Under Friday, March 11, the book of history records, among other things:
1502: The Shiite prince Ismail Safawi is crowned in Tabriz as Ismail I. Shah (“king of kings”) of the New Persian Empire. He establishes the over 200-year rule of the Safavid dynasty. Under the pseudonym “The Faulty One” he wrote mystical-religious poems.
1672: Molière’s play “The Learned Women” premieres at the Palais Royal in Paris.
1812: About 30,000 Jews in Prussia received equal civil rights by royal decree and a letter of protection.
1867: The first version of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Don Carlos” has its premiere in Paris.
1917: British troops, mostly composed of Indian soldiers, under the command of General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, take Baghdad without encountering any significant resistance from the Ottoman army.
1937: Spanish Civil War: More than 10,000 people are killed in the Málaga massacre after the city was captured by Franco insurgents.
1942: After the surrender of the Dutch governor-general, Sumatra and Java are placed under Japanese military administration.
1957: The Italian Claudia Cardinale wins a beauty pageant in Tunisia. The prize is a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where she gets an acting contract. This is how her world career begins.
1967: In Bern, Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, announces that she wants to stay in the West.
1972: Premiere of the film “The Godfather” by Francis Ford Coppola in New York. In 1974 and 1990 he shot the equally successful sequels.
1997: Paul McCartney, ex-Beatle, is knighted for his services to the British music scene by Queen Elizabeth II.
2007: The Austrian authorities are investigating an Islamist terrorist threat against Germany and Austria that was spread in a video message. The two countries are asked in the video to withdraw their soldiers from Afghanistan. Security experts see “no acute indications of threats”. A similar video surfaced at the end of November.
birthdays: Maurice Halbwachs, French sociologist (1877-1945); Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, German lawyer and resistance fighter (1907-1945); Freda Meissner-Blau, Austria. Politician and journalist (1927-2015); Joachim Fuchsberger, German TV presenter (1927-2014); Günter Rittner, German painter (1927-2020); Douglas Adams, British author (1952-2001); Pier Paolo Bianchi, former Italian motorcycle racer (1952).
days of death: Georg Reutter, Austria composer (1708-1772); Franz Sacher, Austria hotelier and confectioner (1816-1907); Geraldine Farrar, US soprano (1882-1967); Pierre Renoir, French actor (1885-1952); Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, German journalist and publicist (Die Zeit) (1909-2002); Willibald Jentschke, Austria physicist (1911-2002); Richard Brooks, US film director (1912-1992); James Tobin, US economist (1918-2002); Betty Hutton, US actress, singer and entertainer (1921-2007).
name days: Rosina, Ulrich, Eulogius, Theresia, Konstantin, Heraklius, Wolfram, Heinrich, Alram.