Under Saturday, March 4th, the book of history records, among other things:
1608: 18-year-old Gabriel (Gábor) Báthory is elected Prince of Transylvania by the Transylvanian Estates.
1848: The King of Sardinia-Piedmont, Karl Albert von Savoyen, issues a liberal constitution that applies to all of Italy after national unification from 1861.
1873: The first illustrated daily newspaper, the “New York Daily Graphic”, appears in New York.
1913: Democrat Thomas Woodrow Wilson is sworn in as the 28th President of the United States of America. He replaces William Howard Taft in office (until 1921).
1918: Romania accepts the Central Powers’ peace terms.
1918: Leon Trotsky becomes chairman of the newly formed Soviet Russian Supreme War Council.
1928: Birth of alpine skiing: For the first Kandahar race in Austria in the disciplines of slalom and downhill skiing, the British Lord Frederick Leigh Earl of Kandahar donated the winner’s trophy in St. Anton am Arlberg.
1933: In an inaugural speech before both houses of Congress in Washington, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his program to combat the economic crisis (“New Deal”). In addition to extensive job creation measures, it also provides for the introduction of social insurance.
1933: After the resignation of the three Presidents of the National Council, Karl Renner, Rudolf Ramek and Sepp Strafner, the government under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss spoke of the “self-switching off” of parliament.
1938: On behalf of Hitler, German State Secretary Wilhelm Keppler insists in Vienna that the ultimate provisions of the Berchtesgaden Agreement of February 12 be fulfilled.
1938: The German military attaché, Generalleutnant Wolfgang Muff, reported to Berlin that an action by the Austrian executive against the Nazis was no longer conceivable.
1938: On the construction site in the Ufa city of Babelsberg, Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, lays the foundation stone for the “German Film Academy”, the first state German training center for film artists. The facility soon became too expensive due to the war, so it was closed in 1940 by Joseph Goebbels “for the duration of the war”. The planning of the construction project continued until 1943 and then stopped, in 1944 the film academy was dissolved.
1943: The Macedonian Jews living under Bulgarian occupation were interned and shortly afterwards handed over to the Germans and deported to Treblinka.
1948: The Moscow Patriarchate convenes a pan-Orthodox Church Conference in the Soviet capital, defying the canonical prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
1963: Three people involved in the assassination of French President General Charles de Gaulle in Petit-Clamart in August 1962 are sentenced to death by a special court in Paris.
1973: Eight Palestinian terrorists from the Black September underground group end the occupation of the Saudi Arabian embassy in the Sudanese capital Khartoum after killing three diplomats.
1973: Majority change in general elections in Ireland: After the defeat of the nationalist Fianna Fáil, Liam Cosgrave becomes Prime Minister of a centre-left coalition of Fine Gael and Labor Party.
1973: Germany’s first TV talk show “Je Later der Abend” with Dietmar Schönherr is broadcast by WDR.
1988: French President Mitterrand inaugurates the pyramid designed by the Chinese-American architect Ieoh-Ming Pei as the new entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris.
1998: Israeli President Ex-General Ezer Weizman is re-elected for a second five-year term.
1998: The German clothing chain Peek & Cloppenburg opens two fashion houses in Vienna.
2008: Former top model Waris Dirie disappeared in Brussels for days, causing excitement and confusion in equal measure: the author initially said she was lost. However, two days after her reappearance, she explains that she had not found the hotel and that she was looking for a taxi driver who had kidnapped her. In turn, she accuses the Belgian police of treating her like a prostitute. The exact circumstances remain unclear.
birthdays: Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer (1678-1741); Rudolf Staudinger, Austria politician (1923-1995); Kurt Schubert, Austria Judaist and resistance fighter; 1966 founder of the first European Institute for Jewish Studies in Vienna (1923-2007); Allan Sillitoe, British author (1928-2010); Kito Lorenc, German-Sorbian poet (1938-2017); James Ellroy (aka Lee Earle E.), US writer (1948); Shakin Stevens (actually Michael Barratt), British singer (1948); Patsy Kensit, British actress (1968).
days of death: August Zang, Austria Journalist, newspaper editor, politician and businessman; Founder of the newspaper “Die Presse” (1807-1888); Elsa Brändström, Swedish philanthropist (“Angel of Siberia”) (1888-1948); Antonin Artaud, French actor, director and writer (1896-1948); Ossip K. Flechtheim, German political scientist (1909-1998); Fedora Barbieri, Italian opera singer (1920-2003); Trude Ackermann, Austria Burgtheater actress (1924-2018); Jérôme Savary, French theater director (1942-2013).
name days: Casimir, Humbert, Adrian, Burkhard, Lucius, Walburg, Rupert, Olivia, Otwin, Edwin, Petrus.