Olympic Gold
Mar 1 Australian swimming authorities suspend triple Olympic gold medal winning sprinter Dawn Fraser for 10 years for misconduct at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics
- Mar 1 Gas explosion kills 28 in apartment complex in La Salle, Quebec
- Mar 1 WPSX TV channel 3 in Clearfield, PA (PBS) begins broadcasting
- Mar 2 Montcalm Community College founded in Sidney, Mich
The Sound of Music
Mar 2 One of the most popular musical films of all time, "The Sound of Music", starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, premieres (Academy Awards Best Picture - 1966)
- Mar 2 US Air Force begins Operation Rolling Thunder, a three year sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam
- Mar 3 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- Mar 3 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
David Attenborough Heads BBC2
Mar 4 David Attenborough becomes the new controller of BBC2
Music Premiere
Mar 5 1st performance of Walter Piston's 8th Symphony (his last), by the Boston Symphony, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf
- Mar 5 Ernie Terrell beats Eddie Machen by unanimous points decision over 15 rounds in Chicago, Illinois to win vacant WBA heavyweight boxing title
- Mar 5 March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against British colonial presence
- Mar 6 12th ACC Men's Basketball Tournament: NC State beats Duke, 91-85
- Mar 6 1st nonstop helicopter crossing of North America, JR Willford
- Mar 6 Bruce Taylor hits 105 for NZ v India in 1st Test Cricket innings
How to Succeed...
Mar 6 Frank Loesser's musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", starring Robert Morse and Rudy Vallée, closes at 46th Street Theatre, NYC, after 1415 performances, 7 Tony Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize
My Girl Hits #1
Mar 6 The Temptations' single "My Girl" reaches #1 on the Billboard Pop Chart; written and produced by the Miracles members Smokey Robinson and Ronald White
Event of Interest
Mar 7 Alabama state troopers and 600 black protesters clash in Selma during "Bloody Sunday", protesters, including future congressman John Lewis beaten and hospitalized
- Mar 7 Bruce Taylor takes 5-86 in debut innings for NZ after ton
- Mar 7 Christian-democrats win parliament in Chile
- Mar 8 First US combat forces arrive in Vietnam, on the beaches of Da Nang
- Mar 10 "I've Got a Tiger By the Tail" album by Buck Owens is released (Billboard Album of the Year, 1965)
- Mar 10 Dutch Princess Margriet & Pieter van Vollenhoven get engaged
Event of Interest
Mar 11 Indonesia President Sukarno signs the 'Supersemar' order, giving army commander Lt. Gen. Suharto authority to do whatever he "deemed necessary" to restore order
Music History
Mar 13 British guitarist Eric Clapton quits the Yardbirds due to the band moving away from traditional blues; Jeff Beck becomes his replacement
- Mar 14 Israeli cabinet approves diplomatic relations with West Germany
- Mar 15 T.G.I. Friday's 1st restaurant opens in NYC
- Mar 15 WMFE TV channel 24 in Orlando, FL (PBS) begins broadcasting
- Mar 17 Beatles announce their second film is titled "8 Arms to Hold You" ; later changed to "Help!"
- Mar 18 "Do I Hear a Waltz?" opens at 46th St Theater NYC for 220 performances
- Mar 18 A truck loses control down Moosic Street, Scranton, Pennsylvania, killing the driver. This accident later inspired the 1974 Harry Chapin song, "30,000 Pounds of Bananas."
- Mar 18 Poppin' Fresh Pillsbury Dough Boy introduced
- Mar 18 Rolling Stones fined £5 each for public urination
1st Person to Walk in Space
Mar 18 Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov leaves his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes and becomes the first person to conduct a spacewalk
- Mar 18 USSR launches Voshkod 2
- Mar 19 Indonesia nationalizes all foreign oil companies
- Mar 19 Rembrandt's "Titus" sells for then record 7,770,000 guilders
- Mar 19 Stoica becomes president & Ceausescu party leader of Romania
- Mar 19 The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000, said to have been most powerful Confederate cruiser, discovered by then teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence exactly 102 years after its destruction.
- Mar 20 10th Eurovision Song Contest: France Gall of Luxembourg wins singing "Poupee de cire, poupee de son" written by Serge Gainsbourg, in Naples, Italy
- Mar 20 27th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: UCLA beats Michigan, 91-80; Bruins' back-to-back National titles; Gail Goodrich 42 points
Dorothy Height's 1st Column
Mar 20 Civil and Women's Rights Activist Dorothy Height has her first column published in the weekly African-American newspaper called the "New York Amsterdam News"
- Mar 20 Venkataraghavan takes 8-72 v NZ at Delhi
- Mar 20 Wales misses out on a 4th Grand Slam after losing to France, 22-13 at Stade Colombes, Paris despite winning the Five Nations Rugby Championship
Event of Interest
Mar 21 Martin Luther King Jr. begins march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama
- Mar 21 US Ranger 9 launched; takes 5,814 pictures before lunar impact
- Mar 22 Dudley Senanayake wins his third in general elections in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Election of Interest
Mar 22 Nicolae Ceausescu is elected General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party
- Mar 22 US confirms its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong
- Mar 23 Gemini 3 launched, 1st US 2-man space flight (Grissom & Young)
- Mar 23 Moroccan army shoots on demonstrators, about 100 killed
- Mar 24 US Ranger 9 strikes Moon, 10 miles (16 km) NE of crater Alphonsus
- Mar 25 Martin Luther King Jr. leads 25,000 to state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama
- Mar 25 West German Bondsdag extends war crimes retribution
- Mar 27 119th Grand National: Tommy Smith becomes first American jockey to win GN aboard US trained and owned horse, Jay Trump at 100/6
- Mar 30 Vietnam War: A car bomb explodes in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, killing 22 and wounding 183 others
- Mar 31 Iberia Airlines Convair 440 crashes into the sea on approach to Tangier killing 47 of 51 occupants
Authors
Civil Rights Activists
Inventors
Kings
Revolutionaries
Scientists