March 23 Historical Events

The following events took place on March 23. The list is arranged in chronological order.

Found 47 events. Showing 31 - 47.

• 1965
  NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States’ first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young).
• 1965
  The first issue of The Vigilant is published from Khartoum.
• 1977
  The first of The Nixon Interviews (12 will be recorded over four weeks) are videotaped with British journalist David Frost interviewing former United States President Richard Nixon about the Watergate scandal and the Nixon tapes.
• 1978
  The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line.
• 1980
  Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador gives his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.
• 1982
  Guatemala’s government, headed by Fernando Romeo Lucas García is overthrown in a military coup by right-wing General Efraín Ríos Montt.
• 1983
  Strategic Defense Initiative: President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.
• 1991
  The Revolutionary United Front, with support from the special forces of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia, invades Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow Joseph Saidu Momoh, sparking a gruesome 11-year Sierra Leone Civil War.

• 1994
  At an election rally in Tijuana, Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is assassinated by Mario Aburto Martínez.
• 1994
  Aeroflot Flight 593 crashes in Siberia when the pilot’s fifteen-year-old son accidentally disengages the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.
• 1994
  A United States Air Force (USAF) F-16 aircraft collides with a USAF C-130 at Pope Air Force Base and then crashes, killing 24 United States Army soldiers on the ground. This later became known as the Green Ramp disaster.
• 1996
  Taiwan holds its first direct elections and chooses Lee Teng-hui as President.
• 1999
  Gunmen assassinate Paraguay’s Vice President Luis María Argaña.
• 2001
  The Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.
• 2003
  Battle of Nasiriyah, first major conflict during the invasion of Iraq.
• 2005
  Texas City Refinery explosion: During a test on a distillation tower liquid waste builds up and flows out of a blowout tower. Waste fumes ignite and explode killing 15 workers.
• 2009
  FedEx Express Flight 80: A McDonnell Douglas MD-11 flying from Guangzhou, China crashes at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, killing both the captain and the co-pilot.