What Happened on March 12

Historical Events

1881 – Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world’s first black international football player and captain
1894 – Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time in a candy store in Vicksburg, Mississippi
1977 – Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet bans the Christian-Democratic Party
1992 – Mauritius becomes a republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations
2003 – Elizabeth Smart found after having been missing for 9 months.
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.

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Famous Birthdays

1637 – Anne Hyde, wife of James II of England (d. 1671)
1826 – Robert Lowry, American hymn composer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 1899)
1832 – Charles Boycott, Irish estate manager (whose workers refused to work for him amid Irish rent and land issues, origin of the term “boycott”), born in Burgh St. Peter, England (d. 1897)
1863 – Vladimir Vernadsky, Russian mineralogist (d. 1945)
1936 – Eddie Sutton, Basketball Hall of Fame coach (Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma State; first coach to take 4 schools to NCAA tournament), born in Bucklin, Kansas (d. 2020)
1963 – Ricky Yacobi, Indonesian soccer striker (31 caps; Arseto Solo, Matsushita), born in Medan, Indonesia (d. 2020)

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Famous Deaths

1832 – Friedrich Kuhlau, German-Danish opera composer, dies at 45
1949 – Maria “Beppie” Bakker, Dutch actress abd wife of Piet Vink Sr, dies at 95
1996 – Charles Bruce Perry, Professor of Medicine (Bristol University), dies at 92
2008 – Lazare Ponticelli, the last “poilu”, French foot soldier of World War One, dies at 110 (b. 1897)
2017 – Luigi Barbarito, Italian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, dies at 94
2018 – Craig Mack, American rapper (Flava In Ya Ear), dies of heart failure at 47

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