March 7th

Charlie Sheen was fired from the sitcom "Two and a Half Men" by Warner Bros. Television following repeated misbehavior and weeks of the actor's angry, often-manic media campaign against his studio bosses.

Iraq held an election in which neither the Sunni-backed coalition nor the Shiite political bloc won a majority, spawning an eight-month deadlock and stalling formation of a new government.

John R. Bolton was nominated by President Bush to be U.S. ambassador to the UN.

V. Gene Robinson was invested in Concord, N.H., as the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop.

A four-day walkout by Broadway musicians began.

Three U.S. servicemen were convicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawa girl and sentenced by a Japanese court to up to seven years in prison.

Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Britain over Salman Rushdie's novel Satanic Verses.

The Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

A speech by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman helps spark the Bangladesh war of independence. Bangladesh's founding leader made his historical speech at a time of mounting tensions between East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh, and West Pakistan, which became present-day Pakistan.

Peaceful civil rights demonstrators marching from Selma, Ala., are brutally attacked with billy clubs and tear gas by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The event is later called “Bloody Sunday.”.

During World War II, U.S. troops crossed the bridge at Remagen, the first incursion into Germany by Allied forces.

Adolf Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact when he ordered troops to march into the Rhineland.

The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation took place, between New York City and London.

Roald Amundsen announces discovery of the South Pole.

The SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse becomes the first ship to send wireless signals to shore. The German transatlantic liner was fitted with wireless communication by its owner, Norddeutscher Lloyd, in order to outdo its rival Hamburg America Line.

Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone.

Composer Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France.

In a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius dies and is succeeded by co-Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, an unprecedented political arrangement in the Roman Empire.

King Henry VIII's divorce request is denied by the Pope. Henry then declares that he, not the Pope, is supreme head of England's church.