Beware the Ides of March? A look at March 15 in history

Julius Caesar was forewarned about the "Ides of March." March 15 wasn't his best day.

Today is Monday, March 15, the 74th day of 2009. There are 291 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

44 B.C. - Roman dictator Julius Caesar is assassinated by a group of Roman senators including Cassius and his friend Brutus. Caesar had been forewarned of the 'Ides of March.'

1493 - Christopher Columbus returns to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1603 - Samuel de Champlain, French navigator and explorer, sails for the New World.

1776 - U.S. Congress resolves that authority of British Crown should be suppressed.

1848 - Hungarian intellectuals stage bloodless revolution in Budapest against Austro-Hungarian empire. It is put down by Russian troops the next year.

1874 - France assumes protectorate over central Indochina region of Annam, which breaks off vassalage to China.

1875 - The Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York City, John McCloskey, is named the first American cardinal by Pope Pius IX.

1894 - France and Germany agree on boundaries between French Congo and Cameroons.

1903 - British conquest of northern Nigeria is complete.

1913 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson holds the first open presidential news conference.

1916 - U.S. force of 12,000 soldiers under Gen. John Pershing is ordered to Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.

1917 - Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates after humiliating defeat by the Germans. The Russian state and military begin to dissolve.

1919 - The American Legion is founded in Paris.

1937 - The world's first blood bank is established at Chicago's Cook County Hospital by Dr. Bernard Fantus. It is a breakthrough for surgical procedures and emergency treatments.

1938 - Nazi Germany seizes Czechoslovakia with little resistance, after having annexed the Sudetenland, with its fortifications, the previous year.

1988 - Israeli authorities impose travel ban on Palestinians in occupied territories.

1989 - Soviet Union's President Mikhail S. Gorbachev calls for rapid measures to ease chronic Soviet food shortages.

1990 - Iraq executes London newspaper reporter, Farzad Bazoft, after a closed-trial conviction for spying.

1991 - Serbian President Borisav Jovic resigns after the collective presidency fails to declare a nationwide state of emergency.

1992 - A second earthquake in a short time strikes eastern Turkey, killing an estimated 800 people.

1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin offers, after a meeting with U.S. President Bill Clinton, to surrender part of the Golan Heights to Syria.

1996 - Taiwan's president tells China to stop "nagging" the island with war games. Within hours, China announces more exercises, this time much closer to Taiwanese territory.

1999 - Rosemary Nelson, a Northern Ireland attorney who represented Catholic clients in several high-profile cases, is killed by a car bomb. The outlawed anti-Catholic group Red Hand Defenders claims responsibility.

2000 - In a forensic first, a grand jury in New York indicts an unidentified man for three rapes based on his DNA genetic profile.

2001 - Armed Chechens hijack a Russian plane carrying 174 people after it takes off from Turkey and force it to land in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

2003 - Rebels led by ousted army chief General Francois Bozize capture the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, and the international airport while President Ange-Felix Patasse was out of the country. Bozize declared himself president.

2004 - Saudi security forces kill two militants, including one considered al-Qaida's chief of operations on the Arabian Peninsula, in a shootout in the capital Riyadh.

2005 - A French court convicts six men in an alleged plot to send a suicide bomber into the U.S. Embassy in Paris, wrapping up a trial that shed light on the spread of Islamic radicals in Europe.

2006 - A Spanish boat recovers the bodies of 24 people believed to be African migrants floating in waters off the coast of Mauritania, hundreds of miles south of the Canary Islands.

2007 - The Islamic militant Hamas and its Fatah rivals forge a unity Palestinian government to end more than a year of political wrangling, isolation and bloodshed. Israel quickly rejects the new leadership, saying it fails to recognize the Jewish state.

2008 - China orders tourists out of Tibet's capital while troops on foot and in armored vehicles patrol the streets and enforce a strict curfew, a day after riots that a Tibetan exile group says left at least 30 protesters dead.

2009 - Thousands of anti-government protesters led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif head to Islamabad for a planned sit-in at parliament, ramping up a power struggle that risks hobbling a vital Western ally in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Today's Birthdays:

Andrew Jackson, U.S. president (1767-1845); Charles de Montalembert, French author (1810-1870); Jules Chevalier, French priest/founder of Sacred Heart Missionaries (1824-1907); Henri Saint Cyr, Swedish equestrian/Olympic gold medalist (1902-1979); Harry James, U.S. band-leader (1916-1983); Judd Hirsch, U.S actor (1935--); Sly Stone, U.S. singer/musician (1943--); will.i.am, U.S. rapper/musician (1975--); Eva Longoria Parker, U.S. actress (1975--).

Thought For Today:
Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose — Billie Holiday, American singer (1915-1959).