44 BC – Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

221 – Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself emperor of Shu Han and claims his legitimate succession to the Han dynasty.
1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1564 – Mughal Emperor Akbar abolishes “jizya” (per capita tax).

1819 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel wins a contest at the Academie des Sciences in Paris by proving that light behaves like a wave. The Fresnel integrals, still used to calculate wave patterns, silence skeptics who had backed the particle theory of Isaac Newton.

1864 – American Civil War: The Red River Campaign : U.S. Navy fleet arrives at Alexandria, Louisiana.

1877 – The first cricket test between Australia and England was played in Melbourne. Australia won by 45 runs.

1906 – Rolls-Royce Limited is incorporated.

1921 – Talaat Pasha, former Grand Vizir of the Ottoman Empire and chief architect of the Armenian Genocide is assassinated in Berlin by 23-year-old Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian.

1939 – World War II: German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.

1941 – Philippine Airlines, the flag carrier of the Philippines takes its first flight between Manila (from Nielson Field) to Baguio City with a Beechcraft Model 18 making the airline the first and oldest commercial airline in Asia operating under its original name.

1946 – British Premier Attlee offered India full independence after agreement on a constitution.

1952 – In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in a 24-hour period, setting a new world record (March 15 through March 16).

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

1998 – CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired an interview with former White House employee Kathleen Willey. Wiley said U.S. President Clinton made unwelcome sexual advances toward her in the Oval Office in 1993.