Events on March 12 39
Year 538
Vitiges, king of the Ostrogoths ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of the victorious Byzantine general, Belisarius
Year 1550
Several hundred Spanish and indigenous troops under the command of Pedro de Valdivia defeat an army of 60,000 Mapuche at the Battle of Penco during the Arauco War in present-day Chile
Year 1622
Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Society of Jesus, are canonized by the Roman Catholic Church
Year 1811
Peninsular War: A day after a successful rearguard action, French Marshal Michel Ney once again successfully delayed the pursuing Anglo-Portuguese force at the Battle of Redinha
Year 1864
American Civil War: The Red River Campaign begins as a US Navy fleet of 13 Ironclads and 7 Gunboats and other support ships enter the Red River
Year 1881
Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain.
Year 1894
Coca-Cola is bottled and sold for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi, by local soda fountain operator Joseph A. Biedenharn.
Year 1912
The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the United States.
Year 1913
Canberra Day: The future capital of Australia is officially named Canberra. (Melbourne remains temporary capital until 1927 while the new capital is still under construction.)
Year 1918
Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years.
Year 1920
The Kapp Putsch begins when the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt is ordered to march on Berlin.
Year 1922
Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan form the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic
Year 1928
In California, the St. Francis Dam fails; the resulting floods kills 431 people.
Year 1930
Mahatma Gandhi begins the Salt March, a 200-mile march to the sea to protest the British monopoly on salt in India
Year 1933
Great Depression: Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This is also the first of his "fireside chats".
Year 1934
Konstantin Päts and General Johan Laidoner stage a coup in Estonia, and ban all political parties.
Year 1940
Winter War: Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia. Finnish troops and the remaining population are immediately evacuated.
Year 1942
Pacific War: The Battle of Java ends with an ABDACOM surrender to the Japanese Empire in Bandung, West Java, Dutch East Indies.
Year 1950
The Llandow air disaster occurs near Sigingstone, Wales, in which 80 people die when their aircraft crashed, making it the world's deadliest air disaster at the time.
Year 1967
Suharto take power from Sukarno when the MPRS inaugurated him as Acting President of Indonesia.
Year 1971
The March 12 Memorandum is sent to the Suleyman Demirel government of Turkey and the government resigns.
Year 1992
Mauritius becomes a republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Year 1993
Several bombs explode in Mumbai, India, killing about 300 and injuring hundreds more.
Year 1993
North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea says that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites.
Year 2004
The President of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, is impeached by its National Assembly: The first such impeachment in the nation's history.
Year 2009
Financier Bernard Madoff pleads guilty in New York to scamming $18 billion, the largest in Wall Street's history.
Year 2011
A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan's earthquake.
Year 2014
A gas explosion in the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem kills eight and injures 70 others.