March 4 in History

March 4 is the 63rd day of the year. There are 303 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1675 – John Flamsteed was appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England.
• 1681 – Charles II granted a land charter to William Penn for what would become Pennsylvania.
• 1789 – In NYC, the first Congress of the United States met, putting the US Constitution into effect.
• 1791 – Vermont is admitted as the 14th US state.
• 1794 – The Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dealing with each state’s sovereign immunity, was passed by the US Congress.
• 1797 – In the first peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders, John Adams was sworn in as President succeeding George Washington.
• 1837 – Chicago was incorporated as a city.
• 1861 – Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for his first term as US President.
• 1877 – Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake premièred at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
• 1882 – Britain’s first electric trams ran in east London.
• 1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, measuring 1,710 feet long, was opened.
• 1894 – A fire in Shanghai destroyed1,000 buildings.
• 1902 – In Chicago, the American Automobile Association was established.
• 1985 – The Food and Drug Administration approved a blood test for AIDS.
• 1998 – The US Supreme Court ruled that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same gender in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services.