Related Resources • History: March • Religious Timelines

0809
Harun al-Rashid, caliph of the Abbasid empire from 786 to 809, died at the age of 44.

1455
Pope Nicholas V died.

1661
Florence Newton was arrested for witchcraft in Ireland.

1664
Roger Williams was granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island.

1832
Mormon leader Joseph Smith was beaten, tarred and feathered in Ohio.

1959
Iraqi leader Abd-al-Karim announced that his country was withdrawing from the Baghdad Pact.

1980
Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights in war-torn El Salvador, was assassinated while saying mass in a San Salvador church. Thirty people were killed by bombs and snipers during his funeral six days later.

2004
Hussam Abdo, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, fails in his mission as a suicide bomber when his bomb-vest didn't detonate at an Israeli checkpoint outside Nablus. An armed wing of Fatah takes responsibility for paying the child $23 and promising him sex in heaven as his reward.

2004
The Georgia state House of Representatives passes a bill that banned any and all genital piercings for women, even when it involves consenting adults, as part of an effort to halt the female genital mutilation the occurs in some Muslim populations. No ban on either genital piercings or genital mutilation for men was included.

2005
The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal brought by the parents of Terri Schiavo. Terri Schiavo fell into a coma brought on buy her bulimia and the loss of blood flow to her brain caused it to die - her cerebral cortex was gone and spinal fluid was all that remains. Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, wanted the feeding tube removed and said that was what she would have wanted. All courts agreed, but Terri Schiavo's parents fought it - and lost

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