March 11 in History

March 11 is the 71st day of the year. There are 295 days remaining until the end of the year.

March 11 is Johnny Appleseed Day in the United States.

• 1702 – The Daily Courant, England’s first national daily newspaper, was published for the first time.
• 1824 – The US War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• 1851 – The first performance of Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi occurred in Venice. 
• 1867 – The first performance of Don Carlos by Giuseppe Verdi took place in Paris.
• 1888 – The Great Blizzard of 1888 began on the US eastern seaboard, killing more than 400.
• 1955 – Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish biologist who discovered penicillin and won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, died. He was born in 1881.
• 1983 – Pakistan successfully conducts a cold test of a nuclear weapon. 
• 1993 – Janet Reno was confirmed by US Senate as the first female US Attorney General.
• 1999 – Infosys became the first Indian company listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
• 2002 – James Tobin, American economist & 1981 Nobel laureate, died. He was born in 1918.
• 2006 – Michelle Bachelet was inaugurated as first female president of Chile.
• 2011 – An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 81 miles east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami that killed thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.