March 03 : If you have a strong purpose in life, you don't have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.

On this day, 03 Mar....

78 - Shaliwahan Shaka Hindu Calendar started.

1575 - Indian Mughal Emperor Akbar defeats Bengali army at the Battle of Tukaroi.

1821 - The first U.S. patent issued to a Black-American was granted to Thomas Jennings for a “dry-scouring” cleaning process. Jennings used his royalties to buy his family out of slavery and to support the abolition of slavery.

1883 - The first steel vessels of the U.S. Navy were authorized by Congress.

1885 - Registered mail first authorized in the US.

1892 - The first tuberculosis test on cattle in the U.S. was made by Dr. Leonard Pearson with tuberculin that he had brought from Europe.

1923 - The first radio facsimile transmission to a distant point was made in the U.S.

1923 - Time magazine publishes the 1st issue.

1939 - In Mumbai (Bombay), Mohandas Gandhi begins to fast in protest against autocratic rule in India.

1966 - Plans to begin broadcasting television programmes in color from the following year were announced. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) would make Britain the first European country to have a schedule of color programmes.

1996 - Haryana Govt. bans liquor vends and bars in rural areas.

2005 - Solo non-stop global flight was made by Steve Fossett. He landed from where he had taken off 67 hours earlier. (The first non-stop two-person flight around the world, was made in 1986 by Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan in nine days, covering 26,366 miles without refueling).

2014 - Bill Gates is named the world's richest person in the 'Forbes' annual ranking, with a total net worth of $76 billion.

Born

1839 - Jamshedji Nasarvanji Tata, famous industrialist and father of modern technology. He started cotton mills in Bombay and Nagpur and founded the Tata Iron and Steel Company, which is one of the largest integrated steel mills in the world.

1847 - Alexander Graham Bell, the great pioneer, inventor, and professor.

1939 - Motganhalli Laxmanarsu Jaisi alias Jaisimha, cricketer (Indian batsman of the sixties).

1947 - Swami Chinmayanand.

1955 - Jaspal Bhatti, actor.

1967 - Shankar Mahadevan, singer.

1989 - Shraddha Kapoor, actor.

RIP

1707 - Aurangzeb, Mughal king.

1982 - Firaq Gorakhpuri "Raghupati Sahay", great writer and nationalist.

You may have known....

In the sprawling compound of the Radha Rani temple in Barsana, thousands gather to witness the Lath Mar Holi when women beat up men with sticks as those on the sidelines become hysterical, sing Holi songs and shout Sri Radhey or Sri Krishna. Even today the marriage between residents of Nandgaon and Barsana is not allowed!

March 2 ; One mark of a good leader is the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.

On this day, 02 Mar....

1784 - Jean Pierre Blanchard made his first successful ascent in a self-built balloon. (He had been inspired by the demonstrations by the brothers Étienne and Jacques Montgolfier of hot-air balloon flying in Annonay, France. By 7 Jan 1785, he and an American physician, Dr. John Jeffries, made the first flight over the English Channel, from Dover to Calais.On 9 Jan 1793, Blanchard made the first balloon ascent in North America).

1825 - Work began on the Thames Tunnel in London, the world's first tunnel under a navigable river. Excavation was engineered by Marc Brunel. Beginning his own engineering career, his son Isambad K. Brunel assisted. Together they persevered through 18 years, dealing with floods, human disasters, and delays caused by financing difficulties. It opened for pedestrians on 25 Mar 1843. Planned ramps for use by carts and freight traffic were never added due to cost. The tunnel re-opened with a railway line on 7 Dec 1869, and it continued in use as the oldest part of the London Underground.

1858 - Frederick Cook, New Orleans, patented a metal cotton-bale tie.

1863 - Congress authorised a track width of 4-ft 8-1/2 in. as the standard for the Union Pacific Railroad, which became the accepted/standard width for most of the world. (All high-speed rail lines, except those in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Finland, are standard gauge ie 4 ft 81/2 inches. It is also called the UIC gauge or UIC track gauge. A popular legend that has been around since at least 1937 traces the origin of the 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in gauge even further back than the coalfields of northern England, pointing to the evidence of rutted roads marked by chariot wheels dating from the Roman Empire. Snopes categorised this legend as "false", but commented that "... it is perhaps more fairly labelled as 'True, but for trivial and unremarkable reasons").

1866 - Excelsior Needle Company of Wolcottville, Conn., began making sewing machine needles.

1908 - Gabriel Lippman introduced the new three-dimensional colour photography at the Academy of Sciences.

1928 - Mrs R Valentino patented a doll.

1930 - Gandhiji addresses letter to Viceroy intimating his intention to break Salt Law if Congress demands are not conceded.

1959 - An experimental push-button phone was tested by the Southern New England Telephone Company to see if customers dial fewer wrong numbers using the new design.

Born

1933 - Anandji Virji Shah, famous music director.

1963 - Vidyasagar, South Indian film composer, musician and singer.

RIP

1644 - Guru Har Gobind.

1568 - Meerabai, saint poet.

1949 - Sarojini Naidu (born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay), "Nightingale of India", freedom fighter, social worker and patriot.

You may have known....

According to legend Lord Krishna from Nandgaon visited his beloved Radha's village Barsana on this day (Holi) and playfully teased her and her friends. Taking offence at this, the women of Barsana chased him away. Since then, men from Krishna's village, Nandgaon, visit Barsana to play Holi in the town which has the distinction of having the only temple dedicated to Radha in India.

March 01 : Failures fall in love with excuses. A VERY HAPPY AND COLORFUL HOLI.

On this day, 01 Mar....

1260 - Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, conquerors Damascus.

1640 - Britishers were allowed to do commercial activities in Madras.

1818 - Singhgad won by the Britishers after the end of Peshwa kingdom.

1864 - Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first black woman to receive an American medical degree, from the New England Female Medical College in Boston.

1866 - John Muir's workplace was destroyed by fire. The factory, near Meaford, Canada, was not only where he worked as a woodworker and inventor of tools, but also where he stored his inventions, and a stock of wood he part-owned, all of which were lost in the fire. At the age of 27, he changed his lifestyle to that of a naturalist and author.(John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States).

1896 - Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity when he developed a photographic plate he left in a desk drawer with crystals of a uranium compound upon it. He found a fogged image of the uranium crystals resting on it, although the plate was wrapped in heavy black paper.

1912 - Captain Albert Berry performed the first parachute jump from an airplane over Jefferson, U.S.A. Previously, Berry had many times parachuted from a balloon. This time, he left his seat in the two-passenger Benoist pusher bi-plane while it was flying at a speed of about 50 m.p.h., at an altitude of about 1500-ft. The parachute was stowed underneath the aircraft in a specially constructed case. He cut it loose and descended on a trapeze bar attached below it. (Leonardo da Vinci drew a parachute in 1485. With two very large umbrellas, Frenchman Louis-Sébastien Lenormand tested the concept by jumping from a tree in 1783. The first parachute jump from a hydrogen balloon was made by Frenchman André-Jacques Garnerin on 22 Oct 1797).

1921 - A Diver's Suit invention was patented by Harry Houdini.

1954 - At Bikini, in the Pacific Ocean, the blast of the U.S. hydrogen bomb code-named Bravo was the most powerful of all U.S. thermonuclear bomb tests in the area. Equivalent to at least 15 megatons of TNT, it was similar to 1,000 atomic bombs of the kind dropped on Hiroshima. Bikini is a Pacific archipelago that is part of the Marshall Islands. In this test, one of the atolls was totally vaporized and disappeared in the over 100-mile wide mushroom cloud. Fallout exceeded predictions. Earlier tests began in 1946 after the indigenous people were evacuated to an island believed to be a safe distance away. (They have moved again in 1949.) Radioactivity made the bomb site islands an unsafe wasteland for many decades to follow.

1966 - The mission of the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft Venera 3 (Venus 3) was a partial success when it reached Venus and automatically released a small landing capsule intended to explore the planet's atmosphere during a parachute descent. However, contact had been lost since 16 Feb 1966. Although no data was returned before the capsule impacted, it became the first man-made object to touch the surface of another planet.

1975 - Colour television transmissions begin in Australia.

1997 - Gopi Chand and P.V.V. Lakshmi retain individual titles and India takes team titles in SAARC badminton in Colombo.

2000 - P.Harikrishna becomes India's youngest International Master in the Sangli International chess tournament.

Born

1917 - Kartar Singh Duggal, a famous author.

1939 - Air Chief Marshal Satish Kumar Sareen, former Air Chief.

1983 - Mary Kom, boxer.

RIP

1994 - Manmohan Desai, screenwriter.

1995 - Iftikar, famous character actor.

Titbits

1869 - Postage stamps showing scenes are issued for the 1st time.

1962 - K-Mart opens. (Kmart is an American chain of discount department stores headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, US. The chain purchased Sears for $11 billion in 2005, forming a new corporation under the name Sears Holdings Corporation).

1978 - Charlie Chaplin's coffin and remains are stolen from a Swiss cemetery.

You may have known....

Lath mar Holi is a local celebration of the Hindu festival of Holi. It takes place well before the actual Holi in the town of Barsana near Mathura in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The name means "that Holi in which [people] hit with sticks" (laṭh is a thick traditional staff).