Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 8

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 * 1655 – The court of Northampton County, Virginia, issued a ruling that made John Casor the first person of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be declared a slave for life as a result of a civil suit.
 * 1658 – After a devastating defeat in the Second Northern War, King Frederick III of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the remainder.
 * 1702 – Anne (pictured) became the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, succeeding her brother-in-law William III.
 * 1736 – Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty, was crowned Shah of Iran.
 * 1919 – During the Egyptian Revolution, British authorities arrested rebel leader Saad Zaghloul and exiled him to Malta.
 * 1924 – Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, killed all 171 miners working there.
 * 1978 – BBC Radio 4 began broadcasting Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other formats.
 * 1983 – Cold War: In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".
 * 2017 – The Azure Window, a limestone natural arch in Gozo, Malta, collapsed during a stor
 * Born/died this day: | Pope Celestine II |d|1144| Simon Cameron |b|1799| Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge |d|1819| Frank Avery Hutchins |b|1851| Bramwell Booth |b|1856| Ida Hunt Udall |b|1858| Gladys Bustamante |b|1912| Panditrao Agashe |b|1936|  Juvénal Habyarimana |b|1937| José Raúl Capablanca |d|1942| Petra Kvitová |b|1990|

March 8: International Women's Day; Aurat March in Pakistan


 * 1576 – A Spanish colonial officer wrote a letter to King Philip II containing the first mention of the Maya ruins of Copán in present-day Honduras.
 * 1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence.
 * 1963 – The Ba'ath Party came to power in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council for the Revolutionary Command.
 * 1966 – Nelson's Pillar, a large granite pillar topped by a statue of Lord Nelson in Dublin, Ireland, was severely damaged by a bomb.
 * 1979 – Images taken by Voyager 1 proved the existence of volcanoes on Io (pictured), a moon of Jupiter.