March 6 is the 65th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (66th in Leap years). There are 298 days remaining.

1480 – By the Treaty of Toledo, Ferdinand and Isabella recognize Afonso’s African conquests, while he cedes the Canaries to Spain.

1521 – Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam.

1808 – At Harvard University. the first college orchestra was founded.

1820 – The Missouri Compromise was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by U.S. President James Monroe. The act admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibited slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.

1825 – Beethoven’s Opus 127: String Quartet No. 12 in E flat major was performed for the first time.

1834 – The city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

1836 – The thirteen-day siege of the Alamo by Santa Anna and his army ended. The Mexican army of three thousand men defeated the 189 Texas volunteers.

1857 – The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision ruled that blacks could not sue in federal court to be citizens.

1886 – “The Nightingale” was first published. It was the first magazine for nurses.

1899 – Aspirin was patented by German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser.

1900 – In West Virginia, an explosion trapped 50 coal miners underground.

1901 – An assassin tried to kill Wilhelm II of Germany in Bremen.

1907 – British creditors of the Dominican Republic claimed that the U.S. had failed to collect debts.

1928 – A Communist attack on Peking, China resulted in 3,000 dead and 50,000 fled to Swatow.

1930 – Clarence Birdseye’s first frozen foods went on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA.

1939 – In Spain, Jose Miaja took over the Madrid government after a military coup and vowed to seek “peace with honor.”

1941 – Les Hite and his orchestra recorded “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise”.

1944 – During World War II, U.S. heavy bombers began the first American raid on Berlin. Allied planes dropped 2000 tons of bombs.

1946 – Ho Chi Minh, the President of Vietnam, struck an agreement with France that recognized his country as an autonomous state within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

1947 – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the contempt conviction of John L. Lewis.

1947 – Winston Churchill announced that he opposed British troop withdrawals from India.

1947 – The first air-conditioned naval ship, “The Newport News,” was launched from Newport News, VA.

1957 – The British African colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

1960 – Switzerland granted women the right to vote in municipal elections.

1960 – The United States announced that it would send 3,500 troops to Vietnam.

1962 – Frank Sinatra recorded his final session for Capitol Records in Hollywood.

1964 – Tom O’Hara set a new world indoor record when he ran the mile in 3 minutes, 56.4 seconds.

1967 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his plan to establish a draft lottery.

1970 – Charles Manson released his album “Lies” to finance his defense against murder charges.

1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed price controls on oil and gas.

1973 – John Lennon’s visa extension was canceled by the New York Office of the Immigration Department. It had been granted only five days before.

1975 – Iran and Iraq announced that they had settled their border dispute.

1980 – Islamic militants in Tehran said that they would turn over American hostages to the Revolutionary Council.

1981 – Walter Cronkite appeared on his last episode of “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.” He had been on the job 19 years.

1981 – U.S. President Reagan announced a plan to cut 37,000 federal jobs.

1982 – National Basketball Association history was made when San Antonio beat Milwaukee 171-166 in three overtime periods to set the record for most points by two teams in a game. The record was beaten on December 13, 1983 by the Pistons and the Nuggets when they played to a final score of 186-184

1983 – The United States Football League began its first season of pro football competition.

1985 – Yul Brynner played his his 4,500th performance in the musical “The King and I.”

1987 – The British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the Channel off the coast of Belgium. 189 people died.

1990 – In Afghanistan, an attempted coup to remove President Najibullah from office failed.

1990 – The Russian Parliament passed a law that sanctioned the ownership of private property.

1991 – In Paris, five men were jailed for plotting to smuggle Libyan arms to the Irish Republican Army.

1992 – The last episode of “The Cosby Show” aired. The show had been on since September of 1984.

1992 – The computer virus “Michelangelo” went into effect.

1997 – A gunman stole “Tete de Femme,” a million-dollar Picasso portrait, from a London gallery. The painting was recovered a week later.

1997 – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II launched the first official royal Web site.

1998 – A Connecticut state lottery accountant gunned down three supervisors and the lottery chief before killing himself.

1998 – Oasis’ Liam Gallagher was charged in an Australian court after he allegedly headbutted a fan, breaking the fan’s nose. He was released on $10,000 bail.

2000 – Foxy Brown crashed her car into a fence in Brooklyn, NY. She was admitted for medical attention and released the next morning. Brown was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle by police.

Birthdays

1475 – Michelangelo Buonarroti, painter, (d. 1564)
1619 – Cyrano de Bergerac, soldier, poet, (d. 1655)
1806 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet, (d. 1861)
1831 – Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, theologian, (d. 1910)
1885 – Ring Lardner, writer, (d. 1933)
1898 – Therese Giehse, actress, (d. 1975)
1904 – Joseph Schmidt, tenor, (d. 1942)
1905 – Bob Wills, country music singer, (d. 1975)
1906 – Lou Costello, actor, comedian, (d. 1959)
1923 – Ed McMahon, television personality
1923 – Jürgen von Manger, cabaretist, (d. 1994)
1926 – Alan Greenspan, American economist
1926 – Andrzej Wajda, Polish film director
1927 – Wes Montgomery, musician
1927 – Gordon Cooper, astronaut
1928 – Gabriel García Márquez, writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
1929 – Günter Kunert, writer and lyricist
1930 – Lorin Maazel, opera conductor
1935 – Ron Delany, Irish athlete
1936 – Marion Barry Jr., mayor of Washington, DC
1937 – Valentina Tereshkova, cosmonaut
1941 – Willie Stargell, Baseball Hall of Famer
1944 – Kiri Te Kanawa, opera singer
1946 – David Gilmour, musican (“Pink Floyd”)
1947 – Rob Reiner, actor, comedian, movie producer
1947 – Dick Fosbury, athlete
1947 – Kiki Dee, singer
1959 – Tom Arnold, actor, comedian
1972 – Shaquille O’Neal, basketball player
1979 – Brian Smith