On This Day - 4th March
March fourth ( i.e. March forth!) is the only date in the calendar year that constitutes a sentence.
1238 The death, aged just 27, of Joan of England, queen consort of Scotland and wife of King Alexander II of Scotland. She married Alexander II at the age of ten at York Minster, when he was aged 23. The couple had no children together and Alexander went on to marry Marie de Coucy, who bore him a son Alexander, the future Alexander III of Scotland.
1681
King Charles II granted a Royal Charter to William Penn, entitling him
to establish a colony in North America called Pennsylvania.
1790The death of Flora Macdonald, the Scottish Jacobite heroine who helped
Bonnie Prince Charlie (the Stuart claimant to the British throne) escape after
the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
1824The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI was formed) by Sir William
Hillary. Initially known as the National Institution for the Preservation of
Life from Shipwreck, Hillary was inspired to form the charitable organization
when he saw a fishing fleet destroyed by a storm off the Isle of Man. See 
picture of St.
Justinian's RNLI Lifeboat Station and the 
picture of Scarborough's RNLI lifeboat.
1882The first electric trams in Britain ran; from Leytonstone in East London.
1890The Forth Railway Bridge in Scotland was opened by the Prince of Wales.
The bridge is more than one and a half miles long and took six years to build. See 
picture of the Forth Rail Bridge.
1912Suffragettes, demanding votes for women, smashed every window they passed
in Knightsbridge as a protest at government inaction.
1923Sir Patrick Moore, astronomer, was born.
1951The birth of former Scottish footballer and manager Kenny Dalgleish.
1966Beatle, John Lennon, caused outrage amongst Christians by stating "We're more popular than Jesus Christ right now. I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity." Beatles' records were consequently banned in
many US states and in South Africa.
1967The first gas from the North Sea was piped ashore near Durham.
1969The Kray twins, Ronald and Reginald, were found guilty of murder.
1972 Kenneth Grimes, from Hampshire became the first individual to win more than £500,000 on the football pools.
1974Following the election, Edward Heath failed
to persuade the Liberals to join a coalition and resigned. Harold Wilson would
become Prime Minister for a third time, but with a narrow majority.
1975Charlie Chaplin was knighted after a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
1976An Irish born mother-of-four, plus six other people, (known collectively
as the Maguire Seven) were jailed for possessing explosives. Their convictions
were later quashed.
1997In London, the match-fixing trial of footballers Bruce Grobbelar, John
Fashanu and Hans Segers ended in deadlock, with the jury failing to reach verdicts.
2015 The UK government announced that it was selling its 40% stake in the cross-Channel train operator Eurostar to an Anglo-Canadian consortium, for £757.1m.