East Indies ↗
A map of New Guinea, Papua and Bougainville in 1942-45, with Lae and Salamaua on the Huon Gulf.Image: SpoolWhippets · CC0Just after midnight Japanese troops came ashore at Lae and Salamaua on the north coast of New Guinea, then an Australian territory. The small Australian garrison destroyed the airfields and withdrew. The new bases put Port Moresby within reach of Japanese bombers.
Source: Anzac Portal (Department of Veterans’ Affairs): Wau-Salamaua 1942 ↗
Members of the Ba’athist Military Committee celebrate the coup, March 1963.Image: Unknown photographer · Public domainArmy officers allied with the Ba’ath Party and supporters of Egypt’s Nasser seized power in Damascus, meeting little resistance. Within months the Nasserists had been purged. The Ba’ath Party went on to rule Syria for decades.
Source: US Office of the Historian: Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-63, vol. XVIII, document 185 ↗
Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade on the beach at Da Nang, March 1965.Image: United States Marine Corps (photograph A183813) · Public domainOn the morning of 8 March 1965 a battalion of US Marines came ashore on a beach north-west of Da Nang in South Vietnam. They were the first American ground combat unit sent to the war; until then the United States had sent advisers and air power. Their task was to guard the Da Nang air base, but the landing marked a turning point. By the end of 1965 more than 38,000 Marines were in Vietnam, and total US forces there would pass half a million.
Source: US Marine Corps History Division: US Marines in Vietnam, the landing and the build-up, 1965 ↗
Muhammad Ali avoids a punch from Joe Frazier during their first fight, 8 March 1971.Image: United Press International · Public domainOn 8 March 1971 two unbeaten heavyweights met at Madison Square Garden in New York: the champion Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, returning after being stripped of his title for refusing the Vietnam draft. The fight drew a worldwide audience. In the fifteenth and final round Frazier floored Ali with a left hook, and he won on a unanimous decision. It was Ali’s first defeat as a professional, and the first of three famous fights between them.
Source: Sports Illustrated Vault: Ali and Frazier’s first fight, 15 March 1971 ↗
A US stamp for International Women’s Year, 1975.Image: Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Designed by Miriam Schottland. · Public domainDuring International Women’s Year, the United Nations celebrated International Women’s Day for the first time. The year also brought the first UN world conference on women, in Mexico City. In 1977 the General Assembly invited all countries to set aside a day for women’s rights.
Source: United Nations: International Women’s Day, background ↗
A Philips CD100, the first compact disc player sold, from 1982, at Amberley Museum in England.Image: Les Chatfield from Brighton, England · CC BY 2.0On 8 March 1979 Philips invited the press to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to see a prototype player and a shiny disc 11.5 centimetres across, read by a laser, which it called a music box for the future. Two weeks later Sony agreed to develop the system with Philips. The two firms settled on a disc of 12 centimetres, and the first CD players went on sale in 1982. The compact disc went on to replace the vinyl record and the cassette.
Source: IEEE (Engineering and Technology History Wiki): Milestone, Compact Disc Audio Player, 1979 ↗The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.
The aircraft that became MH370, registration 9M-MRO, taking off from Los Angeles in October 2013.Image: Paul Rowbotham · CC BY-SA 2.0A Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board lost contact less than an hour after take-off. Radar and satellite data later showed it had turned back and flown for hours into the southern Indian Ocean. Searches led by Australia found no main wreckage, and the loss remains unexplained.
Source: Australian Transport Safety Bureau: MH370 search overview ↗Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.
This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 8 March, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.
Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.
Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.
The New York Stock Exchange in 1882, by Hughson Hawley.Image: 
Raymonde de Laroche, 1909.Image: